00:00:00,000	Oh, I probably should have my crown. Okay. Good evening. Do you guys hear me? Yep. Okay. Good evening. I call to order the meeting of the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee on Thursday, August 20th, 2026 at 7:01 p.m..

00:00:21,600	And I’d like to remind everyone that this meeting is being recorded and live streamed on cam. Um, first up, we will have an opportunity for citizens comments. I’m going to assume there are no citizen comments in the room. Is that correct? I don’t see anyone on Zoom. And it doesn’t look like we have anyone on Zoom.

00:00:45,130	Okay, so we will go ahead and close the zoom for citizen comments at 7:02 p.m.. Thank you. Amy. Um, okay. Next up. Um. You want me to put all the stuff up there? Sorry. Are you good? Um, so next up, we have something that we added. It’s a little bit different. Different order and different information, but we have a community outreach.

00:01:11,800	Um, agenda item. This is going to be an opportunity for members of the committee to share with us any, um, community outreach. Um, any, uh, events that you have attended or you plan to attend, or that you want to encourage the public to attend or anything like that.

00:01:31,630	Um, just to highlight that and give us any information about that. Um, and so to start that off, I don’t know if anyone has any information about any public events that they’ve been at. I do. Excellent. Um, I was just at the library for a presentation about, um, remote town meeting participation. Uh, from the town of Wayland.

00:01:55,800	Unfortunately, I had to leave before I really got a ton of info, but it has. It is being recorded. It’s happening right now. Um, so I look forward to watching the rest of it. Thank you.

00:02:11,730	Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think that is exactly the kind of thing it might be really directly related to our schools and our students, but also just to our community. And in that case, sort of how our community runs voting and democracy. And thank you for bringing that up.

00:02:30,300	Um, I don’t know, uh, Amy or Julia, do you have anything to say about anything in our inboxes recently? I have not received an email from the general public in the last since we had our last meeting. Yeah, I’m trying to think I really have. Not. Yeah, yeah. We’re definitely. This is our kickoff back to school, and we definitely have. Yeah.

00:02:48,400	Anybody else have anything to add on that? Yeah. Um, I just wanted to add that I am going to attend a community event on Monday night. If it I think it falls in this category that there is a fundraising event at the North Shore Music Theater on Monday night for Patrick Watson, who is a student in our district who’s battling cancer.

00:03:05,200	So I just wanted to mention that that event is occurring and that I believe tickets are available if people are interested. Thank you. Yeah, and certainly a community building supportive event. Yes. Thank you. I have one more item. Yep. Um, the although I don’t know if this is for later.

00:03:24,200	The, uh, Communications Working Group has created a Facebook page, um, to push out meeting agendas. What’s that? It’s so long to do it. We did it. Uh, meeting agendas, recaps of meetings, notes, anything that we want to share with the community.

00:03:43,470	So I put that on the two Hamilton community pages that I know of, and hopefully people share it and follow it and learn more about what we’re doing. Thank you. Yes. And I would say very importantly, that it is comment free.

00:04:05,970	Um, because we did a lot of research and it would violate open meeting laws if we turned on the comments for our, our particular page. So, um, it’s really for us to share information and things that are going on and recaps and just purely informational. And then just like anything else that the public sees, if they have a question or concern. The emails, right. They can reach out to us and, um, and we can respond.

00:04:27,230	Yeah, great. Thank you. Um. All right. Anything else on that? Okay. Um, next up, I think it’s to you, Julia, with a review of a portion of the school committee protocols.

00:04:54,470	As elected members of the Hamilton Wenham 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. Members of the Committee will make no independent commitments or take any independent actions that relate to the school district.

00:05:12,900	When school committee members attend meetings of other committees or boards, they will speak as individuals. They may only speak for the committee when designated to represent the committee. Thank you. And next up, we’re going to do something a little bit different this year. We’re going to test it out. And we’re going to review a portion of our district’s portrait of a learner.

00:05:32,370	Okay. All graduates of the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District will be able to independently use their learning to adapt and persevere. Students will work effectively to pursue goals within a climate of diverse views, ambiguity, and changing priorities. They will demonstrate flexibility and resilience while responding productively to feedback, criticism, and even failure.

00:05:57,970	Thank you. Um, next up on the agenda, we have the superintendent’s report. Unfortunately, the superintendent was unable to be here this evening. Um, you don’t have anything to report from him? No. Okay. Um. All right, next up is the consent agenda. Um, these are items that, um, we do not anticipate.

00:06:27,300	Discussion. Um, and so that was an opportunity for any member of the committee. If you have something that you would like to discuss. Um, to hold any item, does anyone have any item from the consent agenda they’d like to hold? Okay. Um, can I have a motion? I move that we accept the consent agenda as written. Second.

00:06:50,830	Second. By Amy Kunberger. Um, all those in favor? Uh, is unanimous. Of the five members present, and the motion passes. Uh. I think I am okay. I’m not sure. I can’t remember. That was an accident. Clarification question over there. I was wondering the same thing myself.

00:07:18,270	We’re back in a new year, and I was wondering who is our assistant secretary? I think it is Julia. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Um, next up is, um, our district goals. Uh, for the upcoming year 2026-2027. Um, and, um, just you all should have had the opportunity to see the exhibit.

00:07:44,470	Um, because Eric is unable to be here. Um, Jen Clifford has, um, graciously agreed to come and answer any questions and discuss this. Um, item. I know she has been deeply involved in the entire process.

00:08:04,300	Um, Jen, do you want to speak or do you want just people to dive in with any questions that they might have? I can speak to each. Sure. Go ahead. You can ask questions, if that. All right. Maybe that will help. All right. So these goals are an evolution of the work that both the school committee and the leadership team have completed since the end of the last school year.

00:08:14,970	Can I just ask? I’m going to just get your. I’m not sure if they, um. Cam, can you turn up that is that mic could be a little louder. Okay. Go ahead Jen. All right. So these goals are an evolution of the work that you’ve been doing.

00:08:28,970	And the leadership has been doing all summer. Uh, the goals themselves are a little more complicated than in years past, because we are now in a point in our work where we are getting into the fine details and have a more refined focus in multiple areas in order to continue forward momentum.

00:08:44,130	I know you reviewed our district’s accomplishments over the past five years at your school committee retreat last week, and these goals represent the next steps forward. The leadership team has also integrated the school committee school recommendations, while also making sure that we are continuing the work that has already been started in previous years.

00:09:00,200	While connecting all of this to the strategic plan. You’ll see strategic focus areas lined out, with each goal nested underneath. It’s this coherence that will help us move that strategic plan forward with the aligned goals. And as always, our district wide goals will be connected to school improvement plans. And at each building.

00:09:18,970	And next year, we anticipate our goals will shift slightly as we move to year two of that strategic plan. So the first goal is under the focus area of facilities, operations and long term planning.

00:09:33,470	And it’s a combination of drafts that were presented during the retreat and outlines the work that the director of facilities has budgeted for and will be finished finishing this year, while also working towards a facilities audit request. We want to make a town meetings in April. This goal advances several capital projects and safety improvements that will occur through the school year.

00:09:50,930	We’re looking to complete that high school roof project, begin the solar canopy project in the next spring, and continue with school security upgrades, and still do some deeper long term planning to create updated schedules for asbestos abatement and painting. We’re also investigating the electrification across all of our buildings by determining how much power is coming in off the street to each building.

