00:05:20,930	Thank you. Good evening. I call to order the meeting of the Hamilton Mountain Regional School Committee on Thursday, June 4th, 2026 at 7:05 p.m.. And I’d like to remind everyone that this meeting is being recorded and live streamed on, uh, cam.

00:05:44,430	Um, and you can pull up the zoom. Um. But before we get to that, um, I’m gonna start off, I’m gonna ask, uh, Mr. Tracy, uh, to recognize our student government representatives. Thank you. Um, throughout the year, we ask a group of students, generally officers, and each of the classes, uh, to present at school committee meetings one time a month.

00:06:12,200	And this year, we’ve had four students who have been consistently bringing reports, but also behind the scenes, working with their peers to gather information, get get it all sorted out, get it organized into a presentation, and then coming here, um, to do the presentation, answer any available questions.

00:06:32,670	So tonight we want to take a moment to recognize those students for their work and thank them for being a part of our team and certainly keeping the school committee up to date on the things that are going on in school. So we have three out of the four here tonight.

00:06:51,200	We have Anderson, Kraft, Colby, McGovern, Emmy Pitkin, and not here. But, uh, was active. Abby Bernard Anderson. Told me congratulations. Thank you. You’re gonna take a close. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for your hard work. We appreciate it. So don’t go. Oh. Thank you. Thank you. Hi.

00:07:25,330	Um, next up, we have an opportunity for citizens comments. Uh, do we have anybody on the zoom? Nope. Is there anyone in the room, uh, interested in making a citizen’s comment? Are you sure about that? Okay. Looks like. No. Um. Um. All right, so I will spare you all the information about citizens comments.

00:07:51,630	It looks like there are none. Um, and we can go ahead and close the zoom and citizens comments are closed. Um, next up, we have a, um, review of our school committee protocols and a portion of our mission statement to you. Jen. As elected members of the Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee.

00:08:14,070	We, including the superintendent, accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business, the School Committee recognizes the importance of working collaboratively with town officials and actively seeking their support to

00:08:34,330	improve the district. And then. Mission statement. The Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee’s mission is to ensure our schools create graduates with a passion for lifelong learning. Together with the critical skills needed to maximize their potential.

00:08:59,800	The Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that is a source of civic pride and municipal engagement to serve the community for generations to come. Thank you. Okay, next up. Uh, to Eric to provide us with a superintendent report. Thank you. Chasing it around the screen right now. Okay, there we go. Um, thank you everyone.

00:09:40,530	I just wanted to reach back a little bit and talk about, uh, both the candlelight ceremony and graduation. Uh, amazing ceremonies. Candlelight was beautiful. The speeches were amazing. They really. The kids, uh, really did a great job stitching the speeches together. And, um, creating a really tight connection with, uh, the class of 2026 graduation ceremonies.

00:10:06,000	Same thing was a wonderful ceremony just under an hour long, um, 108 students. And it was probably the most interesting graduation I’ve ever been to with a kids. At the end, they throw up their hats and they didn’t leave. They all came together and kind of danced around and hugged each other on the floor, which was great to see.

00:10:21,470	It was a really, uh, tight group of seniors. We wish them well and good luck in the future. And then, uh, last night I was able to attend the Underclass Awards, and that was at the high school last night.

00:10:39,300	And, uh, another great opportunity for us to see students who are up and coming in the district and kids who receive, uh, not only departmental awards, but a lot of our juniors received some book awards. The Patent Leadership Award is given out. So a wonderful opportunity for our kids in grades nine, ten and 11 to be celebrated and recognized. So it was a nice night last night.

00:11:00,070	Uh, this afternoon I attended the, uh, middle school National Junior National Honor Society ceremony again, wonderful ceremony. Very simple. Um, and and, uh, straightforward, but, uh, new group of inductees today. And it’ll be exciting to see, uh, all that they’ll bring to the National Junior Honor Society at the middle school, um, number of tournament games going on.

00:11:23,070	Still, believe it or not, I think this year we had all of our teams head to the tournament. Uh, currently, the tennis team won today 5 to 0. They’ll move on to the final four. Boys tennis. Girls tennis will play tomorrow at home at 330. And I think they play Hopedale. And then, uh, baseball is currently playing.

00:11:42,070	And I’ll tell you what the score is in one second. It is we are up 3 to 2 at the end of the fourth inning. Uh, so teams are doing well. Unfortunately, both boys and girls lacrosse, uh, lost in their most recent tournament games, but great seasons for both of them.

00:12:05,070	Uh, girls lacrosse went 14 and three on the season. They also received the Cal Sportsman Award and then, uh, boys had quite the turnaround season. They had a tough start to the season. They turned it around and ended up in in the tournament.

00:12:20,300	So congratulations to both of those teams, uh, for making it as far as they did in the tournament. And that is about. It. Thank you. Anybody have questions? All right. Thank you. Um, next up we have the consent agenda. Um, does anyone have any items that they’d like to have pulled from the consent agenda? Um, so I do.

00:12:44,130	I’m going to ask to hold both of the donations. Um, and are you willing to make a motion? Sure. I move that we accept the consent agenda as written. With the exception of the two donations. Second. Second by Amy Klobuchar. Um, all those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the four members present, and the motion passes.

00:13:12,870	Um, so I held both of these because these are both really dramatic. Huge grants from the Ed Fund. Um, and no, no pun intended. Exactly. They are both dramatic and dramatic. Um, and I was hoping, Eric, that you might just speak a little bit about them.

00:13:39,030	Yeah, these these are, grants, two grants that have been in discussion for much of the year. Uh, back and forth, trying to figure out what the best approach would be to both of these projects. Um, the lighting project is a continuation of the work that we have been doing, supported by the Ed Fund in the auditorium.

00:13:57,900	Um, as you know, they did a renovation, the auditorium, but years ago and kind of left some things on on checked. So over the years you had fund has been an Fouda have been really good at donating to things like soundboards and lighting change outs and audio, uh, wiring and rewiring. And so this is kind of the next step.

00:14:16,370	Everybody agreed that the lighting project would be the best bang for the buck, and the $450,000 grant for, uh, updating our lights, which are desperately needed. We have a number of lights in the theater that don’t work. They’re just stuck up on the ceiling.

00:14:35,300	And to get them down, you got to take them all down. So this will be an opportunity for us to not only reduce the number of lights we have reduced the wiring cables that we have. It’s insane right now. Um, to a very, uh, slimmed down version because of the digital capabilities of all the lights and the low amperage.

00:14:54,800	Uh, excuse me, low wattage, um, lighting fixtures that you can get now for the theater. So this is a big, big grant for us. The amphitheater has been a dream of Doctor Pape, uh, for a number of years. And he has been trying to figure out ways to make this happen.

