I on Oh, I didn’t do that. Mike’s are on. OK. I got his tee book You want, I want them both? Sure. This might wanna read. You never know. It’s part of our mission statement when it’s time. Come on OK Good evening. Uh, I called to order the meeting of the

Hamilton Wham Regional School Committee on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:01 p.m., um, and uh uh, I will start off before we uh begin. I’d like to just officially welcome our newest member, uh, Kristen Noon. Welcome to the committee. Kristen is, uh, been, um appointed to the committee and

properly sworn in, and she’s ready to get to work. Welcome. Thank you. Alright, um, are we up on Zoom? Good OK Um oh, I feel very loud. Yeah, that is loud. super loud or is it OK? OK. Um, OK, next. uh OK, um so next up we have an opportunity for citizens’

comments. Um, we’ll have an opportunity for people in the room as well as um on Zoom though it doesn’t look like anyone is available on Zoom right now. Um, uh, just a little, uh, to update you on citizens’ comments. Um, this is an opportunity for citizens to, it’s an opportunity for you to be heard. Um, it’s an

opportunity for us to listen and you to speak, um, any citizen that wishes to speak, um, in the room, I’ll ask you, um, to go ahead when, when we are ready to, um, approach the podium. Um, I do ask you to keep your, um comments to 3 minutes. I’ll ask Amy to be our official

timekeeper and she’ll let you know when you have about 30 seconds left. Um, I do ask that you, um, give your name and address and please spell your name for us so that we can, your last name so that we can get it correct in the minutes. Um and I think that that’s about

it. I think I may not remember to say that we are being live streamed and recorded. OK. All right. Um, if there’s, and it looks like we don’t have anyone on Zoom right now, so if anyone in the room is, um, wanting to offer a public comment, please approach the podium. right Hello, Jeff Austin, Hamilton, Mass.

I’d like to offer two brief clarifications. First, the role of the school committee. I’ve heard many times by members of this committee that they work for and or on behalf of the children By Massachusetts law, a school committee is governing board with specific duties, hire and review the performance of the

superintendent. Review and approve the budget and set goals and policies consistent with law. Who do you answer to? You’re an elected public officials accountable to the voters of the member towns. and to the Commonwealth through open government and ethics laws. Deliberate deliberate only in public under the open meeting law and comply with the conflict of interest law.

Student learning is the purpose of the system. Your legal accountability is to the public and to the law. School committee members are treated as municipal employees for the ethic for ethics purposes under MGL chapter 268A. Under MGL chapter 71, subsection 37 and 16, the school committee governs the district. It answers to the voters into the state law.

Student success is a system’s purpose, but your legal accountability is to the public and to the law. Secondly, I’ve also heard by many members of this committee and members of the public that they wish to align the state law of a simple majority threshold. This must misunderstands the intent of the law completely.

State law majority language MGL chapter 71, Section 16 establishes a floor. A floor is the minimum level of consent the Commonwealth will accept for regional district debt. It does not prohibit a regional agreement from adopting stricter locally chosen safeguards that are compatible with law and approved by the commissioner. preserving a supermajority at the local level protects both

towns by ensuring one broad district-wide consensus before taking on long term tax backed obligations. 2 resilience against low turnout or single issue swings and 3 stronger alignment between multi-year debt in the community’s fiscal capacity and priorities. So my que my request is straightforward. Govern exactly as the statute describes policy budget, superintendent

oversight, transparency and within these voter consent rules and 2, keep the statutory majority of 2/3 as the legal minimum within our regional agreement and preserve any duly approved supermajority safeguards. That approach serves students well and keeps you clearly accountable to the people who elected you. Thank you. Thank you Welcome

Thank you. Uh, I’m Beth Blanchard. I spent 30 years teaching the district at all three elementary schools and up on Gordon Conwell for one year. Um, what might have been too. Anyways, um, I ended here and when I retired, I stayed in the teachers union and I ended up, uh, joining the, uh, retirees

group and the retirees group took on the MCAS test and the impact it was having um, we were pro mo ting and we wanna thank we were the ones who were collecting signatures to get the issue on the ballot and parents and adults in the community who voted did vote to

stop using MCAS scores as a graduation requirement, and we thank you for that and that’s, that was hard for us to do, um, but. we were wanting to return to rich and authentic learning that was not for the basis of um getting a score and we were also interested in promoting again a return to a

project-based and performance-based assessments that um are more authentic and are more rich and learning experiences to be shared. We’re now re promoting people’s forums on graduation readiness, um I wanted to let you know that on November 13th at 6 o’clock to 7:30. We’re holding a gathering at the Salisbury, uh,

Public Library for the North Shore. There have already been different forms held in Western Mass, Cambridge, and Somerville, New Bedford, Worcester, Boston, Lowell, and Salisbury, and it’s an opportunity for parents and families to get together and talk and discuss these three questions What should students know and be able to do by the time they

graduate? How should students demonstrate the readiness to graduate and how can school pre-K to 12 support these goals. So I’m inviting people. I’ve put flyers in the Hamilton Wyndham Library, both in the adult room and in the children’s room. Um, it’s an issue that actually heavily impacted, uh, the quality of learning and

made it more difficult to really dive into interests that students had and shape that into projects that were productive and I’m thinking 30 seconds examples of what could happen. So the posters are at the library, um, there are some that will go to schools and um if you could register, uh, there’s an address down the poster

again, it’s 6 to 7:30 and children are welcome. There’ll be light refreshments and we just, we want to involve parents, um, in how they want would like to see students being assessed for graduation. Thank you, thank you Welcome I, uh, Deb Safford. Um, my comments today were addressed really towards people

that aren’t here today, but I’m going to go ahead and do it just because what they said a few weeks ago at the last meeting is on the record and I think it’s important to highlight it. Uh, Julie said, I think we should really appreciate the work of, uh, Build Bright Futures and the

groups and parents and teachers that uh that she spoke with that were committed to the project. We also need to take them into account even though this vote didn’t work. I don’t want to negate that group. I want to be respectful of that group, and I want people, um, we have to

think about the people that want the school. I don’t mind debating on issues, facts and truths, but we can’t debate on misinformation. We don’t know how to go forward. There’s personal vendettas. Those are quotes, and I think that that’s a perspective that’s going to prevent this committee from really representing the fruit of what happened.

And I think it’s really important for and public acknowledgement that there should be no surprise with what happened. There was a lot of information. People showed up, tens, 50, Amy’s classic comment, you guys are all showing up, but, you know, the other people aren’t and they’re the majority. It turns out they’re not, as I’ve said

before, and I think it’s really sad 2.5 months after the election for people to still be stuck. And I think that needs to shift if this committee is going to have the respect of the community that they’re going to hear what happened and move forward. So with the profe professional

polls and the stream of feedback and resistance, people showing up, people standing here at the podium and talking. I just wish that there could be a self-reflection and analysis, as if you were a corporation, you know, businesses that have a product that fails, they do a self-assessment, a reflective analysis, what worked, what didn’t work. Instead of

pointing fingers and saying there’s misinformation and uh personal vendet ta s and we should just remember those people that didn’t win, because I guarantee if it had gone through, you would not be thinking twice about those of us that have been standing up. So I would like to just have an acknowledgement of that, and I

really hope that we can move forward in a way which is productive and constructive and reflects the fact that the community spoke. Secondly, regarding the floor ceiling issue, um, again, to reiterate, the 2/3 town meeting threshold supermajority actually did reflect what the majority of the community wanted. So it was a great metric to actually show the support.

If you, uh, cons consider going down to the minimum floor as the requirement, you know, Mr. Tracy has 1515 days of sick time. The state requirement is 5. So you guys have chosen to give 2 weeks extra for sick days unless I’ve misread it. That’s what I saw in the contract

approval. That’s fine. I don’t care. If you have 15 sick days, I really could care less because we’re actually exceeding the minimum. So it’s the same concept remember that, that there’s a floor and a ceiling, and when there’s a floor, we can always go above that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome Thanks. um, I appreciate the

eye contact that you guys have been having. Sometimes we come, uh Bethur Asbury Street. Um, sometimes we come and you’re looking at your computers and not looking at us or you look at the people that you want to listen to. So I appreciate the eye contact that I’ve been seeing. Um, I

just want to touch on what Jeff said about the 2/3. If an individual town can have a 2/3 and a region can’t then dissolve the district. OK? That’s how I feel about it. So if you guys aren’t gonna fight to keep the 2/3, then we should just dissolve the district

because an individual town shouldn’t have the ability to have a 2/3 on a big vote like that in a region not. And that’s how strongly I feel about it and I think a lot of other people do too, and I think you’re gonna hurt yourself. People are already pissed off. If you try to push

this simple majority in the regional agreement. OK. So um, I had a crazy idea. I thought you were actually gonna like start looking for solutions after the vote was over, and I really haven’t heard an acknowledgement and thank you for the eye roll, Amy, that’s very helpful to good communication. So, I’m looking to build bridges

and I think that’s what we tried to do. I too could not believe that I heard the words, we don’t want to negate the people who worked hard. You would not feel the same way about us. You would not feel the same way the huffing, the puffing is really helpful right now, and that might be

something that you might want to consider. Um, you’ve been negating the save small schools people for almost 2 years, but you don’t want to negate the building bright futures people. Do you understand how disrespectful that sounds. This remi um sorry, uh yeah, anyway, so, um, do you even listen to what you’re saying? Would you ever accept

that statement from me or anyone else for that matter. You just kept ignoring us until you couldn’t ignore us anymore. You turned your back on the majority of the community. Clearly, you now know after wasting tens of thousands and millions of dollars on town meetings, on a feasibility study on elections, we now have the

proof you were waiting for that a majority did not want the consolidation. Trent said it best when he said he did not want to get to this place with no project. You ignored us over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So I would ask that you stop whining at

these meetings and that you would, if you need to wine, do it with your friends. You’ve missed the signs. We’ve had road signs, and you’ve missed them. And to move forward, these are my suggestions. We asked you to slow down, you didn’t slow down. We asked you many things. OK.

Suggestion number one, acknowledge a loss and apologize for wasting time. Stop saying misinformation. It only pushes people away. Investigating the other school options. No, you’ve had other people speak for longer. I am very. uh, welcome Good evening. Good evening Scott Maddern, 12 0 Old Cart Road, Hamilton. As you develop next year’s budget and capital plan with

Hamilton and Wenham Fincoms and select boards. I have some requests, which I also made at Monday’s Hamilton select board and we’ll suggest to Wenham as well. First, ask the five boards to share their main reasons for the failures of the new grammar school. Otherwise how can you learn what to do next?

Here are some items to discuss publicly. There were no options It was either one big school or nothing. The change from 2/3 to majority voting social media presence, promotion. and correction of misinformation. 2 hire a social media team to promote your plans and counter misinformation. Reporting at each school committee meeting and regularly at select boards and FICOs.

School renovations are the largest capital spending the towns have by far So help share the community input that happens more online than it does in our meetings. Number 3 add 1 to $2 million per year into a renovations capital stabilization fund. the uh district worn article at each town’s annual meeting.

with overrides and revi revised district agreement looming. This is tough. but waiting until you have plans for each school’s renovations is fiscally irresponsible. Renovations are coming and waiting to unveil the specifics isn’t required to build funds to avoid the shock. of future building costs Number 4 charter, a renovations outreach committee. with responsibility to communicate with voters,

promote social interaction, counter misinformation. present funding and voting options discuss facility options. and provide regular updates here into the select boards and FICOs. I volunteer to help with these efforts. I sent a more formal letter this afternoon copying the select boards and fin coms. 30 seconds. And finally, change is coming.

I prefer to be part of what is best for our towns than be frustrated by a lack of communication options and leadership. Thank you for listening Thank you Um Does anyone else in the room have a comment? OK, and it looks like there’s no one no one on Zoom, OK, um, so at this point.

we will close the Zoom link, and we will end Citizens’ comments. Um, thank you to all of you. um next up we have uh a review of a portion of our school community protocols. Amy, as elected members of the Hamilton-Wynham 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. Number 4, school committee members will channel requests for information, reports, and data through the superintendent and the school committee chair

rather than to staff. The superintendent will ensure that each member of the committee has equal access to this information in a timely manner. recognizing the importance of proactive communication and avoiding surprises, school committee members will, whenever possible, contact the school committee chair and or the superintendent in advance of a meeting if they have

questions or concerns about an agenda item, or we’ll ask the chair at least 48 hours prior to a meeting that an item be placed on an agenda. Thank you. Um, next up, we have a review of a portion of the mission statement. Kristen, thank you. And just as a point of order, I’m only reading the green

highlighted correct questions. Thank you. The Hamilton1ha 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-Wynham Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that supports and guides the superintendent to execute and achieve the approved 2025 to

2026 district goals. Thank you. Um, so before we, um, do the consented and I just wanna check with the committee, um, our, we don’t have our secretary here this evening, um, Megan, are you willing to be the secretary for the evening? OK, um, that good with everybody. Megan fulfills that.

Um, so before, um, we do the consent agenda, does any member of the committee have any item from the consent agenda that they want held. No, no OK you, Megan I move that the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District School Committee, uh, accepts a consent agenda as presented in tonight’s agenda.

Second, seconded by Amy Kumberger. All those in favor and that is unanimous in the motion passes. I just want to thank the E fund for that, uh, elementary STEM grant. That is amazing, yeah. The E fund is doing amazing things as always. um right I am pleased to say that our uh next up is, uh, our Decca

Student group, um. and I’ll let them take it away unless you’re gonna introduce them. Take it away. We’ll let Caroline do introductions. OK. walk up. check this for a not the speaker Sorry. Yes Sorry for that Good evening, school committee. My name is Caroline Cirillo, and I’m one of the 8 DECA officers at our high school.

You can see beside me is the rest of our officer team. alongside which is our officers, we also have a team of ambassadors, as officers meet weekly with Miss Wheeler, and the ambassadors and us meet every month so we can talk about and collaborate what we want to do with DECA. Um, so what exactly is DECA?