00:10:10,670	It’s clear we will need to work with National Grid to improve the power availability as we move towards more electrification of our buildings. We will also continue to work with the MSBA on the current roof project at the high school and separate from the MSBA.

00:10:27,930	The feasibility study RFP, if approved, will help to determine the best approach to move forward with ADA compliance, general repairs and a future direction for our school buildings. Under strategic plan focus area two communication and Stakeholder Engagement. We have a goal that’s very specific to the school committee based on conversations that occurred during the School Committee retreat.

00:10:48,930	This goal helps the communication subcommittee to ground their work while also giving them milestones and opportunities to engage with the public throughout the school year, aiming to build a stronger community understanding of school committee decisions and the FY 28 budget. In focus area three academic excellence for all students. We will continue to build and grow our multi-tiered system of support framework.

00:11:07,900	I remember first introducing this concept of an MTSS framework probably about five years ago, and saying, then it would take us 5 to 7 years to build, and here we are now in the refinement stages. We’ve made great gains in our framework, and now it’s time to really refine and codify the work.

00:11:23,270	This screenings, data analysis, intervention and instructional practices will be aligned to create coherence across school levels. So we really started this planning and this project at elementary. We’ve been moving it into middle and high, and we’re just continuing to really push the complicated systems that we’ve created all the way through the district.

00:11:42,000	We’re analyzing our current coherence to identify the gaps in practice we need to address. We are also diving deeply into four specific instructional practices aimed at meeting the needs of all students, and shrinking the gaps between our subgroups. Using our professional learning community and common planning.

00:11:59,130	Times teachers will think deeply about these instructional practices and work to make them integral to their lessons. Under that same academic strategic focus area is our goal, for which we’ve pulled out.

00:12:17,730	MTSS includes academics and SEL, but the leadership team really discussed this year how important it was to really highlight social emotional learning and behavioral integration into our Mtss framework with an expansion to families and caregivers. So this goal extends the MTSS framework outside of those academic areas to really delve into the systems that we use to support students socially, emotionally, and behaviorally.

00:12:35,970	We’re seeing challenging behaviors and families and challenging situations that need a level of support that’s stretching us, and we want to ensure that we have all the tools we need to succeed. We’re looking to gain a baseline of what students, families and staff are in need of in terms of social-emotional learning so we can better plan our tiered supports.

00:12:50,130	This goal includes the full expansion of the Open Circle curriculum into grades four and five. As a tier one support. We’ve been working on that for three years. Moving that through the elementary years. And additionally, we are looking to map out our existing behavioral and mental health supports in order to identify disconnects and gaps.

00:13:05,900	We’re starting with professional learning for the leadership team, using CASEL’s cultivating and social and Emotional learning for adults, which will be used. It’s a it’s a set of modules and resources and conversations that we’ll have as a leadership team. And then we’ll bring that into the buildings. The principals will be having those conversations with teachers to learn alongside them.

00:13:22,230	We’re hoping to bring stronger supports to connect to home through this goal, providing information and resources for families in need. Goal five is also an academic focus. It’s working on our framework for professional learning communities. We often refer to those as PLCs and Common Planning Time CPT. Those are both. Those are those structures exist.

00:13:42,400	PLCs at the elementary and secondary has common planning time. CPT. And that’s when our educators come together to review and plan student learning. They’re a key part of our professional learning system, as well as opportunities for teachers to learn with and from each other as they review data, internalize lessons, and plan their units.

00:14:00,470	Over the last year or two, we’ve started to explore how these structures can help us move curriculum implementation forward. Planning, specifically with special education and general education teachers together at the table and maximizing our efforts efficiently to work collaboratively to create coherence across the grade levels, especially at the elementary level.

00:14:20,670	It’s a challenge when we’ve talked about this before, we have, you know, third grade at each building, creating that coherence so that every third grader is getting an equitable experience and teachers are getting equitable support, but also creating the coherence, you know, pre-K through 12, as students move vertically through the the district, trying to make sure that we are

00:14:36,600	really, um, creating this coherence of instructional framework. Principals are also using their classroom walkthroughs and their progress monitoring data to create further coherence and really make sure what’s happening, what we hope is happening, is really happening.

00:14:59,670	Strategic plan focus area for is future ready digital infrastructure and learning with a goal around AI usage guidelines and classroom pilots. So this is an extension of the AI work that we started last year with our AI working group. The AI usage guidelines have been fine tuned this summer into one pagers for students and teachers. They focus on our guiding principles and really are.

00:15:16,070	We’re trying to make sure that we maintain data privacy and safety, and that’s at the forefront of our use. We have also outlined instructional focus areas, bringing the AI assessment scale as a communication tool between teachers and students at the high school level to clearly understand when AI is ethically acceptable within the bounds of our academic integrity policy.

00:15:32,870	It’s really trying to teach kids we’re talking about AI in the elementary grades. We’re teaching them skills in the middle grades, and we’re helping them apply those skills in the secondary. That’s where we’re headed. It’s not where we’re at right now, but that’s where this work is heading.

00:15:46,800	Teachers will be learning more about AI use this year, starting with this session from the day of AI. During our first four PD days for secondary teachers, our first priority is to really make sure that that student data privacy is maintained with any application that we use will be ultimately trying to get a really strong read on.

00:16:01,470	Where is everybody right now? What do they need and how do we keep adapting and moving? Professional learning forward? Things are changing so rapidly that even as we line maybe some resources up, something new is coming out, or Google is making an update and we’re and staying on top of those things is really a

00:16:17,570	challenge right now. Our last goal also under the Future Ready focus area, outlines how we will get a handle on all of our technology within the district. So the completion of a comprehensive technology needs assessment will help us determine adequate budgeting and infrastructure planning for the future.

00:16:35,270	We will also be finalizing our student device progression, which currently needs some work as students end to reach the end of their time with us. There. With really large devices, we are not implementing new devices right now for those final years, so we need to think about that.

00:16:49,600	We have a lot of technology in our classrooms, and that doesn’t necessarily mean in the hands of our our students. Teachers rely on their laptops to access all of their teaching materials. They’re using their smart boards and their document cameras to be able to share materials and lessons visually with teacher, with students.

00:17:05,130	And this goal is to help us to look at the very big picture of how we use technology as educators, and how we can ensure that we continue to plan for future needs. That’s my little walk through the goals, and I’m happy to take questions. Thank you. Hopefully I can answer them. Thank you.

00:17:20,930	So what I’m hoping, given that we have, um, you know, seven goals here to look at. I’m hoping if the committee is willing, we can just go through them one at a time and ask questions. Um, unless anyone or if anyone has sort of a overarching question that’s not related to a specific goal, you can go ahead and ask that.

00:17:37,600	Otherwise, I think we just take them in order. If people are okay with that. I have a concern about two of the goals. Okay. Well, we can get to them in that. If that’s okay. That’s fine. Yeah.

00:17:53,470	It’s it’s not as those two individually like it’s not a concern about this one and this one. It’s a concern with both. Okay. So I mean we can I mean you could say it. That’s not a secret. I just I’m trying to just structure like. No, it’s okay. Okay. Um, okay.

00:18:11,970	So let’s start with, um, goal number one, which is a facilities and capital project and safety improvement goal. Um, does anyone have any. Let’s start with first questions for Jen. And then we certainly can. Yeah. And then we can certainly have discussion or debate. Um.