00:15:11,500	He finally decided, um, to dig into it this year and going back and forth again with the Ed Fund committee. Uh, he he was able to put together a really good presentation to them. They accepted it wholeheartedly and donated the $362,000, um, to put an amphitheater in.

00:15:34,470	And for people who have been to the back of the high school. Um, if you’re looking at the back of the high school between the science wing and the athletics section, there is a little curved in section. It will be it will naturally fit into that section of the the back.

00:15:50,470	There’s two, two places it could have ended up, but we believe it’s going to be in that in that section. So thank you to the Ed Fund. These are both amazing grants. Uh, for the district. We’re looking at over $800,000. Um, plus the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They they continue to donate throughout the year for, uh, to benefit our, our teachers and our students in the classrooms.

00:16:13,300	Thank you. Does anybody have any questions, either of those? Oh, this is. Amazing. Okay. Um. All right, all right. Uh, we have a motion. I move that we accept the two donations as presented. Second. Second. By Amy converter. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor? And that is unanimous.

00:16:46,000	Of the four members present. And the motion passes. Um, amazing work to the Ed Fund and to all the, um, teachers and staff that organize the complexities of getting both of those grants written and. Okay. Um, next up, we’re gonna hear about the strategic planning. Draft. Okay.

00:17:23,270	We’re going to talk tonight about our strategic planning process that we started. And the first and foremost, we want to say thank you to 29 of our community members who are part of this process.

00:17:38,830	We had ten community members, ten parents and nine faculty and staff who met with us over the course of three and a half months, starting in February, uh, reaching into May for evening, um, meetings. And it was a really nice process to be able to have lots of varied perspectives in the room and lots of different ideas and thoughts. Um, so this went a little bit longer than we intended it to, but we really felt like the work was.

00:17:57,000	So the conversations and the work was so deep and so rich, it was worth taking a little bit of extra time. So we just wanted to say thank you to the committee. The strategic plan for us. This is our second since I’ve been superintendent.

00:18:14,000	We started with a three year, uh, strategic plan. And this time around we decided to lengthen it up, make it a five year, um, but it’s a system of high leverage goals and strategies that are designed to drive continuous improvement within the district, across the district. Uh, not only each year, but over this five year period.

00:18:31,630	And what you’ll see is the committee talked a lot about further out. We were talking about 2050, uh, which isn’t that far away when you think about it. Um, the work was was really made up of representatives from every stakeholder group within the community.

00:18:47,600	We had people who have had kids in the district 30 years ago. Um, and we’ve had a number of staff members, people who were involved in, uh, some of our government groups. And it was really nice to hear some of the perspectives, but also for them to dig into some of our data to see the reality.

00:19:06,970	Uh, the work was really grounded in district data. We gave them hundreds of documents that they we compiled for them, and they analyzed throughout this process, uh, which helped us to build an honest picture of, of the district and where it stands now and where we need to grow.

00:19:26,600	And this this was really trying to connect the two strategic plans. The previous one, there was still some unfinished business. So we were able to dig into that. And that was our starting point.

00:19:46,870	Say okay, what’s finished? What’s not finished, and then how can we pull some of that into the next level of strategic planning? Um, the initiatives are, uh, really a good, uh, connector for each of our focus areas. And you’ll see that as we present it. Um, they’ll present the initiatives, will connect to goals over the years. So some of these initiatives, just like a number of the things that we’ve worked on, will be multiple years, uh, long.

00:20:06,170	And then, um, the idea of the strategic street strategic plan is to make it a living document. We talked a lot with this group about monitoring it along the way, uh, which is which is something we were trying to figure out. In general, I think we decided on bringing the group back around at the end of the year and say, okay, let’s look at it.

00:20:20,670	Where are we going? What do we need to adjust and tweak? Um, the final plan we’re hoping to have publicly accessible by the start of the school year. Um, and then we’ll continue to be honest about the work, challenge ourselves, will challenge our course and make adjustments as we learn and grow about the strategic planning.

00:20:43,370	So in thinking about the components of a strategic plan, the four boxes on the left are mission, vision, core beliefs, and our portrait of a learner are really who we are and what we believe is a district.

00:21:00,070	And these anchor a multi-year roadmap, that of every initiative that we have in the district. From our early planning stages, all the way through implementation. So we spent some time as a committee really thinking about our mission, which is together we inspire continuous learning in order to lead a purposeful life.

00:21:19,730	Our vision, which is what we want students future success to be, is that they will engage the future with creativity and confidence and our core beliefs, which we established five years ago as a strategic planning committee. Passion for learning, belonging, inclusivity, curiosity, partnerships and integrity. And lastly, our portrait of a learner.

00:21:40,600	Those six competencies that we are really seeking to help our students be able to apply what they’ve learned in our classrooms, uh, in, in their classrooms and beyond. So those are adapt and persevere to empathize, to learn for life, to communicate, collaborate and think critically.

00:22:01,600	So those four foundational pieces were what we started with, what we really made sure that everyone in the room understood why they existed, and we wrestled with them a little bit. And then we really spent our time thinking about these components on the right, the focus areas and strategic objectives, our strategic initiatives and strategic outcomes, and our responsibilities, timelines, funding and monitoring pieces of the plan. So we’ll walk through that a little bit more today.

00:22:21,600	When we initiated this process, we talked to the committee and discussed the, the the kind of the backbone of where this work will come from. And the majority of it comes from the DC Strategic Planning Framework. Um, Jen and I have been through this process before.

00:22:38,370	We went through it with a consultant last time and really took some pieces of that puzzle and some stuff from the DC framework and built out a framework that we felt fit the district more cleanly. But there are three phases. We still use the same three phases. We analyze the context.

00:23:01,230	So looking at all the data, data collection, data sources, um, and then looking towards the future and analyzing that data and creating a direction and then drafting and implementing the plan, which was fascinating.

00:23:21,000	When you start to watch 30 people try and iterate, uh, these documents that we would bring back and forth on giant sized pieces of paper, and they’re writing on them and they’re putting stickies on them. And then we had to bring it back and recapture it so that we could bring it back to the next meeting. And it was quite the process. But, uh, everybody was involved. There was some great ideas and really some great opportunities for us to learn and grow as well.

00:23:36,900	So our first phase really did, uh, involve a lot of data. Um, we were really trying to analyze our current context, like, where are we now as a district? So we spent some time looking at our plan that’s ending this spring.

00:23:53,670	Um, we really use data to orient our team members, and we divided ourselves into self based interest groups, basically, um, of a community and culture group, an academic group and a finance budget and capital group. And we had three sets of data for those groups to analyze.