DECA is a student organization where we develop transferable skills for college and careers. Uh, we try real life job scenarios, whether that’s like a job interview or a presentation. Uh, it was formerly known as the distributive Education Clubs of America, and now it’s just simply known as DECA. There are

over 294,000 high school DECA students in 4,252 classrooms across all 50, uh, states, 4 US territories, Canada China, and more So this year, about 60% of the school is a part of DECA, and so we have just over 270 members this year with 95 new members and 179 returning

members and so each year we make sure to hold new member orientations for all our students, um, and we also have mentor teams, so the officers each take um a team and we divide all the students among the teams and we make sure to keep um in communication with them. And then throughout the

year, we have competition prep for real world situation s and then we also have the stock market and virtual business challenge that we host, um, where students get the opportunity to place um for ICDC, which is our international competition, and there’s also the state Quiz Bowl competition where students get the opportunity to compete

against other schools on a team and then we also have fundraisers throughout the year to um raise money for DACA and we also have speaker series where we bring in professionals um from the community to speak to our students. so we wanna make sure that everybody in DECA feels like

they’re part of a family, but with over half the school in DECA that can be a little bit difficult to achieve. So our solution for that is to have mentor teams. So every year the officers come together and we choose students from across the school, um, to put into smaller individualized teams so we can

have better communication. This year we even had ambassadors join us when we drafted the teams. Ambassadors are usually sophomores and juniors, so they had a better outlook on the kids in their grades. So we just want to make sure everything’s as interactive as we can possibly make it.

Then with those teams, we have group chats and we spread a lot of information on there that the students need for DECA. Some of our most famous ones are the Miss Wheeler videos, where she records a video of herself talking about what we have up next for DECA, and then we spread them to the to the group

chats. We also have a spot for students to ask any questions to us officers and ambassadors on the group chat. And finally, it’s a perfect place for us to get them excited for competition. Competition is the biggest part of DECA. We have over 50 different categories. We have two main parts of it. On one

hand, we have projects, so students have a few months where they prepare a project and then they present it in front of a judge in December. And then on the other hand, we have role plays, roleplay competitors have to take on 100 question test in November. And then on competition day, when they arrive, they receive a

role play. This roleplay is a business event, so they have to create a solution or a plan for the judge, and they only have from 10 to 30 minutes in order to set this up. So this can be a little bit stressful, especially to the newer members, but as Miss Wheeler’s motto goes, you can’t be bad at

getting experience. The main idea for DECA is even though it’s amazing if you move on to the next level, we just want to make sure that students at Hamilton Wenham can improve as much as they can through our club. So, you know, maybe in the future when they have an

interview, they won’t be wishing that they’d done better, but they might even get the job. So we just want to make sure that they can think very quickly on their feet and also have good presentational skills. Every student that’s involved in DECA has to meet with Miss Wheeler to kind of find out their interests and see what

would be best for them. Deca categories explore marketing, finance, hospitality, entrepreneurship, and business management. Every competitor um receives an email with personalized competition prep that will help them prepare for the different competitions, including tips and tricks, a practice scheduled, just things like that. So a little more about the competitions themselves.

There’s 3 different stages of the competition. There’s districts, states, and ICDC districts. It’s a two-day event at the Doubletree Hotel in Danvers, states, if you move on from districts is a weekend in the Seaport district of Boston, and then the main event is ICDC, which is the International

conference that is held this year in Atlanta, Georgia. So as Mallory mentioned and Gabriella, a lot of us do role plays, but we get the furthest in competition through our written projects. So at the bottom you can see some of the partnerships that we’re using this year in our projects. Some of them are the cord food pantry.

Institution for savings, Hamilton Police Department, Red Bull, and the Hamilton went I’m Little League. Uh, so what is deck in action look like? So over the past two months through September and October our school and community came together to support um MDA, which is muscular dystrophy Association through raising awareness and a

fundraiser that was organized by 4 seniors, 3 of us which are here today. the muscular dystrophy Association we raised um just around $3000 and we had um a bracelet and Shamrock fundraiser that was part of it where students got to purchase a $5 bracelet and they got to donate, um, through that, and

then there was also Shamrocks that were hung up on the windows at the school, and then we promoted the fundraiser through a QR code. So each homeroom got a QR code and through that students were able to scan the QR code at the beginning of the day and donate and um the QR code was also

sent out to um families and students across the community, and there was also a challenge today that we put together for MDA where we brought all the students together and we had activities that were aimed to promote MDA and um bring students together for the cause.

um, and this is just one of the many examples of how our um team gets involved within the community and then not only was this project um successful, but, um, Patrick and I along with our partner Wyatt, is also doing this as our project management written project. Um, so for those of you who were

here last year, you might remember, um, the social squad, um, so that was when the a group of 4 students came together to run the school social media um in hopes of retaining um, student enrollment and not only do we grow our following 60%, but we also did see some

growth in our enrollment rates, which we are definitely very proud of, um, and not only that, but our um group placed 3 in the state, um, competition qualifying us for nationals where we competed in Orlando last April, um, and this year we are applying that the same exact skills to our MDA

fundraiser using all that information from the last slide and creating a written project so it’s a 20 page paper which definitely helps us, um, as Gabriela was saying earlier for like kind of the documentation side of things in our future, and then there’s also a slideshow where we can kind of get that more public interaction with people

about that. Um, this is just an example of our paper last year, um. where it’s just it’s not gonna load. OK, um, so it’s like 20 page paper where we really we wanted to make it look aesthetic obviously, but also keep the um information, um, good and informative.

um, so there’s that. So we really hope we can use the same exact skills to the MDA thing this year. Oh. So, as I’m sure you guys can probably see. DACA is important because it builds transferable skills, self-esteem, leadership, and community service, but to me and to us that is so much

more than that. I’ve grown so much both as a person and as a learner through this club. I’ve made many new friends and new memories. I’ve even been to Anaheim and Orlando as part of the International DECA Conference. And so, yes, well, Decca builds these skills, it really helps with personal growth. We thank you for your time.

you Thank you all. Um so much with that presentation. Um anybody wants to add anything? Yeah, I’m just so impressed by this group. I think that it I’m, I was impressed by your public speaking skills and your presentation skills. Like these are all, you know, they’re all such important things for your future. So congrats to you guys

and Tim Wheeler. I think this is, yeah, and it’s always just amazing to hear the to hear the number of students that are participating. What an amazing culture at our high school that this is something that more than 5% of the kids want to participate in, um, it really

I, I feel really proud to sit here and see what you all are accomplishing in our community, and our schools. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. OK. Um, I wish I had been in that group and I, I know. We didn’t have that All right. Wheeler. Thank you. Um, I think maybe we just lose our presenter.

Oh, it’s me. It’s you. Oh, I thought, OK. All right. Next up is our annual roll. I don’t know why I thought it was the two of you. Annual enrollment in class size presentation. Thank you. This is something we do annually annually as we lead into the budget process, uh, one of our

uh things that we track fairly closely is our enrollment, as you know, we have, uh, the past few years, had a declining enrollment this year we’ve actually had a bump up. um, with an increase of 37 students overall from last year’s account. We have 9 in the high school, 5 in the

middle school, and 23 new students at the elementary level and you can see we do a uh attached to this is a breakdown of every class and there the the number of kids in the class and overall average broken down by uh either grade or department depending on which level we’re

looking at so elementary we break down by grade and you can see the averages here on the screen 19 is the average class size for our elementary school classrooms, um, when you moved to secondary you’re looking at 18 for an average class size in your secondary. It’s pretty impressive to have class sizes

that small. Um, many of the schools in this area do not have class sizes in that range, uh, so it’s, um, it’s nice for all of us to be able to dig in with our kids and keep our, keep our um numbers uh reasonable within classrooms so that everybody gets the appropriate amount of attention,

um, the, along with the same report is the um district enrollment over the last few years from 2013 to present, so you can see the shifts over time um, the one caveat I will say is the 1706 uh total number hasn’t been verified by the state. They don’t do that till

November 15th, but, um, we’re we’re we’re the ones submitting the data to them so it’s, it’s a matter of just managing who’s who and then this is uh a chart of that data over time you can see the elementary has um it slowly kind of bumping up a

little bit each year, uh, same with the, uh, middle school as well and this year interesting bump in the high school. Then in the document itself, and I’ll just show Bukkers as an example is a class rosters basically the class um classes that teachers teach. and each of the buildings, some of our names, some of the names

you will see them multiple times because some of our specialists teach in multiple buildings. so you may look at the Buker for example and see um the library tech at the Buker who also is the library tech over at Cutler part time, so we have 22 people in each of the

special areas that rotate between the three schools so you will see some duplicate names, but this just gives you some ideas of numbers at the Buker school and when you look at the chart on the right hand side, it has the grade breakdown, the specials breakdown, but below that

special education is NA um special education is hard to actually nail down to a classroom because there are so many moving parts, teachers, there are teachers that have specific classrooms like I’ll use the uh CASL program. Those kids are assigned to that room so we can count them as a group,

um, the other, uh, classrooms like the teachers you see below the chart of the averages, those are special ed teachers and they’re case loads, those are the kids that they’re traveling in and out of class where they’re working with individually for uh to meet the goals in their IEPs uh throughout the day. So we’ve done the same

thing for each of the schools. I’m not going to roll through every one of them, but each school has a breakdown of all their teachers, uh, their number of students in each class and then the average is uh by the breakdown and they, they’re in order Buker Cutler

went throughout Middle school and high school, um, so you can see how all the data connects back to these charts in the front. and that is it. Take any questions? you questions Um, Eric, I just wanted, you said the, um, the 1706, that, that’s the number on October 1st, but it isn’t approved yet

or doesn’t get certified until I think November 15th if I remember correctly. Um, I had one brief question if that’s OK Um just out of curiosity, and I know that this report doesn’t include this, but, but I wonder, do we do anything to look at children in the district that

are too young to enroll yet, sort of like the, the idea of how old are our preschoolers and toddlers that could be coming into the pre-K and kindergarten program. Yeah, so we do, we do get some counts from local schools. We have a preschool program, but we do not have all the preschool kids,

uh, several of them are at the Christ Church. There are different programs around that kids attend. We have a, we have, we do have a pre-K that has um it’s an integrated pre-K, so we, it’s a, it’s a split classroom where there’s 7 seats for students on IEPs and 78 seats for mentor students, um, and

then we tracked around the town with the numbers of kids that we have in kindergarten. The hard part is knowing the private schools if kids go to a private kindergarten we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be able to track that so every every June we was we as kids sign up for kindergarten, we’re

counting the numbers and we watched them go up this year, uh, fairly dramatically from last year, the kindergartners, um, came in they were at 117 this year we had 100 and we had 141 at one point and then a couple of people moved out so. we do know that the next couple of years you’ll probably see

similar kindergarten numbers which we’ll carry through, um, after that, I think it will dip down a little bit. Thank you Anybody else have questions? No. All right, thank you um next, so, um, we have um two committees, um, subcommittees that have vacant um slots, negotiations subcommittee and the policy subcommittee and we’re hoping this evening

to have a discussion and a point, um, we have, we do have a new school committee member who uh, is not currently on a committee, um, so, um, and we do have two empty spaces, um, I don’t know how you, the committee want to begin this. I would like, I

will say, um and I guess I was gonna say it at some point in my chair report or um I am um on negotiations, um, and do just want to share that we do have some work coming up, um, we are, um going to the fairly near future begin

bargaining with the um ESLs, um, which is ESPs, excuse me, um, which is our educational support education support professionals, um, and so we do need to make sure that that committee is complete. um so I’m just having my eye on that. That’s not to say that policy we need to fill policy as well, um uh.

but anyway, so I just so does anyone have any thoughts? I can, or do you have questions or do you have questions or thoughts or yeah, um, so as a, as a the new member, I’m happy to be on a committee. um I have done a little bit of

research, you know, myself to kind of explore what the possibilities could be. Um I’m happy to go on to the negotiations committee. I know that’s an important committee, and I think because this is, um, there is still an important negotiation to happen this year, but it’s not, you know, the largest.

teacher contract. So it could be a good time to learn about the process as well as a new member. Um, so I am willing to do that. And if that’s not appropriate, if another committee member prefers or if it seems that, you know, my efforts are better spent someplace else. I’m happy to go

on another committee as well. So. um OK. Anybody have and do you have any questions? Does anybody have No questions? I, I’m happily busy on the capital planning and finance subcommittee with my friends over here. um right, I was gonna say, does anybody have a a nomination that they’d like

to offer? I nominee Kristen Noon to the negotiations subcommittee. Second, seconded by Megan Benson, um, is that nomination something you would accept? Yes. OK, um, is there any further discussion? No No, looks like we’re ready to vote. Um, all those in favor? Uh, thank you sure if I could vote for myself.

Um, that is, uh, only the fact that only that I will not yet start voting against myself at the first meeting. I’ll wait. Um, that is unanimous and the motion passes. Congratulations. I look forward to working with you on the negotiation subcommittee. Thank you. Um uh. OK, um. Hold on, I’m just behind myself.

All right, next, we have a policy opening um and I, I guess given now that everyone who’s on the committee is now on a subcommittee, um, I don’t know, Amy, if you want to speak to policy, and we can certainly potentially talk about so the way our subcommittees work, we have 3 subcommittees, we have 7 members.