00:18:34,670	My my question is only it’s more like a concern because we’ve heard from the towns repeatedly that they want much more forward planning. You know, and I understand like being on the Capital Finance Committee, that a lot of it is here are the projects. Here’s the need for funding. Here’s what we need to do. But I wonder how that that, um, how that goal will address some of the needs, maybe from the town’s for going longer term.

00:18:58,100	I., I. Mean, you can speak to this, but I see that as the role of that district wide facilities feasibility study, really being able to map out what the needs are and start to plan longer term. Okay. Yeah. So we. So when we get that concern presented to us, which we will.

00:19:15,730	Yeah. Then we can okay. That makes it a little bit easier to talk about. There’s a district wide facilities feasibility study. Um, and that is going to be a comprehensive study of where we are, where we need to go and like what we’re looking at long term. Okay.

00:19:30,170	And I think I mean that’s number eight there. Um, is what you’re talking about. And that is going to be up to the committee to move that forward, um, or not up to the committee. Does anyone else feel like. The lights? Yeah. We just. It’s fine. We can be in the dark. Um, thank you. Um.

00:19:54,730	All right, does that answer your question? Um. Jen? Go ahead. Where is the, um, project to basically get price quotes to upgrade or replace all of our schools? Because I didn’t see it anywhere. That’s that’s that’s. That’s part of the feasibility. Okay. We would gain that from the feasibility study. I wasn’t sure. So that’s why. I asked. No.

00:20:20,830	I’m glad you know, that’s that’s a good question. But yes, that is the and again that’s part of the goal is right. Like so. Yeah we. Don’t have that yet. Like it’s part of our goal is to get.

00:20:37,930	Yeah I just didn’t see it like spelled out I didn’t know that was called the feasibility study. And I wasn’t 100% sure what was in the feasibility study, because it’s not really listed in well, there’s capital funding article. And for the facilities feasibility study, but there’s no real definition of what that facilities feasibility project entails. And I think I’d like to see. That that’s what we’re developing. I think that’s.

00:21:02,530	We’re developing the RFP, right. We’re developing it right now. So I thought we already submitted the RFP. We did not submit it. We’ve developed it. Passed it around to get people’s input on it. Yeah. It has not been distributed nor is a appropriation, uh, been put forth.

00:21:20,100	But if we sent it out, we didn’t send it out to be bid over the summer. We did not know. Okay. Anybody else have questions on this one? Um, I have one. Um, so number four bullet.

00:21:43,800	Um, uh, it’s this is investigated electrification of all the schools in anticipation of future energy savings. Um. I guess, I mean, it just says investigate, because one of the concerns I have is investing, given that we like.

00:22:11,930	Does this make sense given the age of our schools? Um, but I guess I guess I just want to make sure that we’re really investigating it and that if part of the investigation is given the age of our schools, how much investment makes sense? Correct. That’s why we’re investing. I just hope that’s part of the. If it’s the right path. Over to the right, I just. I’m just sort of preparing that like feedback coming from me is like I have a concern around, um, given.

00:22:31,270	Others doing it to an old. Well, given the other things that are within this goal, even like how, you know, we don’t know, like it’s a need. And so and I just want to make sure that investigate just means investigate. And then we’ll get information. I know I now have another question.

00:22:52,600	So the RFP is only going to be presented at to us next April. And then we’re going to figure out how much it might cost and then present it to the town. So I. So the feasibility study won’t be done until 2028. Probably. So I know things take a. Long time, but. Most likely it would not. Be right.

00:23:12,770	But it’s not going to be presented. It would be I mean, the goal, my understanding of the goal, you guys, is that it would be presented to the public in. Doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be right. It’s by April 2027. For the capital request for fire. Right. So it’s not that you’re not seeing it until April.

00:23:32,900	I mean, in other words, would that be something that would be right? And the reason for the delay is only because the town has to approve the funding, the capital request. , unless you guys decided to maybe take it out of the capital stabilization or some other source.

00:23:51,270	If it’s not that, then yes, the town would have to appropriate it. I know and I know we’ve talked I know we’ve talked about this, but. Well, it has. I. Mean that entail. Right, I.

00:24:07,500	Right I think I mean I interpreted this that because I had your same question and I have notes that says, you know, this could be funded in a variety of ways, but I interpreted it and you can say, is April 2027 being the by April 2027 just what happened? There are all right. We don’t know. Like we know that there will be both town meetings in April 2027, but hypothetically, there could be more town meetings earlier than that.

00:24:31,400	There could be other opportunities for funding like we don’t know, but we know that there’ll be both town meetings in April 2027. Um. I don’t know of any agenda.. Idea would be by that town meeting to present it to the town for funding. Right. Unless, you know, you guys decide to go a different path with the funding.

00:24:49,970	Source and. Right, it could happen. Earlier and earlier. For whatever reason we decide to. But if we don’t choose to go through the capital stabilization Fund, we would have to go to town meeting for it to be approved. Um. Right.

00:25:13,970	Anybody else have anything on goal one? I know, just it seems to me it’s so hard to make these decisions without that study, but I understand that it takes so much time to create the RFP and to hire someone and to pay for it and all of that. I understand. That. Um, okay.

00:25:38,330	So goal two, before we get into any discussion, does anyone have any just questions about the goal? I suspect there may be feedback and discussion, but does anyone have any questions? Um, I have one. that’s pretty minor.

00:26:03,270	Um, I don’t know how people feel about if you read this in detail, number four says January through April as the FY 28 budget developments begins, increased communication and cadence on budget topics, I just wanted to sort of ask maybe Vinnie and maybe the committee, like, do we really feel like it’s. Like could is. Do we think the January is soon. enough to or like in other words, I thought to myself, huh? I don’t know if we want to increase that communications. I understand the.

00:26:23,600	January or. Like we could like would it. be December or November when we first have like I that’s a minute detail. I just. I think we picked January because. Because that’s in the tentative budget. Right. It makes it more tangible. For people. I again, I told you it was very nitpicky.

00:26:41,770	I was really just like, is that the right. It doesn’t. There’s nothing that would prevent this from starting earlier. Or this is just saying, like by January at the latest word, I just. I agree because if we wait until the tentative budget is put forward, then we really don’t have a lot of opportunities to incorporate community feedback. That’s a good point.

00:27:04,130	Yeah. When do we do the budget hearings? It’s right after the tentative I believe those meeting following the ten. I, I mean, that was just sort of feedback. Is that like I mean, I don’t know what. Yeah. You guys think.

00:27:22,670	That’s interesting because, you know, the budget is something that happens the whole year round, which is like a different part of the evolution of the budget. Right? So maybe it’s worth talking about like a budget at 101, like how school budgets work. And that could be something that we could push out even without the actual numbers of our budget.

00:27:40,370	But just letting people know, because it’s really complicated. And, you know, I think that might help people understand before then we start putting our real numbers, and maybe that would just help people understand how we make our decisions. And how we could put out the word, you know, the budget schedule, like not the full schedule because it’s so much.

00:27:58,430	But just yeah, but how it works. How this is one that ten of the budget we’re hoping to vote on it. Here’s how you can get your voice heard. Come to school committee, email us.

00:28:11,830	Talk to us at office hours, whatever it is, and we can put that information out there consistently. Like it’s anytime you have an opinion on the budget, you can email us. Right? Right now, people could, right? Yeah. Jen. Can I offer a little bit of feedback from the Strategic Plan committee? Because this was a big topic of discussion, and I think there’s so many factors.