00:24:15,870	These included things like survey results, um, budget documents from both the district and both towns, goals, reports for the last five years of our district goals, Student Opportunity Act data and accountability data from DC, state of the facilities reports that we’ve recently published, our enrollment data, our class size data, just all those things that come together to form and really create a picture of our district.

00:24:38,330	So these groups dove into these sets of data and synthesize those to really think about what are the overall pieces, where this leads. The synthesis process was really fascinating for me to watch people who probably didn’t understand initially, a lot of the things they were looking at.

00:25:05,600	So trying to acquaint them and acclimate them to, uh, school district data and helping them to understand what it represented, and then bringing in kind of the whole group to identify these broad themes, as Jen said, like facility infrastructure, uh, futurity curriculum, inclusivity. And then, uh, some school level focus areas as well. Uh, the, the themes really blossomed quickly, but we had to kind of rein it in and we were trying to control it.

00:25:29,600	But the themes ultimately came down to four focus areas, which will present in a minute. And then all of these priorities, these focus areas, kind of the big umbrella had to be defined.

00:25:47,800	So we spent, I think, a meeting and a half, maybe almost two meetings, just trying to define those, uh, focus areas so that, um, they met the incoming data, uh, assimilation and all the thoughts that we had about what the future should look like. And then really trying to integrate modern priorities, modern district priorities, um, AI strategies, long term master planning, and then some deeper stakeholder engagement, which came up quite a bit through the process.

00:26:10,400	One of the things you’ll note on this is, and I just pointed out quickly, only because, um, in the middle of this, it talks about, uh, strategic spokes. And that’s even an, an idea of how the language changed as we walk through the process.

00:26:30,470	We honed the language down and made it, made it match how we felt our district would be represented. So you’ll see the shift in a second. So as Eric said, this is a really iterative process. We would start with one plan, go through a meeting, think we knew where were we going exactly. But we really decided that we needed time to have those rich conversations.

00:26:50,200	Um, everyone in the room brought a different perspective. Whether they graduated from the regional many years ago, whether they their children did that, whether they work there today or whether they’re just a community member now that have never attended the regional, it was really valuable to have time to kind of wrestle with some of the things we were

00:27:07,730	thinking about and to make sure that our all ideas were surfaced and heard and captured. So we did a lot of work where one group would start with a focus area and try to define it, and then then rotate a new group in to work and build on the group of the previous.

00:27:23,330	We went through several sticky notes. We went through lots of chart paper, lots of markers, even had some printed posters that we were working on. Um, really to try to make sure that I well, I used voice to text, but I think I took about, I don’t know, maybe 150 sticky notes that were collected one evening on

00:27:40,000	everyone’s main ideas to, to capture and start to categorize what what is it that we were seeing that was unfinished business of our work currently, and where did we need to go with that in the future? So we really took time to go from the large discussions to the smaller pieces, and trying to

00:27:58,770	make sure that all the voices in the room were heard. Connecting the dots for the committee was an interesting process because, again, a lot of the members were not familiar with school terms.

00:28:21,700	So we spent quite a bit of time really just acclimating them to the million acronyms that occur in school districts, you know, MCAS and Doe and desk and all of the things that suddenly come at you. Um, and once we were able to do that, we really settled on four elements that make up our plan. And the greater umbrella is the focus area.

00:28:42,430	And we’ll show you what our four focus areas are in a minute. But those are broad areas. Um, they, they really are places that we want to specifically look as we develop the, the strategic plan moving forward. And, and they really support the mission vision, core value portrait of a learner piece as we move forward through this process. Under that, our strategic objectives.

00:29:06,100	And there they’re a really strong component. By connecting the elements together but also defining the focus areas. Um, we spent I forget how much time, but a lot of time, um, iterating the focus areas and trying to connect the dots for people so that they were clear, but also gave us enough.

00:29:26,170	Um, they were broad enough to give us some latitude to plug in through the years where we may miss something because, you know, readily admit that we didn’t get everything we wanted in here yet. Um, and that that stuff will come.

00:29:42,130	And then this under the strategic objectives there, the initiatives, the things that we’ll do, what are we moving towards to meet that objective? And then under that really the outcomes, you know, what’s the product, what do you see? Uh, at the end of first year or second year or all five years? The strategic focus areas and the base objective statement.

00:30:02,930	So here, right now in the four areas of facilities, operations and long term planning, uh, communications and stakeholder engagement, academic excellence for all students and future residents, future ready digital instruction and learn infrastructure and learning. Um, these are really broad categories, purposefully because we need to capture so much underneath these categories.

00:30:30,330	I’ll use, um, future ready digital infrastructure and learning as an example. When you start to look at all the things that would fit under there, we were trying to figure out how to, um, start to recognize and understand and develop some guidelines around AI, but also the infrastructure behind it.

00:30:50,630	What is, you know, what types of goals will we need to keep up with the structural pieces like the servers, the software, and any of the safety issues that we need as we move forward and then goes all the way into training, like helping staff members and being committed to purposefully training staff members to know and understand, uh, what’s coming at us along

00:31:08,700	the way. And then passing that along to kids, um, and helping them to figure out appropriate ways to integrate AI into their world. It’s happening already. Our our phones are already converted in our pockets when we, you know, when we weren’t looking.

00:31:25,670	So, um, there’s a lot coming at us in this realm. So we wanted to try to tackle it along with the current goal that you’ll see next meeting, uh, for the AI stuff that’s coming. Uh, but also what that looks like moving, uh, forward towards the future.

00:31:44,870	One of the problems we all recognize is the speed at which things are changing in the technology area, and then the reality of screen time with kids came up a lot. And talking about how to balance fine balance or even gradually increase or decrease, uh, technology use at various grade levels, for example, you know, very limited at, say, K and one.

00:32:09,070	And then as kids get up into high school, they start to use it more and integrate it into their their day to day. So what are the next steps? Uh, leadership team has begun to review it. We’ll continue to look at it. Um, we need to add timelines in.

00:32:29,470	The timelines are a little bit tricky because we’re trying to connect all the initiatives in the plan that you have before you tonight. Uh, through that five year thread to see, you know, there are some things that might be one year, and there are other things that will be two, three, four or even five years.

00:32:44,830	Who’s responsible is a big piece of the puzzle, trying to make sure we can align things that, you know, uh, academic excellence. There are a number of things that will fall under the realm of Jen and her people. Um, in the teaching and learning piece.