Some it. some people have to serve on two, right now I think it is um Jan that serves on too, um, so Jen is on um Capital Finance and policy. So I would say we can think about any member that we want. I would say typically you haven’t asked people to serve

on 3, so I don’t imagine, but I at the will of the committee if everyone felt like that. All right, tell us a little bit about what you’re needing term policy, um, something that I like about policy is that it’s our job to read through district policies. So it’s, you know, it’s a good opportunity

to really dig in and understand more as far as scheduling. I like it. We meet about once a month and I’m able to do the work. Um. you know, late at night when I have time to read or make notes or write new things. So I feel like it’s a little more flexible than some of the other.

committees that have more urgent deadlines or longer meetings. That’s just my plug, but I do like that and that being said, like all the committees. one never knows when something might come, right, not guaranteed, but but it could happen but um. so, um, so I genuinely don’t know given that we have

some people that aren’t here this evening. I don’t know, um whether people have thoughts on whether they’re nominate someone I guess what I, what I would say that well, no, we don’t, I would say this is my thought is that it wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate for us to actually

vote someone in, um on the other hand, I, I don’t think, I think it’s OK to discuss whether we might think of someone on the committee or someone here, um. you know, to fill that spot, um. I’ll stop talking. Anyone have thoughts? Oops. I just have, I have just a question. What is the timing

by which we need to fill these vacancies. So the negotiations um it felt very pressing because we really do need to begin the process, um. technically speaking, there’s a, it’s a three person committee, so policy could and negotiations could in theory, continue with just 2 because if you both show up, then that’s

the majority of the subcommittee. So it can, um but we do have one more meeting before our next policy subcommittee meeting so we could table that particular nomination. Um, so I moved to table or push that discussion to the next meeting. OK, I heard a motion. Is there a second? Second by Megan Benson.

Um, is there further discussion unless you guys wanted to like jump in, but I just feel like we could wait until we’re all discussion would be, I’m absolutely OK with tabling it. um I, I would encourage all members of all 7 members of the committee, um, to really

reflect to that someone is going to have to fill that spot, and it means that someone is going to need to be on two committees, um, and I will reflect on that as well, myself included, um, because obviously, I am one of the 7 people who

can do that as well. So I will think about that as well. Um, so that when we can come to the next meeting, I hope that somebody will be hopefully some two people will be fighting for it. That’s my hope. um, uh, we have a, we have a motion on the table. Does anybody else have any discussion?

OK, looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor. That is unanimous of the four members present, and the motion passes. So we will add the policy vacancy to the next um meeting, um, and, uh I will just say to two present members of the negotiations team that I will, um, Eric and I will, uh, reach

out with some dates to get um, a first meeting on the agenda. OK, um, next up, thank you for putting that up there Um, this is um a list of liaisons and a couple of things hoping to look at it, fill the vacancies, kind of make sure that I’m

we can do this however you all want, but I wanted to, if we could just, if you could just scroll down to the bottom. I wanted to just point out that currently we still have these listed as the master planning on both towns with, um, liaisons, but both master plannings are complete, so

one thing I might suggest to the subcommittee is that it might be time to remove those since those, those are both. not in existence anymore or not ongoing, I should say, um, does anyone else have anything like that that you, when you read through this, that anything that you think

this is no longer relevant or no longer necessary, um, I think I, so just for Kristen and maybe for Megan’s sake, um, it the liaison roles, I would say that none of them are particularly heavy lift. It really is that you are the contact person to connect with

that particular group, um, in town if someone were, you know, like someone from the, you know, um Hamilton, Final they you know, would see that, oh, I should reach out to Dana if I have a question, um, it doesn’t prevent them from reaching out to different members instead if

they want to, it’s fine it’s just um on the school front I do think we do want to at least make um you know, attend, hopefully at least um once or twice a year, one of the friends meetings, um, if possible, um, To know you and sort of and you

did that I think already this year, is that right? I’ve been in touch with both friends of Miles River and of Winthrop. Um. because I have students at those schools. So I would love to, if possible, I would love to be on be the liaison for the middle school.

as well. OK. In addition to Cutler and, yeah, I mean, if someone, I don’t, but that that was gonna be my question is you’re, I mean, make you. like you don’t have, I don’t have a connection to Cutler other than this rule. So if someone else does or Kristen,

do you have a connection to Cutler? Both of my children attend Bukker, um, and looking at this list too, I was just wondering and I should know this, and I’m sorry that I don’t, but what is CPAC? That is the, uh, special education parent. OK, got it. I know I recognized it. I’ve seen

the acronym. OK. And then also is the athletic facilities improvement Building Committee still active or does that relate to the new fields. That is, I would say that that is. similar to the master planning is that I don’t think that we have a need. I mean, doesn’t officially closed out, but

officially signed off but it was not really. They’ll probably have one more meeting to close everything out. Right, OK, um so, um, so I heard Amy saying maybe an interest in filling the vacant spot at the Miles River Middle School, and if I was hearing it correctly,

it sounded like maybe open to giving up the, the liaison at Cutler. So accurate. to picking up Cutler. I, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna say I think um it it could be a good opportunity to get into the schools. I know, um, that’s right for everyone who doesn’t know my children are young, free and 21 months,

so, um, and, and, uh, I mean, Megan and I have had sort of a good conversation about sort of book we are sort of the bookends, right, that my children are already out of school, um, and hers are not yet in, and so it does, as a school committee member, it is sometimes challenging to find

opportunities to get into the schools. um, where are the books? You guys are the books. We’re the book ends, um, so I mean I don’t. so that’s a, it’s just a thought. We’re just throwing some thought thoughts around that that might be something that Meghan might be um the other two that are vacant.

um, are the Hamilton Select Board and the Wenham FinCom. we’re all I mean, I would be willing to be the one. I’m a Fincom. I’m the one I’m resident. I’m the one, the one in person, so I don’t mind, um doing that unless anybody else is like very motivated to do what I do it, you know, um.

and so then there’s Hamilton Select Board, um, which I, I’m more than happy to do. I um. but I’m also happy to have somebody else do it like I don’t mind doing that when I do always watch the suckboard meetings. This is true. It’s true. So I’m happy to do that

one as well. I don’t think we have any other, like our members that aren’t here tonight are all one them anyway. They’re Wham, yes, exactly. So they would have been fighting Kristen for the um um, OK. Uh, so so that was just a discussion but I heard a bunch of things.

I want to just sort of review what I heard and then maybe we can kinda have our secretary try to figure out what to craft, if anything. Um, OK, so what I heard, taking it from the top is um a potential switch from Amy to Meganette Cutler Elementary, um a uh filling Amy into the empty

slot at Miles River. Um and on the for the Hamilton select board, not on the select board. We’re not appointing you to the select board. Um, and then, uh, Kristen on the Wenham Finance Committee. and then I do think we have 3 lines that could be removed or we’ve suggested that could be removed.

The athletic facilities and then the Hamilton master planning and went on master planning. OK. Question as stand-in secretary, can we do this? Do I need to do it. We can do it all at once. Otherwise we could do it. I think I got it. OK. I move that the Hamilton, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Yes, that the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District School Committee. Appoint Amy Kunberger as the Miles River Middle School liaison. Megan Benson, as the Cutler Elementary School liaison. Kristen Noon as the Wenham Finance Committee liaison. Amy Kunberger as the Hamilton Select Board liaison. And that we remove. the athletic facilities improvement building Committee, liaison roll

the Hamilton Master Planning liaison role and the Wha master planning liaison roles. by Kristen Noon. That was impressive, um, right, is there any discussion questions? No. OK Looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor? That is unanimous of the four members present, and the motion passes. Thank you all for getting that done. OK, um OK

Um, next, uh, is the Buker uh, lease. Oh, interesting. I’m sorry, I just got signed out of my Yeah. it was an hour ago. Doesn’t usually happen in the meeting. Usually it only happens when I’m meeting with Eric, um, right, that’s OK. I’m here. No, I’m, I’m, it’s here. I can

still see it. um OK, and to you, Eric, about the lease. Thank you. Uh, as you may remember earlier in the spring, the two leases for Cartler and um Bucher and and actually Winthrop too were all coming to ends and uh on the Bucher, excuse me, on the win.

the uh Wyndham side, we reached out I think right after town meeting to start the discussions with the extension of the lease terms, um, they went back and forth a little bit, got the document drawn up by their attorneys. Uh, we finally got it signed by everybody on the select board

and it’s been officially voted by the select board, uh, the terms just need to be accepted by the school committee of it’s a 10 year term. Everything else in the original lease remains the same. There’s no transfer of money. or anything like that, but they just need us to accept the um

the lease as presented the lease, the lease amendment as presented and then uh everybody will need to sign it. and then we’ll get it back to the town. Um, why don’t we start with motion, if you’re willing. I move that the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District School Committee approved the extension of the lease on the

Buker School as written. Second, seconded by Amy Kummberger. Um, anybody have questions? Not have questions. Um, well, I To make a point of clarification. Yeah, I was gonna, yeah, go ahead. I had a couple, but I think you’re gonna answer them right now. Go ahead. Maybe, um, the the two things that I was going

to mention the top has no date built in there it will be today once we get everybody signed in and then um in the regional agreement, it does give for the opportunity to give a 20 year lease they have decided to go 10 because of the unknown. nature of what’s going on with the buildings and possible

repairs, renovations, etc. down the road, so they want to be able to revisit that if necessary. Did I answer your question? Yes, OK, and also I just, I think you said it, but I just want to reiterate not so much for the committee, but just for people in general that it,

there isn’t uh it’s called a lease, but there isn’t actually an exchange of money. I know when I first began on the committee, it’s one of the things I searched through the budget and searched and searched and searched and I finally had to say to Vinny, I’m so embarrassed, but I can’t

find the lease payment. Where is it? There’s no payment. It’s just an it’s really an agreement. um anyway, um, all right, anybody else have questions? Anything else? All right, looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor That is unanimous of the four members present, and the motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you. Um, so anybody who’s here tonight, we’ll get you to sign before you leave, and I’ll track down the rest. OK. Thank you. Um All right, next, I assume this is you, Vinnie. Uh, so it kind of saddens me to bring this to you every year.

I try to train our budget holders and our administrative assistants to process our invoices, uh, timely and create POs, but occasionally, uh things are missed and we don’t get invoices in time. Uh, unfortunately, we cannot process prior year invoices without your, uh, specific approval. So tonight, I believe we have 13 invoices, uh, in

front of us totaling $31,000 that were not processed against FY 25 expenses and we’re seeking your approval to pay them out of 26 funds. 1818 invoices. Thank you Um does anybody have questions I don’t think so. Um, Megan, I move that the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District School Committee approve the prior year’s unpaid invoices.

Second, seconded by Amy Kummberger. Um, then I just out of curiosity, is this, um, I admit that I didn’t go back to look at last year, um how, I mean, is this amount sort of a typical amount it’s a little bit larger than normal. We usually bring this to you that, but I admit that I did

not go back to look. Uh, when we get the invoices, we kind of hold them until about this time of year and then bring them all to you instead of bringing them one at a time. Uh, my hope is we do not come back to you this year. However, last year we did

come back twice, I think in the February time frame. Right now, these are all the invo ice s that have currently been given to me, but again, tomorrow, uh, a department could come in with another invoice. I would probably hold it until February, just in case more come in again. OK. OK Ready to vote? right? um

oh no, you already voted. Did we vote? No, losing my mind. Do you have a motion in a second. Yes, OK. All right. All those in favor. and that is unanimous of the four members present and the motion passes. Thank you. Thank you OK All right. Next up. um so we had an opening discussion,

um, at a previous meeting about um sort of the direction that we want to move, um, on our elementary school facilities, um and we agreed at that, meaning that we would continue the discussion Um, part of that continuation is that Eric has provided us with this, um,

document, and I’m gonna turn it over to you, Eric, and we’ll hopefully have a productive discussion. Thank you. Um, I apologize for the length of this document. It was really stream of consciousness and really trying to figure out how to keep this project in, in the

kind of the in full view, but also to to talk about some of the things that did or didn’t work and talk about some of the options that we have coming forward Um, so this is, is really, this is nothing cast in stone. I want to be clear about that.

This is just me thinking out loud, saying these are some ways we can go. There could be others that that we hope to dig out of, um, talking with people in the community and digging into some of the the activities that have gone along the way,

um, the two things that are still very clear to me. I said at last meeting, uh, that the consolidation lacks sufficient support to move forward, but people from every side believe that something needs to be done. So what is it? That’s what we need to find. We need to dig in, keep looking

forward and try to figure out um what that something is and what the the the towns can tolerate um budgetarily and what that looks like in conjunction with the budgets and the capital asks from the two towns as well, so find that balance, um, some of the things that are really non-negotiable

for us with with these bigger projects, um, we will need to hire an OPM, uh, and you’ll need to have a firm to do renovation uh to do the design work, um, there are uh, general laws that I just cited here just for ease and simplicity, uh, any construction contracts over 150,000 require the appointment

of an onus project manager, so we had an OPM for the Cutler School project. We currently have an OPM for the roof project that’s going on. And then as well, um, projects exceeding 1.5 million, you uh need to do the the authorization for debt, so we have to go through that same

process there’s there’s no uh way around that. You also need a designer, um, when you’re looking at it from the perspective of uh major projects so that you can get some opportunities for actual numbers and through the through the bidding process designers often work as people who do the

design work and help you with the bidding process as well because they know exactly how to set it up. Um, so that’s what the first few paragraphs on the first page talk about, um, we have received from the feasibility and schematic designs phases of the Cutler School project we did receive MSBA reimbursements of $567,000299. That’s from the

original 1.2 million. um, just a quick review of the two programs, MSBR, MSBA offers the core program that’s for big comprehensive projects like a brand new building and the accelerated pro repair program, the ARP. um, time-sensitive replacements like Windows, roofs, um, we’re using the accelerated repair program right now to try to get

into the roof project for with the MSBA. um so the there’s some opportunities for us to look at. I, I talked a little bit about, is it, is it something that we could be more aggressive and prepare a funding request for the 2026 annual town meeting to hire a designer to develop

schematic designs and estimates for one or more schools, um, that could be that could look like something where you hire a designer, uh, excuse me, an architect, and they would come in and examine whatever you’d ask them to do. There are several communities currently doing 345, and 6

schools to trying to get an idea baseline idea and I think you can structure that ask as an opportunity to look at each of the schools, find the needs, and then ask through the RFP process, um, up for a breakdown like, OK, what are the kind of the essentials? What are the ADA compliance that kicked in,

so you could, you could break it out so that you could ask this architectural team to do multiple, uh, levels of, of uh repair or replacement or renovation, whatever it may be. Uh, I talked a little bit about a couple of options again, not in stone, uh, option one would be moving forward with an OPM

and a designer begins begin design estimates, uh, at some level of renovation or renovation addition at a single elementary school, and this would give us one long term view of the pro the the the proximate finan financial impact. You could also do that for multiple schools. You could say

let’s have somebody come in do an RFP and have them look at all 6 buildings that we have and say give us a breakdown of the basics what would be good to have, would be really nice to have what would be a stretch and then put it back out there publicly, um, I think when you

do that we know where we’d stand. uh with the schools and what we had for repairs everywhere, um the drawback is that a, uh, if you do all 6 schools and you have 6 sets of numbers and you pick one school or two schools to attack at one time. Those other school numbers are no

longer valid because they’re gonna move into the future and as we know, the escalation costs have been dramatic over the past few years, so it’d be hard to say if, if somebody said it’s gonna cost you, I’m just gonna use a number out of my head, 20 million per building, and you say, all

right, let’s do Cutler and Bukker and commit to that those other costs move out further because you’re not gonna be able to do them back to back to back to back or you’re just gonna be stacking debt on top of debt on top of debt, which is something we want to uh try to avoid.