00:28:28,330	Put our budget aside, all the factors that lead to the decisions that create our budget is what’s really missing from some of these conversations. So we understand maybe some limitations on state funding or, you know, if this happens then that or we’re we’re, you know, a regional there’s lots of little nuances

00:28:44,870	that are hard to grasp if you’re not living it all the time. And maybe that would be an opportunity to create a foundational conversation that’s not specific to our numbers, but also helps kind. Of budget works.

00:29:00,330	How is it, how is it developed, and what are the constraints and kind of the framework that that the budget is created within? I think that is something that I was hearing in strategic plan meetings. That is an area that people would like to understand more. Cool.

00:29:19,700	I have to say, just listening to this conversation and really looking at those number three and number four, I actually sort of take back. I think it’s there. I think it’s actually I take it back.

00:29:32,930	I think it’s written there that like the one before, it sort of says that the subgroup is going to monitor issues and coordinate, and then it picks up in January as the like I started to take it back like, I’m glad, I glad I brought it up, but I, I actually don’t I think it actually is written. I think that was helpful, Jen, to sort of like it’s there already kind of this laying the foundation is there and then so.

00:29:52,130	um, all right, other questions or discussion about this goal. Go on. Uh, for part five, who’s gonna do the evaluation? I guess we have to do it. And the report. We gotta do it. Yeah, I think that well, I that’s a great question because I read that and I interpreted it as. The. The, the the working group. Can present some.

00:30:23,570	Would present something and then the committee would. But that’s just a lot of work to put on two people. Um. I, I think we, but we have like we can measure we’ll measure number of touch points.

00:30:47,870	Um, I mean, and then really it’s a lot of qualitative, you know, like, did we get more emails, did we get more phone calls? Did we get more people coming up to us at events? Um. If it was me, I would take some time now and identify what you want to put in the final report. So you aren’t don’t reach the end of the year.

00:31:03,130	And we’re like, well, I really need these data, but I’ve got to now go through nine months of work. That’s great. I would we would love that. Like, what do you want to see in the report. Right. And I think a little bit of that is in the deliverables. Right. Like right. School committee appearances and and you know like I don’t know, um.

00:31:21,730	I think this year we’re not going to have any benchmarks or anything to compare it to. Right. So I feel like the report is not going to be really useful until I would say like year three, you know what I mean? Like, so I think I think the number of touch points is good, number of events attended.

00:31:41,030	Yeah. It’s gonna be purely outputs, not outcomes. Um. Kind of. I think so. Because a. Lot of what the working group is doing is really information sharing.

00:31:59,330	And then it’s the events and the in-person things and the office hours that are going to get the back and forth. Um, so a lot of what we do is putting stuff in the paper, but how do I know how many people read that? You know? So all I can, all I can offer, all we can offer is probably outputs of the work that we did.

00:32:13,370	And then, like you said, did it do we think it worked? Do we not think it worked? What could be done better? What’s the feedback we’re getting? But I think that’s a really good point because you don’t want to have an evaluation. And then all of a sudden be like, oh, we didn’t collect that data. Yeah, yeah. Um, to evaluate.

00:32:33,900	And the other question I had is, is this sub subgroups function going to be taken over by the communication coordinator in year two? Is that the plan? I oh, I didn’t anticipate that.

00:32:58,930	I mean I don’t know people could everyone can I read this really as a school committee in conjunction with the superintendent? I mean, you did until I reached the last five half sentence in part five. So I don’t have a question, but I have things I want to talk about, like I have discussions, um, so that was kind of one where or related to one where when we first started talking about this, I saw our communicating as communicating

00:33:25,130	as the school committee and just being strictly not separate from the district. And I’m sure we’ll have a lot of crossover with reporting and discussion, but I never want our group to like, step on the district’s toes.

00:33:43,400	We also have to be careful for speaking for the committee, so it really has to be very strictly like information sharing. Um, so if the idea is to kind of roll this into somebody, somebodies new role, does that mean that at that point, like maybe that role adopts some of our practices and then we kind of stay on the side communicating as a committee, as you know,

00:34:05,200	school committee. So I guess that is a question. But it’s just something I wanted to get more clarification on. I think there’s a way where, I mean, we’re like the guinea pigs, so we can just. Yeah, do it for a few months.

00:34:25,630	And then I think that Eric’s idea was to see if this really would require like a full time position or if it should be on someone else’s position. But I agree with you. I think it needs to be committee focused and not mixed in with district stuff. And you’re raising both of you.

00:34:42,670	All three of you are raising questions that might be part of that conversation. At the end of the year, like what, you know, did this, how did it work? What did we think? Did we achieve it? And then to sort of think about, is there a place as the communicating communications coordinator role? Is there a place like does it become that there’s

00:35:02,870	just a liaison from the school committee that works with that person, or does it like we don’t know. I mean, and that sort of at the end is recommend continuation or an adjustments. So we’ll in year two.

00:35:21,700	So does that sound aligned with what you all were thinking in the leadership team for the goal? I believe it was. Yeah. Good. I’m sure this is the hardest one to speak to because it came. Yes. Yes because it really. And anything else. And Vinnie wasn’t at the like. In other words, the people that were at the retreat are here in the room and like so I think this came from that discussion.

00:35:41,330	So it’s really up to us to say, is this does this represent, you know, what the vision when we started talking about creating a working group, does it represent what we’re hoping the working group might achieve? And we’re looking at our working group. I do.

00:36:03,200	I think for, for me, like bringing in someone to perform a communications role isn’t a bad idea, but I would hope they would communicate a lot more than what we are communicating because we’re kind of tied to school committee communications, and there’s so much more to communicate about the district.

00:36:20,800	And while we can do that, just the nature of our roles were not as embedded. So like, we wouldn’t be able to do all that. So I just want to make sure the rules are clearly outlined and we’re still kind of working on our, um, rules and regulations and all that, and just making sure we’re conforming to meeting law and all that kind of stuff.

00:36:38,430	So yeah, and I think, I mean, it does the initial beginning of the goal is, um, you know, public updates on school committee actions and priorities.

00:37:01,470	You know, it’s so it isn’t it is separate in the sense that it is about what is the school committee, what is the school committee voted on? If we have new policy or whatever, new new, something like that, new whatever. And then, you know, obviously budget is under our purview.

00:37:21,670	I mean, even though it’s the district doing a lot of obviously the work budget is under our and we are that is sort of the only real communications that we currently do. Like in a formal way, currently are about the budget. Right? So, um, all right, are we ready to move on or.

00:37:39,370	I think so, I think that’s another one that we I mean, like all the goals we need to will revisit, you know, I mean, like, we’ll decide on them, but then we can, you know, revisit. Um, yeah. And throughout, I mean, in other words, it can be revisited throughout the is that what you’re saying throughout the year? Yeah. And if we are having challenges, we can always come to the committee.

00:37:55,300	Right. And that I mean, that’s true about all goals, right? We can always bring something up and say, okay, all right. Moving on to number three. Anybody have any questions? This is great. I was very clear I think..

00:38:23,370	Yeah I mean I’ll just say, um, you know, I just my notes are just like I feel really good about this. Like we’ve, we’ve been doing this and it’s really clear and you’re, you know, so anybody else. Oh, okay. Uh, for. Can I feel good about the school? Did the leadership committee come up with this? This is part like they fleshed it out for us.