00:33:00,730	But then there’s also parts of that that will fall into the principals, the curriculum leaders, the coaches and things like that. And then once we get those things done, we’ll have bring it back for final school committee approval. Assuming in that first meeting in August, actually the only meeting in August, but looking for a final approval, we’ll also do some of the graphic design work for those who remember the previous strategic plan.

00:33:18,870	The graphic designer actually took it and dressed it up, made it more public facing. So we’ll we’ll do that and have all of that stuff ready to publish a final at the start of the school year so that we can go into the school year with our with our new strategic plan as we designed it.

00:33:37,730	General, take any questions that you have. No kidding. All right. Questions. Um, so thank you very much for that. Um, I so I did I have a sort of a I’m not sure that you’ll I don’t know really what my question is, but as I read it, I’m Eric knows I have some I have sort of some concerns

00:34:02,670	about the, um, the technology aspect, the digital digital literacy. And so this is a sort of a in the weeds question a little bit, but one of the it says, um, on the, not on this presentation, but on the document that you gave that is on the second exhibit.

00:34:22,930	I think it talks about the full implementation of the K through eight. Um, technology instructional sequences, meaning that they’ll, you know, be creating digital literacy from K through eight. And I have a concern about what that looks like. And I know we don’t we’re supposed to be way up here, not in the weeds.

00:34:44,270	Um, but I guess my my concern is that necessarily teaching digital digital literacy in kindergarten would necessarily involve digital learning in kindergarten. And I’m. Not sure I would say we already do that. So we do have digital literacy standards K through 12 that we’re responsible for teaching students in the state of Massachusetts.

00:35:05,600	And our ideally, our students are receiving instructional technology support in their library media classes. But it’s really the goal is to be age appropriate and developmentally appropriate. So, we are not having kids on iPads all day long.

00:35:26,600	We’re thinking about how do we learn to use technology as a tool appropriately to depending on where kids are in their in their years, uh, digital literacy is actually one of our accountability measures through the state of Massachusetts. And it’s something that we in the past have struggled with as an accountability point.

00:35:45,170	And I would say we also see that rising, especially in our middle school, um, where we haven’t had a digital literacy curricular component. And we’re really thinking about and that’s why that says K to eight. How do we ensure that students through middle school have adequate instruction on digital citizenship, on informational technology, on how verifying that what they’re reading is real, and those really basic skills that are so vital now that haven’t always been part of our coursework.

00:36:03,900	And also on the flip side, how to respect a Chromebook that you’re using and ensure that you’re using it properly and not damaging it quickly. You know, like it’s very technology is so broad.

00:36:20,930	And as Eric said, it’s moving so quickly that we are committed to making sure that it is the appropriate use for technology. Uh, with the age of the child. But we also know that we, our students, are assessed digitally starting in third grade by on MCAS. So we want to make sure that we’re not setting kids up for frustration by not having them, uh, exposed to enough screen time. We’ve seen that before.

00:36:39,600	Um, and we want to make sure that they have the skills they need to show what they know through this tool. So I understand your concern. And I would also say we have a device progression that we’re trying to, um, really think carefully about, about when devices are available to students, what

00:36:57,400	type of devices make the most sense for students? Technology is it’s not the shiny thing that we’re trying to capture. It’s really a vital tool that we’re all using. As Eric says, we’ve got our phone in our pockets. We want to make sure we give students those foundational skills to be able to use them. Um, responsibly.

00:37:16,430	Thank you. And I did want to say I actually in the I don’t have it. I don’t have the right thing pulled up right now, but in that it did. I liked the part about sort of getting curious about device progression.

00:37:30,500	I liked that part because I felt like it did open the idea to, I mean, just for full disclosure, I personally really question whether our littlest learners need any, any screen time, any device time at school. And, and I know that our seniors in high school absolutely have to be entering the world digitally literate.

00:37:55,400	So I, I want to say I did appreciate that idea that it felt like when I read it, it had some curiosity and and flexibility around looking at what is the proper device progression. That’s correct. Approach is thinking about the, uh, the progression.

00:38:12,100	I wouldn’t say we always have the progression, right, but we’ve done some work to try to think about that. Um, and I would say, what you’re seeing kids work on in classrooms, if you were to be in a primary classroom is there’s a lot of technology used as an instructional tool by the teacher, not necessarily by the student.

00:38:28,800	Um, all of our resources right now are digital. So we also have, you know, teacher manuals that our teachers use, but they rely heavily on slides or just for their own organization, not necessarily for students to be using devices, but to make sure that they are moving through their day at a pace and sharing

00:38:44,530	information efficiently for themselves. So, um, we we have a lot of technology in our buildings, and we want to really make sure that we’re using it, um, to the most efficient way and the most effective way to make sure that when kids leave our schools, that they have had a foundation

00:39:01,770	of learning, I’m going to keep pushing that responsibility piece, because that’s where I hear a lot of discussions around how students are using technology responsibly is something that I think we can always improve on. It was also one of the areas in general.

00:39:16,700	I remember this night when we had these giant posters out and we had people iterating. The technology area was where it was. People were like, no, we don’t want this. And then somebody else would come over and say, oh no, we need this.

00:39:29,230	And then somebody else would come in and go, we don’t really need this, but we might need this. So it was literally the page was covered, um, with stickies and, and so what people have are passionate about it. Um, in the realm of technology, schools will always be behind. We just can’t afford to stay ahead.

00:39:46,100	So for us, it’s really trying to keep our heads above water and and give our teachers, uh, the skills that they need, uh, which, you know, we don’t do a great job with right now. And I think it’s an important piece of this strategic plan is to be purposeful about what we want to help our teachers to know and understand.

00:40:02,600	Um, because there’s always the early adopters who are on board, who’ve been doing it for three years now. And then there are others that are like, no, thank you. I don’t want anything to do with it. So it’s it’s really helping to find that middle ground as we grow this through the year.

00:40:16,370	And it could change as well. You could see, um, there are some things at the statehouse now that could come out and say, you know, screen time is here, here or here for particular ages. So, um, we’ll keep an eye on that stuff as well.

00:40:33,970	Yeah, I would say that AI focus area really reflects heavily on professional learning. Like I think that is the basis of what we’re talking about, is making sure that we understand what are the implications of AI when a student’s using it or when they what do we need to teach them about when to use it or when not to use it? What do we need to understand about all

00:40:49,930	these tools? You know, Google is great at making changes. And we’ve seen this year like, wait, something just changed. How do we adapt to that? Like there are things happening so quickly that we need our professional learning to match that pace.

00:41:09,530	How is the high school going to please high school and middle school? Because I don’t see this being as much of a problem in the elementary school. How are you going to please say I use because at the college level it’s really hard. Yeah, it’s just it’s hard for us as well. Alrighty.