We can also, uh, just apply to the MSBA again in April. It’s either March or April. We’re still waiting to hear the deadline and once we apply, we could apply with all the buildings. We could submit an SOI for all the buildings and um you wouldn’t find out until the fall. You find out usually

in October of uh the that year that you apply whether you’re accepted into the program or not they only accept one building they will not do multiple buildings, um, so some level reimbursement could be available if they brought us back into the program, uh, it is unlikely

when you have a fail on one side they usually want you to wait a few years to get your ducks in a row, uh, so there’s no guarantee when you’d be accepted into the program. And then use the current study documents. We have I don’t know 4 or 5 1000 pages of Cutler School, uh, detailed design

documents that are already in play um that we used during the MSBA process to dig into the building itself, the current building has nothing to do with the the new building, just the current building, uh, there were some studies done on um hazardous materials, uh, things

like windows and paint and doors so we have a lot of those things. Uh, we, we need to hire someone to organize that and get some estimates going on that information so that would save some money being able to use that information, um, because we’ve co-paid for it, it is ours to use it’s not

owned by the JCJ team that had had created it. So, um we have all that information to use and move forward and really start saying, OK, how do we move into the estimating phase and then again design that estimating phase so you get multiple levels of estimates for various levels of project

completion, uh, either at one or all buildings. Uh, some things to think about, do we look at contracting for an update in enrollment study. I, uh, went back to the 2014 study and pulled the numbers that they projected, uh, as you can see in the top of this chart 20 14 study, the, the, the top row,

uh, below the dates is the, the, the projections that were done in for the 2014 study and here are the actual numbers in the middle that are current that follow our enrollment charting and then the difference, so, uh, the actuals are, except for one year, which is that COVID year they were um

off by between 20 and 90 students, um, in each of those, so I, I think the further out you get, the harder it is, which is proven here. The numbers rise, except for COVID, the numbers rise, the further out you get, it’s really hard to nail down an average um, you know, birth rate versus

housing starts and things like that, so, um, it’s one thing to to think about and then looking at the maintaining the expected financial needs if we decide to do say one building and do a renovation of I’m gonna use the Buker as our example because we’re sitting here we still need to maintain our other

buildings, uh, example of that is we just put a million dollars’ worth of boilers in the middle school, high school complex, um, because the others failed three in a row failed, failed, failed. So, um, those are things we’ll still have to kind of keep an eye on the roof in

in the high school is being done right now. Um, if that passes the town meeting, great, we move forward. If not, we’re gonna be patching that roof, uh, continuously along with the bucca roof, uh, which is would be the next kind of quote roof project. So we have to um look at that, look at some of the

other costs that are there as you probably remember we have a Capitol, um, committee which Ms. Benson was part of the meeting today to review the current capital, uh, projects that are out there and capital for us in the in the regional agreement is anything over $25,000.

Uh, so we still have to balance all of that across the budget while we’re looking at um what to do with a single school or or two schools or 3 schools, um, do we understand why the consolidated project failed. Uh, this is just my thoughts, and I

wanted just to put those out there. I think I’ve thought a lot about it, I’ve dug into it, talked to a lot of people, got some good insight from people on all five sides. I think they’re literally are 5 sides to this, um and I think it’s important for us to dig into that as we as we

move forward. Um do we simply wanna work at bringing this to Cutler School into compliance with code. The code compliance was, as you remember, the lowest option, it’s also the lowest, uh, level of repair. It doesn’t get everything done, it just brings it to code, um, so that would

be something we could just say, you know, let’s just bring a cutler to code that would be uh I I can’t remember the actual cost on it, but it was several many millions of dollars to bring to code, but it’s still an option, so do we just do

that? We again we have that that all the materials to to look at that and see what that would end up costing us over time. Uh, do we renovate the Cotler School without MSBA support. Uh, what I have learned in talking to a number of my colleagues around, uh, Burlington’s a good example right now. They are

doing an MSBA elementary school project with the MSBA. They are self-funding, uh, Burlington High School project which is uh what Andover was doing a few years back until they hit that cut 2 years ago where they cut, uh, where they had to cut 34 staff members. so the some, some districts are looking at it like that

certainly Burlington is in a much better cash position than we are, much and much better, uh, but just how some, uh, communities are approaching it. You can build, you can renovate without the MSBA. Um, there are some, you know, people who think that might be cheaper. It’s hard to say. I haven’t been able to compare the same

projects on both sides of the coin, but um it would, it would certainly be a full load cost that the towns would have to bear, and then can we renovate more than one school at a time. It really depends on what we decide to do. If you do $250 million renovations, I would say

probably not. Um, so it, it really deci you really needed to determine how to, how to figure out that balancing act because no matter what you do you take out a bond for I’ll just use a round number of 10 million for one building, and that’s a 20 year bond generally sometimes 25, but generally 20,

um, and then you wait a few years and you do another bond and say that’s 12 or 13 or 14 million that goes on top of the current bond you already have, uh, out there, so it, it becomes a a a stack that gains uh value really quickly and um really increases taxes really

quickly too when you start doing that so it’s, it’s uh again just something I just wanted to have on the table, uh, no matter what we do, we’ll still need an OPM and a designer at some level because of uh the general laws and then this just goes on just talking about a little bit of my ideas

of having a community lesson, uh, listening session. I think it’s important to just open this up and let it fly. I mean, it sounds terrible, but I think that’s the way to do it. like open it up, let people come and say you know, I think you should do this. I think you should do

that, and constructively and positively, we have something positive to add, come and tell us what you want to know, and then just take all that information, pull that in and start to build a direction. Once we build the direction, put it back out to the community and start to say, OK, what types of things do we hear?

Um, and I think that way will give us a little more guidance. I don’t know that a number of people in the community, especially in our elderly session are ready to go forward with $100 million in projects, so I think that’s, that’s, you know, just an example of a group that’s often

unheard that we need to dig into and and try to figure out where they said. um and then the uh the, the design really still needs to meet some educational requirements. We do need a space. I’ll use Cutler as an example. Cutler has that modular wing that is rotting to the ground right now. We are

trying to hold it together trying to keep it, keep it, keep it, uh, working and working order. It’s uh it’s really beyond its time, so that piece of the puzzle, this is just again my opinion would probably need to go away. We’d have to replace that. There are 4 classrooms in there plus,

plus, um, art and music in that wing. Uh, so it’s just an idea of like, OK, you know, people say, what’s the worst school? The worst school through the process has always been the cutler. the MSBA came out of nowhere and said, yes, this is the one you need to start with.

We had identified it years ago, um, so I think that’s, you know, just something to keep in mind. And then um really, I, I just hope we can start to determine initial direction so that we can move forward because ultimately I think again we all want, we all

know there’s something to do, and we all need something that we can all be proud of and say, OK, I was part of that. I was in the conversation and this is what I’m, I’m really happy with the, the outcome. um so just, just some thoughts,

you know, I, I apologize for the length of the memo, but I think it’s important to keep this conversation on the front burner, um, until we can get some things done before we. get too close to town meeting because as you know if we don’t have anything on the docket by February. We are not going to

get it on the uh the warrant for town meeting so it’s, it’s really a shorter window when you factor in the holidays and all the time off coming up, so I think just, just want to open up the door for the committee. so Eric, how do you want to structure this? Like I don’t

know what other people have. I have like a whole page full of notes, so I don’t know how you want to structure this conversation like do you wanna, uh, like I don’t, I if, if you don’t have thoughts, we can just try to. No, I, I think, I think if you look at it from the perspective

of the, the committee um I need some direction. Yeah, and I think I think we, we have the, the ability to at least kind of set a direction, I think, yeah, I just, I’m just talking just in terms of like the actual conversation here like I don’t know if you wanna,

yeah, I think I think with like uh like I literally have a whole page of notes for myself. Some of them are questions, some of them are. I don’t know how everyone wants to jump in. I don’t think we need to make rules about it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be organized. I think it’s really

we need to start having this discussion. I wish everybody was here, but I think, you know, we’ll still need to bring this around to everybody else so that we can include them. Yeah right, dive in, Amy. Oh, you know, you go ahead. You want me to start?

Um, well, first of all, thank you for doing this. I think it was helpful. I, I read it. several times and made a lot of notes. I and I guess I want to preface what I’m saying by saying that these are my thoughts right now. This is just a discussion. I’m not

like I’m listening to the committee, to Eric, to people in the community, like I’m not, it’s just my sort of initial thoughts. I think I, I wanna reiterate that I do think that the two sort of upfront the two, the premise that you laid out, I think. I feel it’s really strong and important that consolidation

lacked sufficient support. and that I, I have. I feel like we have a lot of evidence that the community does realize or does think that something needs to be done to improve facilities. So I feel comfortable unless I hear in the future like I have not heard a lot of

things that go against those two that good. I think that’s a solid premise that like personally. um I I guess I don’t, well, I do have one we could start with a question is that when you’re going into the options there, I wanted to sort of discuss the options between option 1 and

option 3, like, and I guess that these are not all the options in the world and I definitely tried to generate kind of out of the box options and thought about things that are outside of this and I’ve you know, kind of put that out to you and too, but, but I just wanna make sure I fully

understand what you’re outlining in terms of the difference between option 1 and option 3. My understanding of option 3 um, is, you know, we have all that stuff from Cutler and you’d be looking or we’d be looking if we pursued that at those initial, first of all, all the current existing conditions at

Cutler, we have, um, but then also starting with that point, we have things on renovation or adrenault. that work and pursuing one or or one of those at Cutler, is that what you’re understanding essentially focus on Cutler now would be a renovation of the Cutler school or an addition renovation of the Cutler’s school, right?

Option one sounds like it could end up being that same thing, but it’s more broad in that it could be a renovation or a renovation edition of any of the elementary schools. Is that I just want to make sure I understand like what the difference between option one

and option. Yeah, I think the when you look at the um option one I was trying to focus it in on any elementary school, just not, you know, the, the option three is dead focused on Cutler. We have all this information. Let’s use it. We can save some money in the process.

Option one is, uh, you know, take two steps back and decide to do something different or focus on, you know, at least one elementary school or low, low level, um, renovations of two, something that says you couldn’t do to it at the time it’d be a little bit chaotic, um, but, but

yes, just, just trying to, I’m trying to just open the door to some idea of moving forward those the the schools we know that need the current, the most, the most in-depth work of the of the elementaries we can, you know, then, then try to put everything else in order.

I would put the middle school to the bottom of the list because it’s the newest building we replaced all their windows we replace now their boilers, their heating system, um, so. that will should hold up for us and I’m going to preface it like 700 times that I am very much still open to hearing

different ideas, different opinions I’m actively seeking different ideas and different opinions, um but because we’re having this conversation I do say like for me as I read this, I, there’s, it’s peeling option 3 to me is appealing that we have a lot of the groundwork. um, that Cutler school is we’ve identified as the most in need.

um, so of those I like I am, but I have questions about applying simultaneously for the MSBA like I and I want, I have questions about like well would it make sense for us to apply in April to the MSBA and pursue option 3 simultaneously or do we separate those things out and

say like let’s pursue option 3. and wait till 2027 to apply. or do we apply in 26 and then if we don’t get anything in the fall begin pursuing option 3. So that was a lot of I think, I think you just made a great point like.

you want to hear other ideas, so I think it’s important to take even this conversation publicly because I want people to hear what I’m thinking, but I am not I brought it here. But I think it’s, I think it’s important like the opportunity of having maybe a couple listening sessions, different times of the day, different locations,

different groups of people and present this to them and, and maybe other options. OK, here are 6 options. What do you think? and just get some feedback from that perspective, but I, I think if you do that you still need some numbers out there for people to digest.

because I think it, it’s, it’s, it’s where we got stuck last time all of a sudden we, we didn’t have numbers and then here’s, I forget what it was 15 options and that’s a lot to swallow, like what, what to do. So I think getting it to some reasonable amount, um

but again, I, I think the, the idea of finding some way to get the information we need from the public is an important first step before we get into even saying let’s go in this direction or let’s go in that because the the opinions that we hear outside of these

meetings might push us to go in a different direction, right? It could be 12. Yeah, yeah, you know, somebody could come up with an idea to say, why didn’t you think about this, this and this, you know, I think about my friend Ed who stood up here and had some ideas I’d, you know,

revisit Ed and his ideas and think about No, I mean digging into some of those things. So I’m gonna say like two more things and then I like so um one is I really have thought a lot about this and again I guess my mind could be changed, but at this point,