00:38:51,930	We talked about how we it’s been integrated into the goal because it is part of the framework. Um, but we want to call it out specifically this year and really shine a light on it so that we’re not, um, make we’re making sure we’re giving it the attention that it needs. Okay.

00:39:09,100	Because if kids are going to be successful academically, then they’re going to be solid socially and emotionally in the classroom because learning’s not going to happen otherwise. So that’s why that’s where this conversation came from. So I have a couple of problems with both go four and five.

00:39:31,400	The first is this is the first time we’ve ever seen, um, those weren’t goals that the school committee thought were even presented in our retreat as goals that the district has. My second problem is we now have three out of seven goals, only benefiting a smaller subset of students. Now, are these the students that need those benefits? Yes.

00:39:54,470	But if I was a parent of an average student and I looked at these district goals, I would say why are almost half of our district goals and resources are going to a very, very small part of our district community? Well, I’d love to answer that. I mean, I guess is all tiers.

00:40:13,000	So every child is a tier one student first. And we’ve had that conversation for many times. I know I’ve said that in this room. So actually these goals represent all three tiers, so that, the curriculum review processes that we’ve been doing that has brought an ELA program to the middle school.

00:40:30,070	Our elementary ELA and math programs are middle school science programs are high school math programs. Those are all tier one supports. And that’s so that’s part of that MTSS framework is is outlining what those resources are and that that does reach every student. Our screening processes and our data reviews do reach every student.

00:40:49,870	The tiered supports the more specialized second and third tier. Yes, you’re right, those are smaller sub separate pieces. But this is a really strong foundation.

00:41:04,800	When I started in this position five years ago, I talked about when you’ve got all these students that are swimming in the river, you know how they fell in the stream. We got to look upstream and we’ve got to stop throwing them in the stream because that tier, we had an upside down triangle, we had everybody needing extra support and fewer kids benefiting from that smaller support. We’ve turned it around.

00:41:18,600	And now this system is meant to be cohesive. So there might be a student who needs some tiered support for a week. There might be some a student who needs it for a semester, depending on something that’s going on at home or if they’ve had an injury or something. They’re absent from school and illness.

00:41:32,530	Um, but then there’s also kids who do need that support over time in our district, our overarching goal as a leadership team has been to make sure that all of our students are reaching grade level standards, and those using those high expectations.

00:41:46,470	So when we talk about instructional framework, which is both in goal three angle, um, five those are our instructional practices. Those are high expectations, scaffolds and supports clarity and checking for understanding. Those are four things that we’re going to be talking strongly about in special or secondary classrooms this year, that are things that happen in every classroom.

00:42:04,900	So not just in a tiered support, but in the classroom. Primarily, we’re going to be talking about what that looks like and our PLC and our CPT. Those structures are when teachers are planning, they’re planning for all of their classrooms, not just small groups.

00:42:21,400	So MTSS is meant to be all encompassing of all of our students. And these practices that we’re doing are supposed to be benefiting everyone. I don’t know if that helps at all. Right. But why? Were goals submitted by the school committee that we thought were priorities dropped in favor of these because we didn’t see these? I don’t know that I saw this. Manual.

00:42:39,300	But I think we saw the behavioral science change. So you said we saw that. Which one? I don’t the goal, this one, this goal. I think we saw it, but we thought because I’m not an expert, I, I think we recommended to be merged in the other one. But I completely understand if.

00:42:56,370	This is what our teachers are asking for. It’s for us to really. Focus, right. I do, I, I that was my I do think we saw some version in that the feedback I think was. Because we only. Saw the problem. Could they be one text? Right. Well, I know. Um.

00:43:11,830	I just it means something that we chose and we thought was important, got left out. I don’t think so. Well, I mean, I’d love to see. I mean, your Jen’s allowed to say what she feels. Like. But, I mean, I feel like something’s missing.

00:43:31,130	For you, but I think as a group, um, I gotta go back to the dots. I know I need to go back to my my notes, too. And we usually have four. Submitted. Six. Right. And two of those weren’t 4 or 5 because we said four should be combined with three. And we never saw five. What was what’s five? I don’t remember. The PLC enhancement.

00:43:57,270	So. I think I mean I do I couldn’t tell you how it was split out, but I do think we did talk about or hear about the common planning time and the I think we did hear about that, whether it was split out or not.

00:44:20,200	I don’t remember, um, but what I’m hearing you say is a concern that, I mean, there are seven goals here, which is a lot, a lot that that’s. More than usual. That in and of itself is a little bit of a concern to me that there’s seven goals here.

00:44:37,000	Um, but I’m hearing you say that you would like I don’t know which other goal that you wish was in here. Well, I didn’t bring my notes, but I would have to go back to the six that we chose and figure out which one was left out, because one of them was. And that is. And that is sometimes true.

00:44:52,230	Of all the he did with the dots. So I would love to see those two. Yeah, yeah. And that is sometimes true because like Eric goes, you know, he get like in other words we don’t know Jen was at the leadership team.

00:45:06,130	But in other words, the leadership team brings forward a bunch of goals that then we see and then we don’t pick some of them. And so that like there’s a middle ground that like I don’t know.

00:45:24,800	But I know in years past there are times the leadership team has suggested a particular goal that the committee has not supported. And so then it gets dropped and vice versa. Like there are times that like ideally we’re looking for overlap, right? Like, um, okay, um. I think I know I’ve talked a lot.

00:45:49,700	I think one thing that I would say is, you know, I think the overarching goal is like academic excellence. And I mean, it’s just up to to me knowing that, um, these goals are going to support as many students as possible in, in, you know, in completing the portrait of a learner.

00:46:14,330	And the hard part for me is that, of course, I have my own goals and my own agendas and things that I, I want done, but I’m not in the classroom, you know, so I don’t really I kind of defer a lot to the administration and the teachers, um, and trust them that they know what they’re doing.

00:46:29,630	I just brought up the ranking sheets, and both of these goals were on that sheet, so it might not have come up in conversations at school committee, but it was on the the kind of the conversations that work came out of the retreat. This was one of these both of these goals were part of that conversation.

00:46:43,870	But I would say as being part of the leader of the Professional Development committee, like both of these goals, are things that teachers are talking about, that are the next steps that really they see as being needs in their classrooms, um, to better serve all their students having time to really develop teacher led structures, to be able to plan independently and work on

00:47:01,600	things like portrait of graduate competencies and with those instructional practices, having those the space and time in those PLC and CPT structures is a really important next step. And also making sure it’s kind of like Maslow, right? Like if students, uh, social emotional needs aren’t being able to be taken care of, then learning can’t happen.

00:47:21,730	We know that. And we want to make sure that teachers have all the tools in the tool boxes. I do seem to recall that we did talk about some of the successes that we have had in the middle school and getting people to break to grade level, and how that would be expanded

00:47:37,300	across other grades. And that to me, seems like what this is maybe in slightly different words, but that’s the thrust. Of it. I don’t like the optics. I think people are gonna look at this and say, primarily, this is helping a minority of students.

00:48:00,370	And we dropped something that I assume was not helping a minority of students and something that very clearly was helping all of us, again, have to go back to my notes. So but I think that’s going to be interpreted that way, because look who’s in charge of it. So it’s just because just as a sort of discussion, this, you know, I respectfully disagree.