00:41:24,830	I mean, that’s one of the conversations you could bring Bob Hickey down here, the curriculum leader for the high school. And he’ll tell you the same thing. I live with an English teacher. Uh, we talk about it a lot at home, and it is, uh, messy. Uh, but the good thing is, our staff members can tell the difference pretty quickly. You know? Um, we do.

00:41:42,270	We still do a lot of on demand writing and on demand stuff, which is helpful for teachers to get a baseline. And they can then have those conversations.

00:41:57,770	And again, looking at it from the perspective of how can we teach kids to manage these tools, these super power tools appropriately? Uh, in school and out of school? I mean, the the use of AI in school is very different than the use of AI out of school, especially given the pace that some of these, um, experiential AI’s are coming out.

00:42:15,930	So things like manipulating videos and creating, you know, a walking, talking bot of yourself that’s perfect is literally happening right now. So those are all danger zones for us that we have to kind of keep keep in line.

00:42:29,970	It is going to be hard to keep up in schools, and in some ways it’s more of like, okay, what do you want to manage? We work under, um, the Google umbrella that we can control fairly well.

00:42:47,400	So staying within those boundaries is helpful, especially for the for the younger kids and shutting it down completely for our elementary kids is is always, you know, kind of a best step, I guess, because they’re just not they’re just not using that type of technology in classrooms. Um, I have questions about like, this is so great.

00:43:06,970	Um, especially the other exhibit that wasn’t on the screen, I would be interested in seeing some really specific examples of how you would implement some of these ideas, like, you know, potential lesson plans or articles. Um, I like I echo what Jen had to say were we’re having a hard time in higher ed with AI, so I, I think also it’s interesting to consider teaching the value of learning.

00:43:28,700	Um, I feel like just looking at what I see in my own home from what’s happening at school, there’s a lot of like gamification of learning and kind of checking the box because it’s digital. And so I think it’s this perfect storm of that. Plus AI is like, oh, I put it in here, put it in here, check the box. It’s done.

00:43:43,470	So like thinking about and talking to students about the science of learning, like how information stays with you and and why it’s important to gain it on your own rather than just take it from, as I don’t know, all the age levels we’re talking about, that’ll be interesting too, but I think that would be something I’d be

00:43:58,700	interested in seeing in here as well. The balance for us has been the portrait of the learner. I think the the if you went to graduation and you walk down the hall, all the seniors each created their own portrait of them as a learner and talked about in these posters.

00:44:15,530	It was just one for every kid on the wall there. They talk specifically about their learning, and there’s a lot of conversation about learning. I mean, you can walk to a teacher’s door and it’ll say, you know, I’m so-and-so, and this is how I learn best.

00:44:34,270	So that has been kind of an ongoing growth conversation, partially driven by but partially driven by these issues that we’re confronting now. Like, how do you help kids and adults understand that learning has taken so many different forms? Um, but then thinking about it deeply and our kids think deeply about it, which I think gives them an advantage when they leave.

00:44:53,430	Um, we do get a lot of feedback from colleges. When kids go off to college, they come back and they’re like, I had to do this paper. It was 15 pages long. It was no problem.

00:45:03,870	And all the people in my class were like, how did you learn how to do that? So I think our teachers are really working hard to keep kids kind of within those within those realms of the, the, the, in kind of in classroom learning and understanding their learning, understanding how they learn best. And now we’re seeing them communicate about how they learn.

00:45:24,930	So that’ll start rolling down to the middle school and continue to go down, which is part of this, this plan, hopefully over the next few years. I would just add going back to Jen’s question, we don’t know the answers, and that’s why this needs to be a focus area. I agree wholeheartedly, I was hoping you had a magic bullet. I know the answer. We’ll share though.

00:45:40,900	I think the ethical piece too is really important. I know you touched on like digital citizenship and but also when I consider AI in my classroom, I think about I get a lot of pushback from my students. Like they don’t want to use AI from an ethical standpoint.

00:45:57,500	Both like intellectual property and environmental concerns. So I think that also needs to be part of this conversation and how we address that with students. And I don’t I don’t know the answer. That’s a really, really tricky one. And it’s also a function of change.

00:46:14,530	You know, a student coming into kindergarten now, by the time they graduate, boy, like that will be so very different along the way. Um, for us to be able to manage that through the years and to, to learn and grow with that, we’ve done a ton of work with the AQIM, high quality instructional material. The integration that Jen’s done with her team.

00:46:32,230	Uh, those pieces of the puzzle are all helpful in growing these learners that, you know, if you walk, you go into our fifth grade classrooms and you watch what our kids are writing about and how they’re writing, it’s very different from when I took over five years ago, and I am not taking credit for that.

00:46:47,370	I’m just saying, like it is very different because of the work that’s being done in the classrooms. Uh, it’s focused, it’s consistent, and it’s consistent from school to school. So all all pieces of the puzzle, as we build this out. Yeah. Thank you. All right, I have I have one more I’m sorry.

00:47:07,970	Um, so this is kind of just a general question. I guess maybe it falls under the academic excellence focus area, but I’m not sure. I just want to do to talk a little bit about, I think and I think Jen already mentioned this kind of throughout.

00:47:22,400	I think there’s a lot of accountability specifically to the district and to staff. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about your thoughts around student accountability, like taking ownership of their I mean, a little bit of what Amy was just talking about, like, like them learning about their learning.

00:47:37,330	But I’m sort of looking kind of where you see student accountability or how you see that. Or does it fit in here? Yeah, Yeah, it connects right back to the portrait of learner starting to grow. This process of having kids understand what they’re doing, but now moving it down.

00:47:56,370	So remember the curriculum over the last five years has been kind of moving up. We’re into the middle school with updates. Um, portrait of learner stuff is moving down. All of this is happening, I think, right at the right time, as the state will this summer release the graduation expectations for graduates. And we will be right there at the front of the pack.

00:48:14,770	So I think part of the expectations for kids and the accountability comes at the state level, but kind of as the superintendent, kind of the least of my worries.

00:48:32,030	I like to see the accountability in the classroom and what kids are doing in the classroom day to day and to see the, you know, walk around the building, see their their work and see what they’re doing in the community and going to events like the Underclass Awards and seeing what kids are doing that’s connected to school is really, uh, a testament to how their kids are really starting to connect the dots.

00:48:49,970	So and we’re, you know, we’re doing there are all kinds of initiatives going on the, the no cell phone initiative was huge. So that that was accountability feature that really put kids in the face of other kids having great conversations. It’s been different in the classroom. It’s been different in the hallways.