I, I am everything I say feels risky to say it really does, but I I don’t want or I see that it, I think it wouldn’t be the ideal situation for us to follow I’m worried about following in the model that I see Ipswich having gone down. um I that while I actually believe very much that consolidation

would have ultimately been the most financially uh, like in the long run, I think it was the most, the best financial decision, and I really do respect that that is not what the voters they did not agree with that. I am concerned about I know this is not me criticizing Ipswich. I don’t like, but I’m concerned that

what happened to them is then they went back to the drawing board 7 years later and came back with the same result, which is they still felt that consolidation was going to be the best financial option, and now they’re pursuing essentially the same project several years later. I’m very cautious about that. I I

that I understand how that happened I guess I just wanted to say that that’s something that I’m worried about. Again, I’m open to hearing people’s other ideas. Um and then the only other thing I’m gonna say and then I’m gonna stop, is that I really think and I’ve literally took in a million notes. I tried.

you know, Googling and searching and chappy cheapy teeing and everything about how to create some sort of a body or entity that could help us as a community, not help us but help us the whole community to agree on an established set of facts. so that we could, like if that body,

I’m imagining that body and you can insert the your own aims, but think of the two most diverse people that you could think of in our community, and if we could put those two most diverse people in a room and they would agree on like the

cost that we could agree or the size of the building or the like whatever it is. I’m not saying that like facts. I’m not talking about opinions. I’m talking about things because I think that that really was a problem is that there was differing um. there were differing sets of facts out in the community and

that really made it very difficult to have conversations that, so I don’t know how that would be created, what that would look like. I like I, I. but I would like it to be that I’m trying to make something up that isn’t related to anything because I’m not looking to sort of inflame anything, but like, in

other words, if we were building and someone was trying to say, well, the building that is, you know, is gonna be set um let’s say somebody described the size of the lot. I would want, that’s a good example, like if if there was a dispute and one person said this, uh, one group was saying

the size of the lot was this and the other person was saying the size of the lot is that. I would love it to be that there was somebody or some organ or group of our citizens, people in town, that could sit down and then they would be able to put out, yes, we’ve confirmed with

whatever that the law is actually this size. That’s a dream that I have, and I would love to hear ideas about how that could happen. Um, one of the things that I wrote down that I wanted to talk about was the possibility, sounds kind of like what you’re talking about of forming our own school

building committee. Um, not to make decisions, but to help collect feedback and have discussions and maybe be this dream team that you’re talking about, um, where like this committee could decide on sort of the ingredients of that committee. I would definitely like to see educators on that committee, people from the

community, you know, uh kind of what you’re talking about, I think. Um, so that was one of the things that I brought tonight that I would like, I don’t know if that’s possible. Um, I, I feel nervous talking about it too because I don’t know how it would work as far as leadership.

Um but that is something that I did write down. So I think I’m kind of thinking of the same thing. Yeah, like I, uh, yeah, I don’t. Well, and I’m intrigued by, I mean so Scott Maddern spoke earlier. I, I think, and, and he had sent us an email. I’m intrigued

by his citizen-led committee to do some of this, like outreach, right, a renovation, what do you call it? a renovations outreach committee. Um, so I’m not sure if that’s like similar to what you’re saying, Amy, or like, do I think you, I guess I’m, I think I’m actually slowing it down even. I think I’m not really

talking about how to communicate out those facts. I’m just talking about like I just would love if like there was a way that like when you got to a conversation with someone when you were saying, well, you know, the whatever the grass that at the Winthrop School is green,

and they were saying no, the grass that went to school is blue that you’d be able to go to uh this committee and say like the committee’s done the research and actually the grass is purple and it’s not like that’s unexpected what’s actually like that’s like so that we

could all be like, OK, and we’d all in I mean there’s no such thing as all, but most people in the community would see that there were representatives on that group or in that group that they trusted and believed and so if that group all agreed, then it would be likely that people would be like, OK,

these are the facts, um, I don’t know, and again I think that’s sort of fantasy. I, I think maybe you’re talking more about how to communicate the facts like, no, I mean, and maybe I interpreted that a little bit differently. I think he was saying more about like working together to like to

identify solutions. So I think it’s kind of similar, but his had like a huge citizen-led element to it. Yeah, no, I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s what Eric’s talking about about the um listening sessions about like and I don’t know how to create those I sent Eric, I’m

not even gonna share it. I did send Eric a kind of a crazy idea because I was like, we’re trying to think outside the box, but about how to ensure that those are really robust listening sessions and not um. like and not like to get big involvement from people like you know And like

yeah, constructive feedback, not just like an airing of grievances, I think is where forward looking. I mean, forward looking. I mean that’s part of it is like that what what I think we’re needing to look is like what do you want to do now. Like, yeah. um. I think that’s where we need to yeah.

I’m sorry, keep going Mhm. You have more I have more, but I don’t wanna keep talking. OK, um, so some other things that I wrote down, um, and I am also grateful, Eric, for this list. I think it’s really important that if we do something like option 3, I did mention last meeting. I think we should

leverage the existing work that’s already been done, like to, you know save some money, hopefully, and have some vision about planning. We’ve got a ton of documentation, um, I do think though it’s really important if we do something like option 3, like I’ll go all in on color. that we identify priorities at the other elementary schools.

and really jump on them. Um, things like HVAC, like some of the things that came out. while we were talking about the others, elementary schools. um and I think you know, trying to argue mentioned numbers like it’s important for people to see numbers, and I agree. And I think you know

HVAC savings, things like that, like I think those are some things concrete numbers that we could get. But I have questions about you know, obviously it costs money to get those kinds of bids and things like that. So it’s hard to find a starting point, but I’m

I would be more comfortable going all in on one school if we also had some things in place for the other schools. Um that was another thought that I had while I was reading this. and the enrollment study, I also agree with that. I think Oh, can I ask an enrollment study question while you’re

asking, do you have any ballpark on how much an enrollment study costs. depending on who you hire and what you ask them to do roughly between $800 and $20,000. Well, I guess I because I really was like I have no idea how it’s not my favorite option. I, I

like, I just, you know, that when you look at this chart, it’s, you can probably reach out 5 to 8 years accurately after that, it falls off pretty quickly. Well and even that is not I mean I don’t know whether the, you know, there’s a range obviously there’s a guess some guesswork. It’s like.

I’m not sure about how it’s dependent on growth because we see that by the time we get to an actual project. like, particularly when you’re talking about say kindergarten. Yeah Many of the children that would be in don’t exist yet, so it’s hard to count them because.

That’s true. You know, so but we do have things, you know, the, the pending project at Gordon Conwell, you know, that could be a significant enrollment. Could be, but we don’t know it’s like that’s part that’s like a. like the ma it’s a big variable. It would be important, but it’s also like if we don’t know for

sure what that’s gonna look like. It makes it really difficult to actually do the enrollment study. The difficulty with an aroma study in small communities is the numbers are so small, it’s, it’s, you’re starting to look at birth rates, house sales, things like that, like there are years when there’s 150 houses sold in, in Hamilton and

in the other years when they’re not, so it’s, how do you, how do you guess on that? How do you guess on live birth rates for the 20 years out when you’re the, you know, there’s there’s a lot of movement now with um the the people that are in their front kind of 60 and over

and 16 and under, there’s a lot of shifting and with the um apartment dwelling units you’re seeing some even more unusual shifts that communities have not uh built into any statistical analysis, so those types of things would, would, I, I just think it’s your accuracy is gonna be short lived. We’re better off spending your money looking at

the buildings themselves to say, OK, what what’s the basics? What are the basics? Bring them all the code or bring the code and do this, or you know, so 3 or 4 tiers for each building, one of the things that I thought that the MSBA required with the consolidated proposal that the MSBA required that I

thought was actually a really good requirement was that you had to show where and how you would hypothetically build a an addition if your population grew and so it might be the kind of thing where if hypothetically we pursued like a a a renovation addition Maybe we made sure like that we

had that kind of a plan in place so that like if that occurred we would already we would save our future selves. some of the hassle. I mean that was part of the original project was that the MSBA wouldn’t let you build this unless you did some work to say where and

how you would make add additional classrooms if that came to be. So I guess I wouldn’t want to do whatever we did, I’d want that to be a consideration and maybe that eliminates a little bit of the need of I mean it does, I, I know I’m this is not my area of expertise, certainly predicting

population, but these numbers sort of feel like, you know, is it really that different than somebody just taking a ballpark guess of how much like, well, I guess the point is more about like uh your point about MSDA requiring a plan in case of a big boost in enrollment. Like maybe

that’s the point rather than trying to nail down the actual number. And so one thing that I’ve been experiencing is the potential of building like an outbuilding, you know, and I don’t know about, you know, this, there’s definitely like security concerns about having, say, like an art and music building on the Cutler lot

you know, having kids go outside, um, which could be wonderful going outside. I love going outside. My high school was in 5 buildings. There’s a lot of benefits. I do know you talking about a modular unit? I’m not talking about necessarily a modular unit, but it’s a separate, a separate building, and I don’t know if

that would help us as far as um you know triggering upgrade costs based on, like, you know, like one of the biggest issues with renovating the schools is if we hit a certain threshold, then, you know, requires us to upgrade a whole bunch of things. And while I want to upgrade all of the things I do recognize

that that’s not going to be possible at once. So that’s one thing that I’m interested in, not only for solving some of these issues, but like that could also be an enrollment plan where if we suddenly have this big enrollment, can we build an outbuilding? I, I don’t like the idea of using modulars for anything

cause we see now the issue of why that’s not good, you know, we’ve got these really old modulars, so I wouldn’t be supportive of that, but I am curious about the rules around outbuildings, um and kind of a long-term plan of, you know, connecting them to an existing building, things like that. That’s like really interesting.

Like I think that’s and also I don’t know that we do know what the modern day modular, like the modular at Cutler School. I know, but it’s not meant to be it was not meant to be anywhere near this old. I’ve told this story 1000 times, but

my 29 year old son went to the 2nd grade there in what they were describing at the time as an extremely old modular building. It shouldn’t still be here and so like that’s but I don’t know like are there modular buildings today? I don’t know that are more.

better than that, like, I don’t know. I mean, it depends on what type of module you’re looking at. So if you had a modular build that was a permanent build, that would be much different than a temporary modular unit for a temporary ours was like a temporary temporary for for overgrowth.

It’s like an accessory dwelling unit for school. Right, well, that’s a creative idea. Um, and then I I’ve kind of think I don’t know, there’s one more thing I wrote down that I’m not ready to talk about yet. OK, sorry, I’m mean I’ve been talking a lot too, so that’s. good um

What do you, what do you think about community listening session? or sessions I think we have to. I, yeah, well, I have thoughts. Go ahead. I’m in favor. Oh yeah. Oh, for sure. I, but I’d like to maybe brainstorm some additional ideas cause, cause we’ve had some, um, and I’m curious to hear like exactly.

what people’s ideas are about format. Maybe we don’t just, we don’t figure that out right this minute, but like coming up with more and I guess I wonder I want them to be open to everyone. and I wonder if it wouldn’t be beneficial for and I don’t, and that’s

something I would look to the public, but to suggest like so, back in the day, I used to run parent groups pre like preschool parent groups. One of the ways to build a good group like if you want to have a group of 10 and have a really productive conversation.

You don’t just put it out on a flyer and say, come to the group. You actually usually call 1 or 2 people and say you would be a really useful member of this group. I’d like you to come. Um and you and people come because because they got invited. So I would want to create

again, to be clear, I’m saying it should be open to everyone. I’m not saying, but what I’m saying is that might be helpful like Eric just mentioned, senior citizens, for example. It might be helpful to specifically reach out to a few people and I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know

how we identify people, but like to invite them to the group. Um like people in diverse commute parts of the community, um, I don’t know. I think. the difference between the six forms we did and the listening session would it be important to delineate that it would literally be

to gather as much information as possible, not sell anything, say anything, show anything. There’d be no PowerPoint. It’d be come in the room and let’s dig into this. What are your ideas? What are your ideas? What are your ideas? What do you think? What do you not like? Get it all together, get it summarized, bring it back

around after it’s summarized, get it back out to the public and say, OK, here’s what we heard. I think we we really just need to take those steps if we do that and, and literally invite invited, you know, send out a mail to every house. We’ve done that. Send out that information,

have people, you know, each group bring 20 people, I don’t know, and just so we can come in the room and it’s, it’s, I think, I think it’s important to lay the ground rules. um, up front, and I think people would adhere to that. I mean, there’s not a fight about.

It’s really OK, what can we do to the best position our community is moving forward financially and academic and educationally, so that’s I think you want to hear the ideas like you and maybe this is too in the weeds, but like to me in a listening session, one of the

things you want to say is like, let’s just hear everybody’s dream and everybody’s vision of what you’d love to create and like acknowledge that like we get that they’re probably like you could come up with your dream and there are going to be obstacles to it, and they’re going to be challenges, but it would be

good to hear what everybody’s because it, it’s an opportunity to hear like, you know, if 15 people all shared. different visions, but each person started off by saying, you know, like it would I really my dream is to, you know, whatever support. you know, that the, you know, we were.

the education of all of our children and that you know, that everyone in Hamilton Wyndham wants to send their children to public school. That’s my dream. If everybody had that dream, but then they had 15 different versions of the type of building that they want it’s, it’s powerful to say like

what an amazing thing, like everyone in our community wants to live in a community where everybody wants to send their kids to to public school. Isn’t that amazing? Like I I just think you want people to dream big even if you’re not being Pollyannaish about it. You’re not trying to

pretend that there aren’t obstacles. I just do want to hear those ideas, creative ideas about like let’s, you know, outbuildings or this or that or like you know. and I think it might be helpful as well to maybe, um, and again, new to all of this, so I don’t know how we do this in a

public body forum, like how we do this, but, um like a lot of what I do in, in my work is gather feedback in a structured way and so maybe accompanying some open discussion with like a structured survey where we’re trying to gather, because I think it’s really important for us to also understand priorities because if, if

people are mostly concerned about cost and like doing multiple projects, then that’s really going to inform the direction we go, right? And I think if people are, then if some people though are more concerned about, well, we need to make sure we have an equitable experience for all students or like all we just bring our

schools up to code. Like I think having some of that direction in a structured way might be helpful as well. And, and doing like a structured survey is one way that I, just as a, a person who works with a lot of data, it can be really difficult when you’re trying to parse open comment, um, in like

a meeting. So, um, I think that’s, I think, I mean like Eric said, there are at least 3 sides and maybe 5 or 6 sides, you know, but yeah, it would be good to understand like. you know, is is the priority cost is the priority is the priority small schools?