00:48:22,070	I feel like I my interpretation was that I really feel like particularly the MTSS goal and the SL goal, I think in my mind, I would I had a vision. I think that this was all going to be one goal.

00:48:45,030	And when I read it, I had the opposite experience. When I read it laid out like this, I thought to myself, well, it there’s a reason that they’ve divided it out that like the people that are actually implementing it, like, I wouldn’t want. I don’t know how to say this. I think the SEL goal is really important.

00:49:08,730	I had a vision that it could be a part of the MTSS goal, and I guess the how you parse it, I’m feeling comfortable leaving it up to the leadership team to parse it. I. , I’m looking back at notes from that leadership retreat. I’m sorry, the school committee retreat. I wasn’t there, but no academic goals were selected during that conversation.

00:49:29,330	And that’s where this leadership team kind of conversation got brought in to say, hey, this is why we’re here. We need to make sure that what we know student teachers are asking for in terms of meeting the needs of students, is a part of the goal setting.

00:49:43,870	So I think that there was some combination of things, but I, I do know that these these were part of the conversation initially. And I think did we choose 5 or. 6, six. We chose six. I don’t know. I. Thought five. I mean, in other words, I guess my. So this is just an expansion from what I see.

00:50:03,030	Yeah. And and I guess I just want to like I because I do think this should be a discussion. So I’d love to hear what people’s like this we can move on to like what’s your opinion? I you know, because I, I think we need to I, I do think and I, I’m always appreciative of Jen’s really

00:50:20,230	thinking about how is it how is it interpreted by the public? How is it like I think that’s an important conversation. I, I feel like, you know, if you have a first grader right now, you might think to yourself, oh, my kid’s doing just great. And they’re never going to need any support.

00:50:41,930	But the truth is, you have no idea what’s going to come up where your child is going to need support, when they’re going to need a. And I mean, my children are much, much older.

00:51:06,730	And I think about their experiences going through and from the outside, I’m just going to say my children would have looked like, oh, sure, they did. Great. This is not mean that there was never a time that they needed to have some kind of intervention, academic or emotional, like that’s that’s it needs to be there for everyone because you don’t know what could happen. You don’t.

00:51:27,130	I mean, how many of us, every single one of us has had to call the school and say, like a thing is going on at home, and I want you to know that, like, my child might not be the same this week. Like, we want to have strong supports for the little things and the really big thing.

00:51:43,870	So I’ll stop talking. But I, I just really feel like it is for everyone. It’s there because you need to have it when you need it, you know, and it could be anything from like a big emotional issue to like, you know what? Boom. For whatever reason, long division just doesn’t click.

00:52:00,070	And I’m gonna need some intervention to. So. All right, I’ll stop. Yeah. No, I agree with that. And I think hearing that it’s important to the teachers and they brought it up is I think that is most important because like really like I’m not in that classroom.

00:52:15,270	I don’t teach those level students. So like and I but I can see and appreciate how it would be really important to have more of a formal structure around something like this.

00:52:36,170	The only thing that gave me a little pause was implementing, um, like, I know I see who the facilitators are, but like, what level of involvement would teachers have for like implementing? Is this another thing that teachers need to handle, or is it more beneficial for them to have it? And this is I don’t know either way. It’s just something like kind of a point of discussion. I guess I need a little clarification about. Yeah.

00:52:54,300	Teachers handling. Just talk to me a little bit more. Explain that a little bit. Just like so the implementation plan at the end is this or is the work something that the teachers can handle on their own. Does this mean more staff. Oh well.

00:53:11,570	And that’s part of the planning is that right now we’re reacting to things. So how do we become more proactive? So how do we kind of document what is needed. Where where are we shining. What is working. Well? Where do we see some things that are falling.

00:53:25,800	You know, we’re falling short and that are really stretching our educators. So that’s part of the plan is to think about, you know, Open Circle is tier one. Everyone thinking about actually mapping out what we have.

00:53:42,400	We have that in terms of academics, I’ve got clear plans that we’re putting together of what, um, screening tools we have, what what interventions we have, what resources we have for everybody, not just people who need little extra, but everybody.

00:53:55,900	Um, and doing the same in terms of social emotional learning, you know, at the same time, the class that we’re going to take is social-emotional learning for adults, because sometimes this is just about like, how much are we carrying? And when we when we are working with a student who needs more from us, how does that impact our interactions with other kids, with our colleagues, with other? You know, this is really all encompassing, and it’s the world that we’re living in

00:54:08,530	right now. Frankly, um, kids are having fewer social interactions coming to school. They’re having a harder time, and the first grader might be shining and doing well, but they still need to learn how to become friends with someone, or how to ride a bus with somebody, or how to how to get help when they need it, you

00:54:21,330	know, if they’re having trouble. So, um, with another student. So this all goes right into the school improvement goals. Like, you know, that will further inform the teacher piece of this.

00:54:36,100	And I can tell you that in June when at a PDC meeting, that was the outcry from teachers is like, we need to be talking about social emotional supports. And I’m really thinking about how does that implement, how does that look like in the classroom? What do our learning environments look like? Just agenda classroom.

00:54:48,630	How is it set up? What are the routines and structures? What are the you know, those approaches for problem solving that is for everybody. That is not just for kids who are struggling, but these are all skills that help everybody. Thank you. Um, okay. Um, I don’t know that we’ve officially talked about goal five, um, that we’ve kind of dipped into it. Um, does anyone first have a question about goal five or.

00:55:15,300	I have one? It’s actually a wording question whether we could change. I don’t think anywhere in this document. Do you the academic acronyms PLC and CPT, I think are not defined. And that is I spent I kept thinking, okay, it’s common planning time and I wanted it to be like something. It’s professional learning.

00:55:42,530	I finally like I that’s just a feedback. Is that like if we want the general public to Jen’s point to be able to read this, I think those terms need to be defined so that, um, so I don’t know whether other people feel that way, but.

00:55:57,670	Professional learning communities are a structure we have in our elementary schools where right now, once a month, a grade level team comes together, and that is anyone who works with students in the grade level are working together.

00:56:14,530	They might be implementing something that’s part of the curriculum, looking at a unit that’s coming up, talking about assessment, they might be looking at data that just happened and thinking about how to what next steps are for instruction. It’s just an opportunity that we have built into our structure. Um, for for teachers to come together. That’s often been led with principles and instructional approaches. We’re trying to make that a little bit more teacher led.

00:56:30,230	And now that we have that rolling at the elementary level, they’ve had, you know, we’ve had data structures in place at elementary for at least 15 years. So this is an iteration of that. And in addition to there, uh, a time during the week, common planning time is something that’s in the contract for secondary teachers. And that is where there’s a few different common planning structures.

00:56:47,230	We have grade level common common planning times, and Miles River where anyone who’s teaching at a certain grade level has a time every once, at least once every two weeks to come together and talk about what’s happening at that grade level. We have a more class. Similar teachers who teach similar classes might have a planning time together.

00:57:04,500	So maybe the sixth grade math teachers have a math time, have the common planning time meet together that is scheduled by administration. It is time that’s in the schedule. It’s not just, um, informal, it is formal time. Part of their contract that they have these meetings at the middle school.

00:57:19,870	They have data. They’ve put in a data structure. So once a month they’re looking at data with Zach or as part of those conversations, they also have curriculum leaders that are part of those conversations. And it’s just an opportunity for teachers to be putting their heads together.