00:49:05,630	So those things will continue to be discussed along the way. And as you know, this kind of overarching plan each year will develop a set of goals and look at all of those pieces as we build it out. Right. Anybody else? Thank you. All right. Thank you to all the people that worked. Um, on the on the committee getting that done.

00:49:38,070	Um, okay. So next up we have on our agenda is the, um, superintendent evaluation. Um, so it actually says superintendent evaluation and vote, but I think that we sort of talked a little bit about last time, particularly where, um, Julia, who is our Julia, created this document.

00:50:00,600	She was the compiler. She’s, um, not here. Um, and, um, uh, what was I going to say? And, I mean, I’m open to the committee’s thoughts, but I think what we talked about last time was reviewing this in this meeting, creating some feedback, if any, for the compiler.

00:50:28,130	Um, and then bringing it back to the final meeting. Um, for approval. Is that what other people’s understanding was? Um. Okay. Um, so traditionally, the way that we’ve done this is that we’ve read it out loud and usually we have the compiler read it. Um, a compiler is not here.

00:50:52,270	Um, I’m open to what the committee wants to do in terms of going through this. It is very small. Um, but I’m sure we can remedy that. Um, uh, you know, about what people want to do about how people want to, um, go through this. It’s obviously a really important part of what we do. Um, so thoughts? Um. Okay.

00:51:23,100	I mean, if you, I kind of forget how we did this last year. We read traditionally what we’ve done is we’ve read, like, read one section and then discussed if anyone felt like there was any feedback or edit that they felt like they needed or clarification.

00:51:44,070	And then we moved forward through the, you know, all of the, um, the document. So, um. So, I mean, we can do that. I mean, typically if you were going to do it in that way, you would probably actually start with standard one.

00:52:08,570	Do the standards and then go back up to the top and read the final, you know, the that’s how I would approach it. But I’m open to other people’s thoughts. I feel like, um, because there’s just reading through it, it feels very, um, I can’t think of the right word. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of disagreement. Right. Because I know in the past we’ve discussed this.

00:52:29,870	It was because, like, one person or another didn’t feel like all of their input was included or disagreed with the overall sentiment. Right. And I think we heard that from Julia last meeting. Julia sort of said she felt comfortable not being here because she didn’t feel like that. There was a. Lot of range of feedback.

00:52:52,770	That that was her feeling. And but it’s important for the members to sort of say what they think. Um, I, I’m not I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m hearing you say, maybe you don’t feel like we need to read the whole document, because. I’m kind of feeling that way.

00:53:11,400	Yeah, but the only thing that I, when I read this, I just want to make sure. I think you’ve said this before, too, that this document is useful for Eric as far as next steps and things to work on in the future.

00:53:28,770	Um, so I don’t know if that’s like a place where we could focus in order to have a discussion or if we all just say like, yeah, looks good. Um, are we. Required to read it out loud? I thought we were. Um, I know, I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

00:53:48,870	I mean, it’s it’s public document with right now it’s marked as a draft. We’re discussing it. We we’ve traditionally read it out loud and gone through it. It, um, you know, I, I will say, I mean, I can just speak to that.

00:54:09,200	The only comment I had was that we haven’t usually included who said which quote in the document. And this one does. I don’t think that that’s good or bad. It’s just different.

00:54:32,830	Um, I didn’t have any concerns about this particular document, this compiled document, and the way that the quotes were used, I could imagine if a future document, if there was, say, one dissenting voice, you wouldn’t necessarily want. I mean, the idea behind the document is that we’re going to vote on it. If it were approved. This is the evaluation that the committee is providing to the superintendent. So in some ways, it I don’t the way this is written and other people can say whether they agree.

00:54:53,000	But the way this is written, it’s sort of like the there’s a statement and then then member quotes are used to illustrate that statement. Um, and I think that that works. And I think it’s appropriate. Um, I um, my concern would not be about this document.

00:55:18,230	My concern would be about setting a precedent that we always named people. I would be concerned. I think sometimes you might just want to say five members or most members said this, and two members, you know, didn’t said something different like that. Um, that would be my thought. And I said that that I provided that feedback to Julia already.

00:55:38,500	Um, but it it doesn’t I don’t see it as needing necessarily to be changed. It was just something I wanted to bring. So, um, I think it’s more important to talk about content. So. Um. Like.

00:56:06,670	Do people have concerns that something that they felt like needed to be highlighted or called out is not represented here? Do people feel like things in here don’t represent something that you, you know, that you want to discuss, that you’re concerned about? Do.. You have concerns other than the fact that it’s very tiny. Um. Okay. Okay. Um, well. Maybe I. Can help. Yeah. Go ahead.

00:56:33,830	The in reading this, I think the the pieces that jump out of me is and when you’re leaning into areas of growth, um, um, they tend to ring the bell of accountability. Um, consistency of implementation. And then, um, really reporting these outcomes more, maybe more often.

00:56:56,800	It sounds like that’s that’s the only thing I was unsure of, is it, is that what the committee is looking for more more often or that would be, uh, helpful clarification. And then, um. What was the other one? There was one other piece that was. Uh. The stakeholder engagement piece.

00:57:19,800	I think will probably be addressed with the strategic plan, but, um, any any other I’m always looking for ways to, to update and change engagement. I think if people are specific, that will be helpful. And surely we’ll dig into it a little more to with our new communications piece on the committee.

00:57:36,300	But Also across the district. I think those are the things that jumped out as me. To me, as what the committee was looking for in future areas of growth. So that’s helpful for me to to set goals and any more specificity is even more helpful. Okay. Yeah. I mean, right.

00:58:01,830	I mean, it doesn’t give a lot of specifics. It does say encourage continued efforts to strengthen broad based stakeholder engagement and to maintain consistent communication across all constituencies. And I think Eric is accurate that we’ve certainly discussed challenges around both of those, um, areas. Um. All right. Okay. So again, we’re not the plan is not to vote this evening.

00:58:37,200	Um, but also the plan wasn’t to spend a tremendous amount of time on it in our next meeting. So I guess I’m hoping that people will feel I’m not hearing people feeling like.

00:58:58,130	And, David, feel free to chime in and, you know, but like if you have if people have feedback that they want to provide, not so much. I mean, yes, to Eric and also to Julia about the writing. Um, you know, it needs to happen sort of either now or between now and the time next meeting. Um. Okay. All right. We’ll bring it back on the next meeting for a vote. That’s a good idea. Okay.

00:59:25,230	All right. Thank you. Um, and thank you to Julia for doing that work. And thank you to everyone. Um, including, uh, Megan for, um, doing those individual evaluations. Um, okay. Um, Amy, do you have any updates for us on the communication working group? Um, so it’s a work in progress.