Is the priority? Like what is the priority like and like what is the problem we’re trying to solve. And we may have multiple problem statements and then we have to then prioritize those and work on those in a phased fashion, but just helping to understand what are we What is the community looking to solve?

I think is that I think it’s important also just like all of you sitting here tonight for a kind of having a little bit of fear of saying certain things. I that would be the first thing to overcome in any public meeting. All right, we want you to come.

There may be people who say, I’m never coming because they didn’t listen to me the first time, but we need to now figure out ways to rebuild that trust. It’ll be slow and it’ll be steady if at all, it’ll just be an opportunity to say come in the room, be heard.

We’re not going to take any action yet. We’re gonna gather information. We’re gonna take that information, mash it together, bring it back again, and then we’ll go through it again so I think that that process helps to help build the trust. I don’t think it’s, it’s not gonna happen overnight.

It’s definitely a long term process, but I think part of that is also trying to align it at the same time with the realities of, of town meeting and, and the, the budget process and things like that. So that’s, you know, it may not happen this year, a deadline of Feb right, because I think that’s

what you’re saying here, Eric, is that if we want to put forth any requests for town meeting in April. We need to have that figured out in February and we’re saying, we’re saying that we want the listening sessions to inform the options that we approach and what we go to the town with, right? So, so it’s

like, sorry, I’m like a project manager. I think like very sequentially. So it’s like if our, if our milestone at the end is April To meeting backing up to that is February budget. What do we need to do to get to that budget request? Well, it seems like then, I mean, to me, we

need to have again, everything feels scary to say because I but to me it sounds like if we need to have a listening session before the end of the year. because if we don’t have a listening session until January. I mean, I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Yeah, I don’t know how we or otherwise you’re gonna have because I think you need to have more than one. You could have 2 in January. Maybe that’s better. People are, I mean, I guess we’re only a couple of weeks away from people being very distracted for for the holidays. Well, then I guess, like, so question

for you, Vinnie and Eric, who have marks I have no experience with this, to get to like the cost of what option 1 or option 3 like to understand how much that would cost and then they ask to put into the budget request. What does that look like? How do we do that?

I don’t think it would happen this April. I think the budget request would be for that to get a bidding to the planning right, it wouldn’t you’d be, you’d bring in a planner who would put everything together to get things ready for um uh. a bidding per uh estimation process so you need to nail

down an estimation process so that you can say here are the of the shoes Buker again. Here are the three options for renovating or renovating addition to that Buker, um. so the, the bottom one is Amy said, we have a little advantage because we have a lot of that data. We just need

somebody to organize it and get those estimates ready. What that looks like in an RFP. I’ve asked every person I can find that’s doing a building project to give me their RFP so that I can look at these and say, what is it about, you know. you may be in the $400,000 range just to get something

done for just get a baseline of each of the schools. And we have, we have to do an RFP to to to get to the number that we can request or we’re requesting money to do the RF. No, we would, we would work with professionals, come up with a

number just like we did for the, uh, for, for the cutler initial project, the number 1.2 came out of the data that we took from the, the, um, MSBA website on Project costs and, uh, through each of the, the modules, the 9 modules, we went back and we went through and we said oh

what’s comparative to our town sizes, what’s compared it to our elementary school, and that’s where we came to the 1.2 million. and then these professional groups have decided, can they do it within that or not? Some kids will say I can’t do it within that, and they walk away and we ended up having, uh, I

think 4 on each side, 4 OPMs and 45, um, designers that were willing to step up within those cost parameters and and some couldn’t do it. They all right said they couldn’t do it. So you get people, you just have to find who’s who’s willing to do it within the parameters, but we wouldn’t

just come with a blind number. I’d literally reach out and like I have a bunch of RFPs right now for districts that are doing, um, something similar, trying to just get a baseline on all of their buildings. So I have 3 different that would be the amount that you’d

and that would be the amount that we would if we were to do this, if, if, if, if, if, um that would be the amount we would have come to town meeting with a request. And once we got that number, then the RFP gets built to say we need to, we, we

want our, we have put out a request for proposals for and we outline what we want in that. request. So we lay that out exactly what we want. We want this, this, this, this, and this. People bid on it and say, yeah, I can get it, you know, they’re not gonna touch it if

they can’t get in within the number we have, so yeah, understood. OK, so I’m just. being my conservative project manager self here. I don’t know if we can do all of this by February, right? Listening sessions and do this and try to rebuild trust, engage the community. Like I think it’s very aggressive where it’s or

year-end, right? It’s Q4, holidays are coming up, right? There’s a lot going on. I’m just hot, right? And I understand we have to do this in like an open forum. We have to plan all of these things. It’s slower than in my corporate life where we just do

things overnight, um, well, I, right, there are, I mean, they keep going, yes, yeah, and so I’m just, I’m just like I’m just trying to be really realistic. I think we all want to do something very quickly and try to do the best for our community, our children our learners, um.

I just don’t, I’m just, I’m just stating that my, my milestone planning brain is like I don’t know how we do this by February, um, if it’s already November 6th. Well, that, I mean, that’s one of the things I said. I said, well like maybe that’s not. Maybe you apply.

I don’t know, like, you know, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get, I guess I sort of feel like it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get started like in other words, request something and then still and no, no, I’m not talking about requesting. I’m just talking about the listening sessions. Like I

think it seems like we haven’t voted or anything, but it seems like people are on board that that’s going to be valuable work. I don’t disagree, and I think I think where I’m jumping to is like is we do these listening sessions, we’re trying to, we’re trying to achieve multiple goals.

We’re trying to rebuild trust. We’re trying to engage the community. We’re trying to do all of these things. Part of that is clear ly setting expectations around what this is going to lead to. And I think if we don’t clearly state that we might not be able to immediately jump on this and do something and get something

in the budget for next year, right? Um, like if we don’t share that upfront with folks in these listening sessions, I do think that’s gonna just already upset people. Like I think we have to be very clear that like our window is rapidly closing, and, and so we’re still committed to doing listening sessions, but it may

not lead to immediate No, I think that’s I don’t know, I think that’s real. I also think we don’t know and so like we want to also be open to the possibility again, which I don’t anticipate, but we do want to be open to the possibility that like we could have listening sessions and it could become abundantly

clear that the community does have a very specific direction that they’re ready to go in and like I mean I don’t feel like we’ve seen that, but it could happen, like it could happen that the community comes and really is like we have a really specific direction. This is really what

we want. We’re ready to go, and maybe we are ready to go like ATMs not your final stop either, because, because look at how many special time meetings have occurred. There’s opportunities beyond the April town meeting. I mean, everybody wants to get in front of everybody in Apriltown meeting because that’s generally the largest attendance.

That’s where people expect things to happen, but there are the budget will have our budget will have to be, this would be separate from the budget because it would be a debt exclusion. I think, but I think everything you said was important and real, yeah. I’m sorry, Kristen, did you have stuff to say? Um, sure,

and I don’t want to repeat kind of anything that’s been said, but as a new member and trying to kind of dive into the deeper layer of this, um, you know, community challenge that we face. my sort of gut feeling is that this is going to be two school

committee budget cycles to get to an answer, we’re going to need to request some amount of money this year. to help us build a plan, right? Because I think money follows a plan So, you know, we have to, I think spend the time needed to build the plan and I think they’ll need to be

way more than 2 listening sessions. I think it’s going to have to be 24 months of listening sessions, feedback sessions, I think all of these ideas are good to be thinking about. Is there a citizen-led community? Is there this sort of information arbiter. I think we need like all the legs of

these stools, and I think for me, the valuable information that I’m trying to understand as an early part of a listening session is what is the information that people need to be comfortable to make a decision, because there are so many intersecting challenges here, and I think

that was part of the challenge with the last round of school voting as we had intersecting challenges of unknown municipal budgets zoning changes, there’s all these questions that people have, and I think understandably, people are reluctant to say, well, I’m going to approve this stat this

year, and I’m gonna, I could be being asked at next year’s town meeting to approve debt for something else that I don’t know what it is, but maybe somebody in the local government or someone had an inkling this was coming, you know, so I think we need a bigger contextual picture of what’s going on. So, and again

like Dana, I’m not, I don’t want to tie myself to one opinion or thing because this is really early days, but I think it’s going to be difficult to know what to do with the schools without more estimates for what it’s going to take, whether we tear these things, it’s like building

envelope, building systems, learning changes. I don’t know how we do it, but to try to get more reliable data as to what all of this will cost, because that’s the first question a lot of people are going to ask, and I think that’s a human and understandable response.

I don’t know that that always gets to the heart of the learning challenges or the educational benefits we’re trying to deliver by aligning facilities with programming, but I think we’re going to probably need to figure out what money we need to have better cost estimates for these renovations and what is the whole landscape of all,

I think Eric said we have 6 buildings, um, what, what, what are we, I’m like 3 elementary schools, the Edmund building, middle school, high school. Like, what is the, what are we really looking at? And I would encourage if it’s possible, and maybe this already exists and I just don’t know, but our, you know,

partners in the two towns, like, what are they looking at for facilities challenge. Like this is a three-part problem, I think, and I think without more information on all of those parts. I think it’s gonna be hard and, and some of those parts are not our responsibility, but I think without more kind of community-wide information on

that. It’s going to be hard for people to make a decision about a significant, you know, borrowing that’s into the tens and tens of millions. Um, so I think that and I think some of these listening sessions too just because I’ve managed facilities and managed the general public and dealing with

them and I think I’m, I’m curious to know, I think some of these folks probably have a number in their head. but they think this should cost, and I think that would be instructive, like where, where is the community and thinking what this should cost and then how can we support understanding where these numbers come from with

prevailing wage and an OPM and a designer and why is it so expensive? to build a a school where it is far less expensive to manage a facilities project in your own home or your own private business, where all these numbers coming from, because I think that um is not easy to

understand, always. It’s very nuanced, I think. And I think we’ve heard that. I know I, yeah, I know I learned a lot about that over this process. Um, I just wanted to sort of tap into you, you talked about what I think and I understand I’m making a little

bit of a different point, but you started to talk at the beginning, um, about I do really feel like in, that’s what I was talking about like I wanna hear people’s dreams. I did hear more than one person throughout this process, say that in their dream what they would have

liked to have had is 3 fully fleshed out, completely built options at town meeting, 3, you know, this is a menu that they could have voted for and I wanted to say like I completely understand that, and I would have loved to have that

too. And um and so I think like I want people to say that if that’s what they wanted, and that creating each one of those options cost for that tremendous amount of money and so but like I 100% I, I would have loved to be able to say like, well if that’s the information

people need to make a decision. Then maybe we have to say, OK, to get that information, we need an appropriation or a budget line item or whatever the right verbiage is of this amount of money to get those answers right even though like that’s a lot of money could be it could be a million dollars.

I don’t even know, right, I mean, in other words, it, it was, it was, it was yes, it’s a lot of money, right? And so you know that it. so I just wanted because I, I, I know that that was a little bit separate from your point, but you started talking about

that and well, I have like 100 ideas like binging around in my brain right now and like questions as I try to figure this out, but, but yeah. I don’t know. Does anybody else have other things yeah go ahead and then I do, we do need at some point to move on, but I

feel like I talked a lot, so please go. This is kind of selfish of me to take this time, but I, I just want to make it clear that my um outbuilding idea. I would not be in support of it. happening if we’re just doing the outbuilding. I really, really, really think it’s important that we also address

what is happening, what the priorities are inside of that building that we build an outbuilding. Uh, I just wanted to make sure that was clear, but I, I just, I, and I wanna say like I didn’t take it as I took it as like being creative and throwing, I mean

literally I threw out, you know, 12 crazy ideas to Eric, including one. I was like, well, do you have anybody who announced like, OK, let’s just do outdoor school. Like, let’s just like, you know, like I want to hear, like, I want to hear right exactly like creative ideas like, you know, and of course that was

you know, tongue in cheek, but it’s also like, OK, well, where is the opportunity in this like like where’s the opportunity there’s always some opportunity in a setback, right? They’re like So in the past when we’ve kind of been stuck on next steps for something like this. We’ve done, we’ve appointed

a portion of the committee to work on you know, first steps, we’ve authorized Eric to take steps, like, is that something we want to do tonight so that we’re moving forward. Um, even if it’s as simple as like setting up an email address where people can start sending feedback like

I don’t just don’t wanna not one thing I don’t know. I mean, we didn’t. we didn’t, I mean that we, it’s just a discussion, so we didn’t commit to, but I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I certainly heard, I don’t know what you take away, but I certainly heard an

appetites from this committee for robust listening sessions. regardless of what happens. um, Eric, what else did you? take away? the idea of the listening sessions, I think, came out loud and clear. I think the idea of direction is something we really want to nail down, like, OK, if we have these listening sessions, can we time them?

to a certain point in time, like, so we want to target by the end of I’m just gonna throw a number out please don’t hold me to it. December 2026 to have all these listening sessions done and also have some direction at that point where we have RFPs in process.

and Vinny hates when I say that because he ends up writing them all, um, but, but the um, the idea would be to just to be able to move in a direction. um, I don’t think you have a year to to do a listening session, I think, you know, you, you

we can, we can do it. I mean, we can definitely get out there gather information, whether it’s, you know, a few people from the community and a few people from the committee just all right, listen, what did you hear, put it all together, and then, you know, morning, afternoon, evening sessions maybe.

22 of each, and then at least start there and say, OK, what do we have? And then bring that back to the crews and the groups and say, OK, is there an agreement point somewhere in here because that’s going to be the hardest thing to find what the

agreement point is because I I’ve talked to, I had a gentleman in my I was 80 something years old, and he said, I’m not agreeing to anything. And I was like, OK, that’s fine, but thank you for letting me know, you know, but, but this, this, you know what I mean?