00:57:35,000	And as we talk about these, uh, if we talk about clarity and what those clarity moves are in the classroom, these are moves from the skillful teacher, which is one of our framework, um, resources that then teachers are going to start to have conversations about what clarity moves they’re making. Um, based on the student work that they’re looking at.

00:57:49,230	They look at student work together and they plan together. So that is a structure that looks a little different at middle school with those grade level times. And at high school it’s more departmental or a similar classes that are planned together. And we’re really small structures or small buildings.

00:58:07,730	So sometimes it’s not the perfect structure, but the administration’s work really hard to be responsive to teachers request of being able to have common planning time with certain peers like middle school this year we’re working on that open side new science program, and we’re making sure that those teachers have time to work together, to plan together. And we’ve really been.

00:58:26,930	Last year we wrote what, uh, a document that outlines what a strong CPT time looks like. What does it what’s happening during it? What are the kind of similarities? This is an enhancement of that work.

00:58:42,500	So this goal surfaces a lot of the work that’s been happening in the buildings and brings it to the district level, and it will flow right into those school, those school level goals. Other feedback on this bowl of questions. All right. Goal six AI usage and guidelines. Questions. I have a question about costs. So I know we are a Google or in a Google environment.

00:59:18,630	Does our license include AI and is it going to cost more money? Gemini is embedded. Sometimes it’s too much into Google. Yeah, they’ll just keep like sticking things in there. Okay. So we are kind of chasing that down and we have to try to keep on top of that to make sure that tools that we’re not ready for in the classroom are be extended to students.

00:59:32,770	And that is definitely something that we’ve become aware of. Um, there are other resources that we use, and this is where you could have the conversation on, like, what is AI? What is not AI? You know, like there are obviously, um, pure tools that are creating content, but then there’s other resources that

00:59:48,700	we’re using that have features of them that would could be considered AI. So, you know, we have our same tech budget as last year. You know, we’ve put forward our budget and we’re looking at tools.

01:00:03,000	We’re really focusing on that privacy piece and making sure that we’re we’re adhering to regulations that student names aren’t in pieces, that we don’t have data sharing agreements with. And, um, we’re just really starting to talk about how do we use this tool and use it well, and thinking about that appropriately. Um, you know, age appropriately. Yeah. It’s a huge challenge.

01:00:22,800	I’m on a steering committee for AI usage at Salem State University, and there’s 55 of us on. And, you know, we’re all kind of investigating different themes within AI usage. So I’ll give you guys a lot of credit because it’s a really hard puzzle to figure out. Like you said, it changes every hour, seemingly.

01:00:41,470	Um, I’m, I’m not sold on what is the best strategy for my college students, for my own kids? Like, I think it’s a really, really tricky. Um, but I agree that it’s important to have guidelines and rules around it because it’s for better or worse here. Um, yeah. I’m interested to see what you all come up with and kind.

01:01:00,630	Of different those usage guides to your next meeting. Excellent. Yeah. That’s great. Thank you. Go ahead. Jen. Uh, for action. Step number four I noticed that’s not covering like a continuous semester.

01:01:23,600	Is this going to be done at the high school, and if so, how are we going to deal with classes that are only one semester long? Because there are definitely classes that might be going in November, but stop in February. That’s a great point. I’m sure about the answer to that. And I would defer to Eric and Bryan Menegoni to talk a little bit more specifically about the high school needs.

01:01:39,270	But, um, you know, we definitely have more year long courses than semester courses, but it might be a matter of if there are teachers who are willing to do this, identifying a year long course where they could do that, or is there something that would happen in the first semester, or that they would be

01:01:51,400	launching? And, you know, after the January midterm into the in their second semester courses? Yeah. I have one more thing. Sorry. This is this is a topic near dear to me. Um, one thing I brought up at our workshop retreat was about ethics and environmental issues.

01:02:15,630	I know a lot of my students bring up those topics. Like I have students who won’t use AI at all. From an ethical standpoint. Um, and I don’t know what our high schoolers especially, or middle schoolers. Well, I know it’s something. Um, so that is something that I’m also kind of curious how we will handle.

01:02:34,900	I know some parents probably too have concerns about what their kids are using, so I’ll wait and see. What do you think? But just wondering if you have preliminary thoughts. I, I would again defer to Bryan. Bryan was part of the AI usage group and I think that might have come up more.

01:02:51,870	I wasn’t part of those conversations, but it’s definitely something that is changing, right? Adapting and changing. And it’s definitely going to become part of this. The landscape of this conversation. I don’t think we’re there yet. Okay. Um, but I also don’t think we’ve embedded AI into our courses thoroughly.

01:03:08,370	So it’s something that will be taken into consideration as we do these pilots or, you know, like we’re going to have to think about that. That’s a great point. Okay. All right. Ready to move on to goal seven. Okay. Questions about goal seven. I had one question.

01:03:37,670	Um, I was wondering as part of this needs assessment, I’m I’m presuming yes to this question, but does this also or does this goal contemplated to also evaluate whether technology is needed to be used by students at all in certain grades? Because I know we have definitely received a little bit of community outreach about Chromebooks and the right time to use the Chromebook. And I think in the wider culture that seems to be percolating up through the culture.

01:03:54,700	So I would say that our device progression honestly has been focused on the other end because we’re not 1 to 1 in the in the early years. That has started more in the third grade range.

01:04:10,670	But we’re looking at students who have aging devices, you know, trying to finish senior year and trying to make sure they have adequate devices. And it’s not an equity issue. If someone’s gone and gotten their own device. So that definitely will be part of the conversation about the progression from K to two, the number of devices, the type of devices, the the amount of access or not.

01:04:26,730	Um, that definitely would be part of this goal. We do have resources that we use specifically that are learning tools. So if we’re not going to be using it in a first grade classroom, then what else are we going to be using? That would have to be part of that conversation. Thank you.

01:04:40,770	I just have a comment. Um, my son’s going to sixth grade and I really appreciated the recent email from Zach about how they’re in a they’re not going to introduce Chromebooks like the first day of school.

01:05:01,300	They’re going to kind of take a beat and, you know, because, um, they learned that, you know, it could potentially be disruptive or there were a lot of things that they learned. So I love that it’s more like these. This is what happened in the past, what we’re going to learn from it. And these are going to be the guidelines that will go forward.

01:05:11,530	And we just feel like this is the way that we’re going to do things this year, and maybe it will change next year. But, um, I thought it was just a really well-written policy and explained really well because I’m sure a lot of parents are like, no, why don’t we get Chromebooks? Chromebooks

01:05:26,230	immediately? And parents like me are like, no, I never want him to have a Chromebook. I just want him to play with his dinosaurs. Um, so I, I just wanted to say and shout out to Zach and, um, the if there’s a technology working group, you know, for their thoughtfulness, um, in crafting that policy. Thank you.

01:05:47,670	I have. A question. So I know we have Chromebooks in middle school, and then our high schoolers have what? Technology? Yeah, great. Okay, there you go. So end of the progression. So looking at okay really trying to solve what that looks like. All right. But not Chromebooks for high schoolers. We don’t. Give them anything. In high school.

01:06:09,970	No. Oh no. So if I knew that that’s a huge area. But they they use laptops generally like that is like culturally that’s what students have or. No. I think it’s a mix.