00:59:54,070	Julie and I have spoken a little bit. I’ve reached out to MASC for guidance that I’m kind of waiting to hear back on. I’ve reached out to the editor of the H.W. newspaper, um, to see how we could potentially leverage the newspaper to get some messaging out.

01:00:15,330	And I’ve been looking at other school committees and how they use similar working groups that are more flexible. Um, so we don’t have, like, specific protocols in place yet. I think that’s the goal. So that if something comes up that we want to communicate about, it’s very clear what we’re allowed to do and how we will do it.

01:00:34,070	Um, so unfortunately, I don’t have a very solid update, but we are working and so we’re planning on kind of taking advantage of the summer as well to really. Have, um, really a specific document about the group or. Yeah, it’s a group. That’s a very small group. Very small group. All right. Thank you.

01:00:56,430	Anybody have any questions for Amy? Can I ask one question? Yeah. Have you guys talked about, uh, outside group to kind of reach out to if you need. We haven’t actually. That’s something that we would probably like to talk. With you about. I have a couple. If you. If you want. Okay.

01:01:12,730	That have reached out to me in the past couple of years that other school districts other properties use. Would love that. Okay. Thank you. I’ll send you an email. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Um. All right, next up is school start times. And a lot of additional. I have notes. All right. Go ahead. Eric. So this is really an opportunity.

01:01:36,700	As promised, when we did the initial presentation to just give you more information. And, um, we’re not going to go through it tonight. There’s massive amounts of information here, but I wanted you to have all the information as we move towards the discussion phase so that you could have time to review it.

01:01:55,330	So this is on this exhibit, I mean, on this agenda to give make the messages and the information public, um, so that you all have access to everything we have.

01:02:16,300	And, um, so you can review it so that when we move towards the discussion, which I believe will do during the workshop, the school Committee workshop will dedicate part of that to that discussion. And, um, really build upon working towards a decision what, what we do next. So really not not a lot of anything asking for you to do tonight because there are hundreds of pages of documents here. But I just wanted you to have everything as promised.

01:02:37,430	Um, so that you can read through it. And then you have one document at your seat. It was a letter that was written by, uh, three students that I thought was, uh, important to include. So I just didn’t just want to put it out there publicly. I figured you could take a look at it. Um. Um.

01:02:57,100	Eric, can I just ask some? Just. This is just to make sure I understand what each one of these exhibits is, because I was not. I had a question. Not. And I’m not diving into the content. I just want to make sure I understand the the first exhibit is, is this. This is an FY 25 survey.

01:03:23,830	This is an original survey. And I think Jan and Dave Frankel asked about it. Yeah. So I just want to make sure because that I understand. So because that so there’s a family a parent and guardian. That first one is like parent and guardian from FY 252425. School year.

01:03:40,700	Yep. But then if you look I just want to if you don’t mind just running make sure I understand each one of this. Then the next one is also from FY fall five. Okay so that’s from the fall. Okay.

01:03:56,930	And then because we have a leader later on, well let’s just go through because we’ll get to the, um, and then you have the family feedback. That’s from. The report. That’s from FY 26. Correct. That’s. Yes. That’s correct. This spring.

01:04:18,370	So anything that says feedback on the final recommendation as the title, those are, uh, the surveys we sent out after we made the recommendation to the committee. We as promised that night, we followed up with surveys, um, to just get some feedback on the recommendation that ultimately came from the committee. Okay. I just wanted to make sure because it’s like we have family or. Yeah, family from some information from FY 25.

01:04:35,330	And then we have family information from 26, and then teacher staff information from 26. Yep. Um, okay. And then the last two exhibits are flipped. They should be the student one first, which is the student response to the actual. Yeah, recommendation.

01:04:58,470	And then Craig wanted me to include the impact on athletics so that people could actually see the data we were. Looking at. Yes, I have a oh, I see what you’re saying. Um, I actually have a question about that too. Yeah, I.

01:05:09,770	Actually so I don’t know, I have a question about just and again, we’re not I’m not going to talk about what it like the details of it. I just want to make sure I understand it. Um, so this represents I’m looking at the late late start impact on athletics. Yep.

01:05:28,930	So this represents if the plan were put into place and the students are being dismissed one hour later. This represents the estimate number of dismissals that would correct be. So none of this represents what are the current number of dismissals that happened because of sports. Correct. And then maybe I’m being. The current number of dismissals.

01:05:47,970	Is what is PR time? Uh, let me answer the first one. The current number dismissals is pretty limited because it’s generally based around tournament time. Like the track team had to go to Forever Town, you know, and it takes three hours to get there, which just happened to them. Um. Someone’s going to.. Yeah. Oh they did. Yes. That’s usually.

01:06:06,800	Only in the. Yeah. So they leave early in the tournament time. But then, then um, same thing like golf will have their final rounds. They’ll start earlier because they’re dependent on when the golf courses will let them. But so not a ton. But there’ll be a lot more from here.

01:06:23,100	Uh, if we were to move in that direction, what was the other one? PR I don’t know what PR time. Maybe I’m PR. This time. Missed. Oh, practice time missed. So, wait. So they’re he’s looking at fall sports based on, um, timing, lighting.

01:06:44,070	So all of a sudden you’re getting an hour later start. So it’s dark or faster in the fall. Okay. So I just want to make sure. So that’s guessing right? No I guess so. But the estimate here would be like for the first one that that there would be 20% less practice time for JV boys soccer.

01:07:01,670	Is that what that means? I’m not sure I buy that. That would mean an hour is 20% of their practice time. Depends. I suppose it depends on the sport. Yeah. So five hours is 100% of their practice time. And I don’t know of any soccer team at Hamilton Wenham that practices for five hours a day. No.

01:07:20,900	But it depends on. So practice in September would is easier to pull off if a kid starts at 330. Say if they get out of 310, they would start at 330, 345. Then in October, because it gets darker faster.

01:07:39,330	I think he was trying to figure out how to account for that. So it’s it’s hard to look at it over the scale of a season because it gets darker the further you go into the season. So football loses out because they’re still practicing in late October and everybody else is done.

01:07:54,670	They lose, um, even higher percentages when you start to look at it. But because of the way it’s spread out, they start earlier. So I think he was trying to come up with averages across across that time span for the season. Not not daily.

01:08:11,800	It’d be it’d be easy in the in September to get out there at 330 and still get a couple hours of daylight. Um, and practices range between 2 and 3 hours generally, sometimes longer. Um, okay. I think I think I don’t have any more questions about any of the other people have questions about under just knowing what everything is and. Did everyone else know what PR time was? No.