Like I said, there’s everybody in between too. So finding that inflection point of being able to get the debt exclusion passed is gonna be difficult It’s gonna be it’s not like, oh, it’s gonna be a. $22 million project that covers this, this and that. I think people need to people will need to see it. I think several

people made the point that um we need to get out there with some numbers. A menu is a great idea to be able to say, OK, here are 3 options for every school Do we, you know, and you create a menu, is it one school at a time two projects at a time, shift

totally out of the box and go to the high school and start there, you know, like so I think. look at that opportunity too to give people the option. Um, and that could be what’s on town meeting. It might not be a binding, it could be non-binding to say, OK, where

are we at? Let’s get a sense of where the community’s at, so that that’s, I think we have some good starting points Well, I, I mean, that was, I mean. which I put it out, I put that out a little bit as the cra I

was like I’m not gonna say that, but Eric just said it, so that, you know, in uh and part of my research about when I researched what happened with the middle school in the 90s. 1 of the things that occurred is they had a non-binding town meeting not saying that we should do

that. I’m just saying throw it and they whatever they horse traded and straw polled and argued about, and it was a non-binding, they took votes, but they were non-binding votes. about what it was a very different. It was, it has a lot of similarities. It also has a lot of differences.

That’s where you’re generally getting the most people in one place, um, so I don’t know if there’s an opportunity for some sort of a listening at town meeting. I mean, it’s, I don’t know. I mean if there’s, I, I’m just, I don’t know anything about that from a legal standpoint or how the

town does that, but I just wonder if there’s any opportunity where people are gathering where we could get reliable feedback. It might be of a diverse group of people that have keeping keeping talking about that to see like is is that worth doing? you know. I don’t know.

Um, I, I don’t, I do wanna move forward, but do we have any, I mean, to Amy’s point, do we feel like that there’s any action step? like do we want to task Sounds like, do we want to task someone on the committee to work with Eric around setting up listening sessions? Is that

too soon? What are people thinking? Or is there some other action? Eric I mean, I don’t think it’s too soon. It’s never too soon have them start them, learn something. I don’t either. I’m trying to be, it’s it’s a little juggling match the next two months is always a juggle, but I think you got to get

people in the room. You gotta get people it could be 5 people in the room to start, then 10, then 20. could be over at the COA next door with 7 people. I don’t, you know, I feel like it’s something that we need like what do you feel like what

everybody feel like we need, like, do we want I don’t know, like do we want a member of the committee working with Eric? Do you want like I don’t know who’s running the listening sessions. I don’t know like. I mean, I’m happy to help. I’m, I’m not like a trained

facilitator or survey provider, but I’m happy to be there and listen to people, I mean, or not, you know, just I’m gonna be frank and say there might be some benefit to either Kristen or Megan only because we’re like you’re, we’re newer you’re joined after many of the decisions were made,

um, and so what we’re striving for is a forward-looking, like I’m happy to be there just to be. clear with the public and completely happy to be at a listening session, um I don’t know, but I don’t know what do, what do you think in terms of what you need in terms of I think

I think open the door to let some public in. So I’m just gonna use an example if, if I’m standing in front of all these people in the room from all the sides. It’s not beneficial to open the trust door. So I think it, it’s an opportunity for us

to, yeah, I have a committee member, have a couple of committee members at each one, so that you’re getting, you’re kind of hearing what’s going on because ultimately it comes back here for that forward vote, but also give um different people in the community There are clearly anxious people. We’ve had several speak

tonight. We’ve had several speak at other meetings that would be involved and really just to media like, OK, let’s let’s go through a process of here’s what we’re trying to do, we’re we’re trying to come to some decision. I mean we have two lines that describe what we’re trying to

do. What do you think? and let it go. I mean, it, it has to be unbound, I think a little bit too, and people, people might get upset, they might get angry, that’s OK. That’s part of the process. It’s part of the community process, but I think ultimately we can get that into some form of action.

or at least starting to look like action that we can drive forward. So I think invite some people in from out in the community who are not school people. Oh yeah, definitely. You know what I mean like I can send a message out to all the parents tonight invite tonight invite

people in tonight invite people in saying no I definitely help facilitate. Maybe you have 33 or 4 facilitators. I No, I mean, I think that could be an interesting I mean it’s everything is fraught, right? Because it’s like if you like you select the facilitator, then you know, but I think it’s like

I there’s never gonna be the perfect thing, but I think that’s a good starting point is to try to do that. Anything, maybe have a try to be balanced. and have, and I think we have a volunteer in the room. I think that’s great. No, I think that’s great. So I, so

new still, do we can Eric like form a com like do you form a committee with? He doesn’t have, I mean, in other words, that’s the beauty of that is it wouldn’t have to be forming a committee or I could just do that. We could form we could vote to task Eric

with doing that, but, um, and then, you know, in a listening session I mean there’s like logistics around committee members could be there, but if you’ve got a quorum there, then you have to post it as meeting, whatever, so we would and then and then you end up with this kind of an

awkward conversation instead of um I don’t, I, if I went to something like that, I wouldn’t anticipate speaking, right, we could all just observe. I mean, those are different. We can deal with all of that later, like, in other words, I, because I wouldn’t want it to be run like a school committee

meeting. It would just be us because where the point is we’re listening, um. so generally just task me with putting together a plan for developing At least, at least, for for listening sessions, yeah. OK. I move that we task Superintendent Eric Tracy to develop a process to establish listening sessions to move forward potential

options with the elementary school facilities. Second, All right, I heard seconded by Amy Kumberger. Does anybody have any questions? right? If we’re ready to vote. All those in favor? And that is unanimous of the 4 members present, and the motion passes. um Megan’s lovely, uh motion there which I didn’t restate so I didn’t write it

down, but it was good listening sessions. They’re not brief, my emotions. It’s OK OK go. All right next up Vinny with the year-end forecast. everybody’s favorite part of the night. Woohoo Uh, thank you guys for letting me present to you tonight. I am here to discuss, uh, the FY 26 year-end forecast, uh, as of

quarter1 ending September 30th, 2025. Doesn’t want to work. Um, so, as you probably, uh, know, quarter 1 means that 25% of our fiscal year has passed, uh, but we are a school district and the majority of our expenditures happen within those 180 days of school. Uh, so if you look at it just from

that September 30th point of view, we’ve only had 21 school days pass or roughly 12%, uh, of the school year. Uh, for that reason, we have not done an entire line by line analysis of all 450 of our account lines, uh, instead, we are quarter one forecast is based on all staff

changes that we know of as of September 30th. uh, plus an outer district forecast that was provided by Stacy Busick, our director of student services and then, uh, in addition, a health insurance analysis. Uh, so you might ask why, it doesn’t work, sorry. So you might ask, why do we look

at just these three items. Well, it’s because they’re our largest, uh, 3 budget categories. So if you look at our FY 26 operating budget. It is approximately $46.6 million. Uh, you look at salaries, this is our number one budget category. It represents $27.6 million of our $46.6 million operating budget, or roughly 59%. Uh, you then

add in our added district tuitions that has a budget of just under 4.6 million, uh, you’re analyzing another 10% of our operating budget. Then you throw in our health insurance premiums, uh, which our budget is approximately 4. 1 million. Uh, you’ve just added 9%. So amongst these three budget categories, uh, we’ve covered $36.3 million or

roughly 78% of our budget. So although we don’t go through an entire line by line analysis, we do cover more than the majority of our budget, uh, during our quarter 1 review. So I’m gonna briefly go over kind of the major changes in these three categories, uh, with staffing, I’m heavily

involved in staffing changes in payroll, uh, every payroll that we post, I’m reconciling it, uh, to the dollar for everyone’s gross pay, uh, back to the budget, uh, back to wherever the major changes are. So from September 30th, I can accurately predict if the year were to end right now when we

didn’t have any other changes that we would end with this residual balance. I’m obviously not going to go over every line item here. I’m kind of just gonna go over the top, uh, everything kind of plus and minus $10,000 but obviously if you have any questions, uh, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Without a doubt, the biggest thing we see year over year with our staffing changes usually is our staff turnover, uh, for those of you who have been on the committee for a long time. Uh, we budget somebody at a certain salary rate, but for whatever reason if they’re not here, uh, a year

later when the budget actually comes and turns into actuals. uh, they could have resigned, they could have retired late, um, or we could have just asked them not to come back. We generally try to bring in a staff member who is uh, lower on the salary scale, whether it’s, uh, lower, uh,

educational degree or lower step, uh, less experience. They come in making, uh, less money. So we have salary savings because because of that staff turnover. That is our biggest line item. We’re seeing about a $250,000 balance. We also have retirement savings. So when we go to set the budget, if we get notification before December

1st that somebody’s retiring. We recognize those savings within our budget and lower uh the salary amount that we’re budgeting for that individual. If they don’t give us that notification, notification by December 1st. They’re not included, but we still had some retirements that we received notification after. When we rehired for those positions, uh, we realized

savings of another $93,000. Uh, there is, uh, savings from our STEM hires. So when we are in FY 26, uh, we had two new STEM positions at the elementary level. Those were brand new positions, so we didn’t have anyone, uh, in those seats at the time, because this, this was a specialty position. We didn’t

budget what we normally budget for a position. We normally budget around a master step 5, but because this was a more unique position. Uh, we budgeted around a master’s 30 step 11, when we hired those two individuals, it was mixed. We hired someone on the high end and we hired someone on the

low end. When you net the two together and compare it to the budget, we had savings of $24,000. I’m pretty honest with my budgeting. I did have a budget error while uh creating the budget last year, I accidentally grated somebody at a step 12 when they were really

a step 10. If you look at, look at our old, uh, salary schedule, the bachelor’s column only had 9 steps, but when we signed the new contract that turned into 12, when I set the budget, I immediately put that person at a step 12 when our reality, they should have gone to a step 9

It ultimately resulted in savings of about $12,000. Uh, last but not least, there’s a second part of the STEM positions when we originally went to set the budget, we knew there was gonna be a 2.0 FTE spread across three schools. If you divide two by 3, it gives you 0.6666. We knew there

wasn’t gonna be 0.666 person at every school. It was either gonna be a 0.7 or 0.6. So during the budget process we simply just put a 0.7 at each of the three schools. A that together, it’s a 2.1, so there’s a 0.1 FTE savings, that 0.1 represents $10,241.

OK, so those are everything, uh, savings over 10,000. Now to go backwards, uh, some of our deficits, things that cost us money so far this year. Uh, we definitely needed some more summer technology help, uh, over the past summer. Um, usually we have kind of one student helper, uh, come in and

help deploy all of the new iPads and all of the new laptops, but this summer, uh, it was a little more unique in that at the end of FOA 25 we purchased a larger amount of technology on top of that, uh, we switched over our information as student information management system

this summer we went from Aspen to PowerSchool, and I will speak on behalf of the entire IT department. It was an absolute nightmare for them, and they did have to call in, uh, additional help during the summer to help make that transition. Uh, in addition, we do, we did have a few employees who

received a little bit above the budgeted cola and in addition, some of their work year was extended, which did cost us roughly about $13,000 more. Uh, there was, there was a need at the Winthrop Elementary School for two additional ESPs, uh, combined, it did cost us over $56,000 to fill those positions.

That is going to be something, uh, the school committee did approve back in September and will be something that carries through to the um, first, uh, rendition of the 27 budget requests that you will see next week. Uh, last but not least, we have late retirements. That, so that’s a little bit different than my retirements up above.

I’m gonna explain it the best I can. We could receive a retirement notification that says they’re gonna retire on September 30th. Um, so that’s, you know, roughly 15 days into the school year. We find it very difficult for, let’s just say a first grade student to meet their teacher on day one

and have them leave 20 days later, uh, and meet a new teacher. So we hire their replacement day one. That means for those 15 days we have technically 2 staff members. So in certain instances, if we receive notification that they’re not retiring on June 30th, we might not lower their

salary in the budget process because we know there’s gonna be two individuals there. So this did happen with 3 instances this year where we had late retirements going somewhere between October and November. and we had um more individuals there than we would have anticipated that roughly cost, uh, $67,000.

So you roll all these things together within our salaries. Uh, I am at this moment, um, estimating to have $270,000 remaining at your end. Do you have any questions there OK Moving on to the 2nd biggest budget category are out of district tuitions I did receive, uh, a year-end projection from our student services director. I, it is

broken down by student, uh, by the outer district placement. I really just summarized it here for you to give you just the numbers on one slide. Um, this is before any offsets and any prepaids are FY 26 approved budget for our out of district tuitions was approximately 4.6 million. The year end

projections, uh, is coming in at 4.4 million which leaves a balance of roughly 98,000. However, there is one very likely placement at the moment that are, that is in our buildings today, but we’ve res but I’ve been told that it is highly likely they’re going to be outplaced before the end

of the year. If the year were to end right now, we would end with $98,000. However, we are anticipating that that student is going to be outplaced before the year is over, costing roughly $50,000 if that occurs, we would have a year-end balance at the moment again before any offsets and

prepaids of roughly $47,000 because during the budget process I always uh go on the side of caution. I’m going with the 47 just so we account obviously for that potential, uh, placement. Next is our health insurance. So I know this is a, uh, convoluted chart, but I tried

to explain to you in here how we come up with our health insurance budget. So when we go to build the budget, we pick the most up to-date invoices, which is usually the ones we receive right before I start building the budget, uh I had my, uh, pointer. If you look at the top, it’s based on

our October 2024 invoices. That’s what we set our 20206 budget off of. If you go and look at those invoices, there is a little less than 392, um bodies on our health insurance. The reason it’s a little less, if you recall from our budget cycle whenever there is a vacant position, I always

budget the full cost of a family HMO for that individual because again, I always try to cover our potential liability, so when that person does come to hire, we at least have the funds there to cover, um, a family plan for them if they choose.

So if you go and look at that bill again it comes out to a little less, but for now we’ll say it’s 392 people. So the next column is the full cost of the FY 25 plan. So for a HMO family plan, it costs roughly $36,000 a year for that one plan.

You times that by your 68, you get your total premium cost for the year, but that’s after that’s at the FY 25 rate. Everyone knows your health insurance goes up every year. We predicted an 8% increase on our health insurance premiums. Uh, that was the exact amount of our actual increase, so we

were exactly where we needed to be. So you multiply, uh, your full premium rate times your 8%. Uh, but then that’s the full cost. It’s split between obviously the employee and the district for FY 26, the district covers 63% of the overall premium. You then charge that by $63 million get you your 1.6 million, just

talking about the HMO family plan. Do that for every single plan we have. It gets you exactly to where we set the budget of the 4. 142 million. So that’s our budget Uh, sorry, clicker doesn’t work. So then you look at our actuals. So then the next, the last bill we we received exactly one year

later, October 2025, we only have 375 actual participants in our health insurance, about 17 less than what we budgeted. Obviously, if you look, the biggest variance is within our HMO family and again, that’s because where we put all of our vacant positions, so most likely that’s where you’re gonna find the biggest variants. Again, very honest

and open. This is where we budget for a um a lot of kind of residual funds at the end of the year. It’s within our health insurance because there is so much movement during the year. Um, we could get the premium rate wrong, we could have somebody walk in tomorrow that says, you know, my spouse

lost their health insurance. I now have to go on the district and as you saw on the slide before, it’s $36,000 every time that happens. That’s why we always try to build in a little bit more within our health insurance because it, it is so volatile during the year. Nonetheless, you have 17 less bodies, you simply multiply

that by the number we had in the last slide, uh, you come down with a balance of roughly $247,000. We did have an additional roughly $5000 in expenses, and that’s just because in September we did have more people on the bill. They weren’t enrolled in October, so there is people

coming and going, so the math just doesn’t exactly work out at the end of the year. Uh, nonetheless, I at this moment I’m predicting a balance of $243,000 in our health insurance accounts. So just summarizing, uh, based on these three biggest categories. Uh, if the year were to, if nothing were to

change between now and the end of the year, we would end with approximately $561,000 but I just have a big Arik here that number the quarter number 1 is the the least accurate quarter and a lot will change between now and the end of the year.

I do anticipate, um, that in quarter 2, if not by quarter 3, we will be asking for a transfer within our maintenance department. Uh, right now we are coming very close already to our budget. They are not currently over, but I anticipate, um, by the turn of the calendar year, uh, there will be something we need

to analyze with them. So I do anticipate that a good portion of this money will be converted to maintenance before the year is over. So at this time, I’m not recommending that we do anything with these funds at the moment for those two reasons, because there’s a lot more of the year left to

go and because we will probably need it for upkeep. Um, do we have any questions? OK? Thank you. Thank you. Um all right. Uh thank you very much for that, Vinny. Yeah. Um, next up committee reports um capital finance which was canceled OK, and when is the next meeting. OK um

all right, um I wish that you have a productive meeting on Monday because I know you have tons of work to do. Yes, we are reviewing the first pass of the 27 budget, so I hope, um, we come together. Great Um policy Uh, we are bringing back the second reading and for a vote, the compensate competency

determination, policy for graduation. um which is linked I don’t know, do you have anything to add? This is we made the changes that were requested to the column headers and um actually simplified one of the notes Last time there was confusion about the difference between the two columns. Yep, we wrote the headings. um do people have

questions about this, um. just, I don’t know if you want to give a little context for Chris and our new member a little. uh, last year, the voters voted to remove the MCAS requirement for graduation. So every district in the state is charged with um, determining new competencies for graduation, which is a little complicated,

um, so this document comes from the state. We didn’t write the template it’s a template, um, but we’ve added our own um requirements on top of the state competencies. So this is something that the policy subcommittee worked on and then just so you know, typically we bring something for our first read to the committee and get feedback,

or bring it back to the policy subcommittee and then we bring it back again for like a second read and a vote. And that’s what this step is. OK. Um so you’re looking for a vote this evening, correct? Um, so maybe we can start with a motion and then if we have discussion.

I move that the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School. School school district school committee approve the competency determination policy as written. Second. seconded by Amy Kumberger Um, so anybody have any questions on the policy or the changes that you see here. Um, so I, well, I have a question not really about this,

but I it’s, I, I think I asked it before, when do we anti we anticipate very we’re still waiting to hear where do we stand with the state. They’re gonna, they’re gonna give us more changes. Correct. Do we know when that’s happening? It’s soon. It’s supposed to be

sometime next week is one of the first releases of some of the information and then I think you’ll see more in December. There’s some of a bit of a tug of war going on between the state, uh, the governor’s office and Department of Education, so I’m not sure how that’s gonna pan out, but I’m assuming we’ll

have to bring this back at some point with changes. I guess my only, I, I think you guys obviously did what we discussed and you know, um. but again like this is being re having this document is required by the state, even though it’s possible that in just a matter of days the state’s gonna tell

us that we have to do something different, correct. I do think it’s important though for students and of course they like have some sort of. Yeah, we need something for the current class, graduating class. There are kids that will be impacted by this. Absolutely, yeah. um. OK. Uh, anybody else OK, um, we had a motion in a

second, so, um, all those in favor. is unanimous of the four members present and the motion passes. Thank you to the AllC subcommittee. And our next meeting is December 1st. Excellent. Um, so negotiations, um we have not met recently, but we, um, now have a new member, um, and so I will

be sending out um I’ll chat with Eric and I’ll send out to the subcommittee and we’ll, and to the union and we’ll see, maybe we, we might need to meet first and then we’ll have a session to start and strategy session and then then meet with the. ESP group first right, so

look for me in your inbox. All right, um, all right, uh, we do not have a secretary of work because we don’t have the secretary. here. Um, unless you just want a wing one Get your minutes in the report. I have to say, get your, get your minutes in. Um, alright.

Uh, Amy, do you have anything for in our inboxes? Our inboxes were pretty quiet this time around since our last meeting. OK. Thank you. Um, to you, Eric. The redundant report We start off with congratulations to both boys and girls soccer who won their tournament games yesterday and will advance in the tournaments.

um I don’t know exactly where they’re going from here, but both played back to back yesterday up at the high school and both took home the win, so. uh it’s fun to have teams deep into the tournament and um, you know, the possibility of one of them making it all the way is

always uh a high level possibility with the with our soccer teams. They’ve always done fairly well, so. we’ll be looking forward to that The other thing in uh the exhibit here is I wanted the committee to be aware that I submitted this position paper. um to the state. The state is

having their own listening sessions oddly, uh, about chapter 70, chapter 70. uh funding is what uh the state calls the funding that they give to uh each school district or communities actually uh or school districts if they’re regional, uh, to offset the budgets and one of the things that you’re seeing with Chapter

70 funding across the state as it is not meeting the needs or the expectations of what it was designed to do. even more so for districts that are regionalized, we all kind of fall into this minnow-maid district. We don’t get very much. um, and because of the way the calculation is designed,

inflation is capped within the calculations, so anything above 4.5% inflation doesn’t get figured in to the numbers that they, they give to the communities, um, so this is strictly my position on the position paper based on my experience here, um and I, I understand the principles of, of chapter 70, I outlined some of the, the

burdens that are, um, on taxpayers I think this chart that I have up front is an important piece of the puzzle, and I’m gonna just take a walk up there for a second. These red lines here That’s right. These red lines here are our chapter 70 funding. all the way back to FY 93

Hasn’t changed much uh, which is one of the problems with some of these smaller districts, regional districts, generally districts under 2500 students are impacted negatively. Um this line here is our budget. This is what we spend. It’s called Net school spending, actual net school spending, um, and it’s dipped a little bit

here and there, but it is now so divergent from state aid that we are in a very problematic situation along with several other region works around us, so I just want, I wanted people to be aware of this. This is an important aspect of the work that I’m doing as the superintendent, but also with my fellow superintendents

around the entire state. Uh, I went to Maskconomme uh last Thursday, two Thursdays ago, and went to the listening session and there were people there from school committees from um city councils, mayors, and really all talking about the same problem, um, which, which we’ve experienced for a number of years now where the the gap widens further and

further and further, and we’ll continue to widen um under the same uh expectations from the state Vinnie’s fancy pointer. Exactly, the laser pointer. So anyway, there are, there are a number of things that the listening sessions are. trying to dig into like, OK, give us, give us some

real change. What are some things that you could do? I mean, realistically, the, the, the formulary now is was designed in ’92. It is so complex that he’s tried to figure it out and kind of gotten close. I’ve tried to figure it out and kind of gotten close, but you can never nail down the actual numbers

based on what you get. Couple that with not meeting the expectations in the law for transportation reimbursements. I think last year we got 57% of our transportation reimbursement that should have been 100%, um, no, 7 75% last year and, and circuit Breaker doesn’t kick in until you exceed over $40,000 for reimbursements for special eds

you’re eating a $40,000 the 1st $45,000 and then circuit breaker kicks in so each of these three things are really doing some damage in the in the realm of school in general. You’re seeing override votes in Georgetown that needed to pass to keep their school system afloat. Override vote in

Amesbury, um, 4th year of cutting, uh, over a million dollars out of their school budget. It’s, it’s because the state aid’s really falling off the shelf for a lot of these smaller communities, so this is just this was my position paper that I sent um to the state and

um I’ll continue to do that work with the superintendent’s group. We’re all involved in all uh really pushing as hard as we can to get this formula changed so that it, it, uh. takes a better account for some of the things like establishing the factor that supplemental state aid to regional districts,

um, in minimal AIDS status like you need a factor that is takes into account the the differences in in regional school districts versus um something like the city of the city of Beverly. um, revisited the minimum aid provision, the per per pupil act uh increase accurately reflects the actual inflation

driven cost growth. There’s a cap in the formula built in for no higher than 4.5% inflation. So if you go back a year when inflation was really high, you lost money even though you got your $44 million which is about what we get, it doesn’t translate into $4 million when you start taking into account of uh inflation.

and then um examining the impact of local contributions, you know, when you you all here at education takes up 60% of the budget, um, and I don’t think they’re understanding the impact on smaller communities for things like trash, like water, like all of the expenses that the towns have that we, we were talking about earlier, so, um,

it’s part of my one of my solutions and then uh the the I what I just talked about with transportation special ed costs are really not being funded at full levels so we have a kind of a uh perfect storm if you will, forming where um the budget will continue to grow and state aid will continue to

remain flat and, uh, you know, we, you see it in our, in our budget offsets and our budget revenues, they don’t change very much. Um, so we’re all just making the push. So if you do get an opportunity to go to a listening session there’s some fodder for you for um regional school districts

anyway, and we are different from, from cities, uh, individual cities, so, uh, just, I just wanted you to be aware that this was out there and I think it’s an important conversation piece for the community to understand, um, that we’re really being penalized the regional penalty

I call it, because of um the failure of chapter 70 to meet the the needs of small districts like ours. Thank you. Yeah thank you Anybody have questions No, thank you for writing this. This is really good yeah no, I was going to say that for me that the chart was

very helpful to have it in there, um. was. I enjoy a good chart. That was a good one. It was clear. He loves a good visual, right? Exactly. um, as those DECA students when they showed their paper with all the, I mean that was. That was a pretty good executive summary. Here you go. There’s 4 pages long.

Um anything else? Anybody have anything? Just wanted to make sure that was out there publicly. I think it’s important for the public to know and the public to get involved. I mean, there’s nothing that says that anybody in the community can’t go to these, can go, can’t go to these listening sessions.

They’re open to the public and I think just helping people to be aware. I’ve talked to the towns, I’ve given them a copy of this, like this is something they need to chime in on as well at the state level. So, um, we need to just use all the tools available to us right now.

It’s to ring the bell at the statehouse to say this is, this is not, it’s, it’s not gonna serve us for the next 5 years. It’s just gonna get wider and wider and wider. No, and I appreciate you not just doing the work but also bringing him in that’s sort of one of the things that

you talked about doing this year is bringing that advocacy work and showing it here and highlighting it here, um. it’s good. for everyone to see it. It’s helpful. Thank you. um, OK, um, I don’t think I have very much on the chair’s report. Um, I did want to just let everyone know that, um,

the most recent meeting for the regional agreement discussion was supposed to be last last week Oh, yes, yes, no day before, 22 days ago. um, not last week, but a couple of days ago, um Wednesday um Wednesday, yes, it was, it was yesterday yesterday. It was a strange week. Um, uh, anyway, um, the towns were not

ready, um, to have that meeting, and so we’ve postponed it. I think it’s the 2nd time we’ve postponed. um so they are doing their work and they’re hopefully gonna be, um, our next, we do have another meeting scheduled, so hopefully I’ll have something to report, um when that happens um, and then I already did

share with you, um, that we are gonna um begin the process of bargaining with the ESP union. I don’t think I have anything else. OK. Um topics for future meetings. Does anyone have anything? Policy subcommittee member 27, yes, OK, wait, hold on, um. yes, I did have that Um, and then

I, I sort of just jotted down and Amy, maybe you can let me know if this is, I, when we were having that conversation a regarding the next steps, I sort of jotted down like a formation of some sort of a committee, as maybe a discussion. I didn’t know if you were trying to add that,

but it sounded like you were, so, um, so I don’t know when that would come back, but, but let’s keep it in our. It could be on the list of things that could be on a future agenda, um, Vinnie, did you have something? 2 our next meeting. Um might be a long one

Great. Just, yeah if you’re agenda and then snacks. OK what else is on there? Um, all right, does anybody have anything else? Nope, nope, one I move to adjourn at at. 9:51, but 9:51 p.m. Second by Kristen, all those in favor. That’s unanimous, and we are adjourned at 9:51. We need to

sign the lease, so don’t run away. Yeah, don’t run away. Oh, yeah. OK. Good work, everybody Um my foot’s asleep.