01:08:35,630	I don’t know what that is. He presented it. So we got it. We got a different view. I was like, it was presented. Yeah. He presented it to the committee. So. Oh. You know. Okay. Thank you for all that. For your reading pleasure.

01:08:56,100	Um, I noticed in some of the documents there were comments that were hidden. Is there any way to get those comments in a separate document? Because a couple of them really show, I don’t know if it’s a biased, like sampling or not. Um. It was generally where teachers names may have been used or coaches names may have been used, and sometimes something that was not complimentary.

01:09:19,930	Can we redact the names and give it to us anyways? Yeah yeah yeah I haven’t yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Um, okay. Uh, next up, uh, MSBA project. Okay. As we know, the roof project is approved. Was approved without meaning and at the ballot.

01:09:48,800	So we are moving forward, uh, currently with a target kickoff date of June 22nd, which is the Monday after school gets out. Um, company, the OPM. Curtis and I have been going round and round and trying to figure out all the logistics. Uh, being able to start to take over from the money side.

01:10:11,300	But this is a standard form that comes from the, um, MSBA, and it’s called the PFA, and it’s a project funding agreement which basically says, yes, we agree to take on this project, pay for it in the way that we’ve outlined. Um, there’s a couple of things. And you can see in the letter, there’s a couple of things that they will look for, including, um, a signature.

01:10:29,870	And the person who signs has to be authorized by the school committee. So tonight is one vote. And you have you have the motion, uh, there’s one vote for authorization for me to sign this funding agreement. We’ve signed them before, uh, when we were going into the, uh, elementary school project.

01:10:45,800	Um, but this one is actually for a project that is moving forward. And then once we vote, we’ll send the the minutes from the meeting to our attorney, and our attorney has to verify, um, that we are, uh, that the district, the local governing body, meaning the school committee is able to authorize,

01:11:07,270	um, the district to enter and be bound by the PFA. So, Mark Terry would handle that for us. I talked to him already. He’s just waiting for this vote. We’ll send him the result. He’ll write his piece and then we’ll send the documents.

01:11:25,530	Plus, the PFA signed to the state, and then we’ll move forward to the project. There’s also other documents that are behind this that you don’t see that are like our banking information. So there’s a form that Vinny fills out that has to go in. But it outlines our direct deposit, how money gets moved from pro pay.

01:11:44,870	Uh, from the state to us and the reimbursement, how the reimbursement system works. And our OPM handles a majority of that. And then Vinny manages the money. Okay. Um. So we have we do have a motion. Yeah. And for the vote if you want to. Yeah.

01:12:06,000	Do you want to start us off with the motion? I move that the school committee approve and accept the attached MSBA program funding agreement. Project number (202) 406-7505 for the MSBA accelerated Repair High School Roof Project, and in doing so, authorize the Superintendent of Schools to execute the document on behalf of the district and to bind the district to its terms. Do I. Have a second? Second? Second. By Amy Berger.

01:12:39,530	Um, anybody have any questions? I think so. Is there a discussion? Has the financial stuff changed at all or are we still where we were? What do you mean? The have we gotten more detailed numbers? Uh, so we’re still at the overall, uh, amount of 7.3 million. We’re hoping to come in under that between, you know, bids and change orders.

01:13:02,630	We’re hoping to be under that number by the time all is said and. Done. Mhm. Okay. Do you have 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 for that, Eric. Okay. Next. Next up to Vinnie.

01:13:33,030	I don’t have a PowerPoint, so it should. Oh, man. Um, so, per Massachusetts General Law 71, uh, section 16, a a regional school district school committee is to appoint a district treasurer. And per our region agreement, we do that annually.

01:13:57,470	Uh, so tonight, I’m here to request the reappointment of Kevin Merz, our district treasurer, and Karina Warner, our assistant district treasurer. Okay. That was easy. That’s good. All right. Jen. I move that the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee reappoint Kevin Merz as our district treasurer and Karina Warner as our assistant district treasurer. Treasurer for fiscal year 2027. Second. Second by Amy.

01:14:24,430	Anybody have any questions? So even though this only accumulates to a 0.02 FTE, they really both do play a critical role in our office. They kind of gather and distribute over $55 million annually and take care of all of our debt payments and documentation, and also work closely with the state in investment, with our

01:14:44,300	opioid trust fund and our capital stabilization fund. Uh, so, again, even though it isn’t a bulk of our business office, they really do play a critical role in making sure we function correctly. Uh, Kevin has been with us, I think, for years now. And Karina, I believe, is on our third year.

01:15:05,370	You will have questions. 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, Vinnie, and thank you to Kevin and Karina. Okay. Uh, committee reports, uh, Capital Finance. We are scheduled to meet, um, next Monday. Not next. It’s the one after that.

01:15:38,870	One after? Yeah. I’m sorry. Monday after. Monday after. Yeah. The 15th. 15th. The 15th? Yeah. Monday at the next. Uh, from 1 to 2. Okay. Uh, policy, policy. We need to schedule a meeting. I need to remind a member to tell me their availability. Okay. We’ll look forward to that email. Okay.

01:16:04,700	Um, negotiations. We are meeting next. Um, to continue negotiating with the SP union. We are meeting next on Tuesday. Uh, the ninth. Okay. Um. Oh, we don’t have a secretary report. Um, I, um, yeah, we don’t have a secretary. Okay.

01:16:34,530	Um, I don’t think I have anything to add, except I did want to note about graduation. I know several people were there. I just wanted to note that, um, I think Eric touched on this, but it was, um, to me, really remarkable that everyone that spoke really talked about the way that they felt connected to each other and the, um, I’m just going to stick with that

01:16:53,470	connectedness. And I just feel like that was really where we want to maybe tap into what we’re doing right in that, in that because the world is feeling pretty disconnected. You read about it constantly, and yet it was really powerful to hear that our that was a theme that ran throughout.

01:17:09,870	And then to Eric’s point about them all running together. So I’m a big fan of focusing on what you focus on grows. Let’s focus on what did we do to create that connectedness, because that was pretty powerful. Um, that was my $0.02 on that. Anybody have anything else? Yeah.

01:17:28,430	Okay. Uh, topic for future meetings. No, because we have a lot of topics already coming. Um, we are, um, not going to have an executive session this evening. Um, and you can discuss that with Eric. Okay. We are. tomorrow morning. We are not gonna have that, uh, meeting today. So, um. All right. Serious? Um, all right.

01:18:06,370	I move that. We. Are not done. Okay. Go ahead. Yep. Okay. You can. You can close the meeting. I move that we close the school committee meeting at 8:18 p.m.. Second. Uh, second. By Amy. Uh, discussion. All right. All