01:06:26,230	So in years past we’ve had students, uh, go with their iPads to high school and use their iPads through high school. And there are a number of kids who have used iPads through high school. But that is an equity issue because there are kids who are bringing their own devices that are more substantial than the school issued iPad that is aging.

01:06:38,670	So that is the part of the progression that I’m saying that we really need to pay attention to, to make sure that kids are getting adequate devices that, um, do what they need to do, but also, um, are, you know, can last through the high school years and we can afford, you know, what? What makes sense.

01:06:58,570	I think, for just seeing the students I have coming in as freshmen who were on, like a Chromebook or an iPad in high school, they have very little knowledge of folder structure and how to handle files and things like that. So that is a concern that I have that it’s an equity issue, right.

01:07:14,100	Like some students are having that experience, some students aren’t. And I think it’s really important for students to have that experience. I would agree with you. And remember we’ve introduced that digital literacy course at middle school to start to fill that gap. It is not a perfect fill, but that is something that we know is part of what is missing.

01:07:28,700	And so giving us some of those foundational skills to kids around organization and digital literacy and, you know, digital digital citizenship, just how to use a Chromebook appropriately, you know, like those are things that are really, um, important. And, um, we’ll be building them into that sixth grade experience for as many students as we can this year. Um. Okay.

01:07:49,300	I even though Kristin I can’t said it already, I can’t help myself. I’m just gonna say it. Everyone already knows. I’m going to say about looking at those. And especially given sort of this conversation about like, that seems upside down to me.

01:08:11,370	Like I feel really comfortable that our juniors and seniors really do need to be having the right device being, you know, sent out into the world with a lot of skills. I really don’t feel that way about our kindergarten first graders. Second graders. I agree with that.

01:08:32,200	And I, I guess I’ve said that publicly many times, but I, I have it’s just feedback to say that when I’m hearing the device audit, that’s going to be something I’m really interested in is if the device audit is. The progression. If the progression is coming back and saying, we really need a lot of, you know, 1 to 1 device with our kindergarteners. I don’t think you’re right. I don’t.

01:08:47,170	Even understand what you’re I’m just. I’m just preparing you. You know. Where are. You going. To be concerned looking at technology as tools and and what tools are appropriate for what grade level if we certainly want to make sure we prepare kids for when you need to use them, because our state testing is still online

01:09:01,900	starting in grade three. So that is a really hard, um, we don’t want to set kids up. Um, so we want to make sure they want to open it and how to use it, and you know, how to how to walk through it.

01:09:13,830	But they don’t need to be using it in the years previous when that’s not part of the application. So, um, I would say our, our partner and teachers are thoughtful use of when they are using technology and when they are not, and that we do not have any programs that are, uh, 1 to 1 in a classroom. And then classroom.

01:09:32,900	But it’s also an important tool for some of our students who need technology to be able to communicate with, with each other, with yours. So, uh, technology is literally all around us. And I would say those, you know, the devices in the hands of our youngest kids are is that is it’s important when it’s using it.

01:09:49,270	And we make sure that it’s it’s thoughtful use. But they use technology in all of our buildings like smart words and and things that are helping students access information. And we want to be careful that we have the infrastructure to be able to support it and to be able to help them apply the skills that they’ve learned in their careers.

01:10:10,200	Anybody have anything else? Um, thank you so much. Um, I appreciate your coming in and giving us a lot of your time. Um, does, um, I don’t we may, I mean, our, our our hope, I think, is to try to vote if or I mean, that’s up to the committee. Um, tonight. Okay.

01:10:42,830	But I mean, I assume that’s your hope is to hear. From us, to be able to get some direction. Um. When a motion. Are you willing to start us off with the motion? Yeah. I move that the school committee accepts the 20, 2627 goals as presented in the exhibit by the superintendent. Second second by Kristin Noon.

01:11:10,570	All right. Is there a discussion? Seeing none. Looks like we’re ready to vote. Um, all those in favor? That is, uh, five in favor? Uh, those opposed? That is one opposed. Um. And the motion passes. Um. Let’s. 5 to 1. Sorry. Thank you very much for your time. Much appreciated. Okay. Oh. No.

01:11:50,070	I’m gonna leave. So go ahead. Do you want to look? It’s okay. Um, at this point, I am going to, um, recuse myself from this next item on the agenda.

01:12:13,500	Um, for those of you new to the committee, um, anytime there is either a conflict of interest or there might be the appearance of a conflict of interest, it’s wise to recuse yourself. Um, and, um, I have disclosed before and filed paperwork into that. The medical consultant, uh, medical. I’m sorry. School physician. That is currently our school physician and being. And on the exhibit is Michael Yoon. He is a partner with my husband.

01:12:39,700	Um, and so, um, in an interest of ensuring that there’s no appearance of conflict of interest, I am going to turn the chair over to Kristin, and I’m actually going to leave the room as instructed by Mike, which is silly, but I’m gonna do it. All right. That’s all you. Thank you. Okay. Gavel.

01:13:10,930	Um, we can start with a motion if you want, and then we can have discussion about it. Um, just to make sure everyone is on the same page. This. The school physician is a statutorily required role to be available as a backstop to the school nurses for certain matters, and to sign off on certain things that we need, um, medically, for the district.

01:13:29,330	So can you show me the agenda again? Is the word a point? Uh, point? Yes. Okay. I move that we appoint Doctor Michael Yoon as the school physician. Medical consultant. Second. Is there any discussion? Okay, we’ll take a vote.

01:13:58,770	Um, all in favor? Any opposed? And the motion passes with the five members present. With Dana having recused herself from the vote. Okay. Okay. Um. Okay. Um, next up, I think we have a memo. Um, is a request from the superintendent for, um, an additional, um, esp. 1.0. Yes. Yeah. My, um.

01:14:48,970	For some reason, it’s not pulling up on my. Oh, there we go. Okay. Um, uh, for Winthrop School. Um, did anybody have any questions? I actually. Have two. Yep. Um, will, assuming these three year olds stay with us.

01:15:16,700	Three, four and five, like, until they reach the end of preschool? Will the grant that is covering this ESP salary be available to cover it all three years? Or are we looking at finding an alternative funding source. So there might be the possibility that we have to find an alternative funding source come FY 28. Uh, that grant amount does change every year.

01:15:36,530	If you remember, uh, in FY 26, it was reduced by the top of my head, I believe was almost $70,000 for FY 27. It’s actually going back to $20,000 more than it was in 25. But it does vary. Uh, so there is a chance that in FY 28, we would have to find an alternative funding source.

01:15:55,170	So if it does stay, um, there is a chance that in FY 28 it would be picked up by the general fund appropriation. But we won’t know that until next year. And my second question, and this is primarily because we weren’t able to keep the gym teacher that everybody loved.

01:16:16,470	Is this a need or a want? Do we absolutely need this ESP? Uh, it was described to us as an absolute need, not want. Because we couldn’t keep the gym teacher. And I know a lot of us really wanted to.

01:16:36,430	And I believe there were other staffing changes in sort of the ESP space and some of the special programming where we had a reduction in students, and so staff was reduced accordingly and people were not happy about the loss of some of those. Um, I think personnel as well. Yeah. Um, but my, I mean, my understanding from Eric is that this is needed in order to cover the IEP needs of the two extra students. Mhm.

01:17:01,870	So, um. All right. Anybody else have questions? Is there any discussion? Oh, I guess we don’t have a motion. Right. Um, would you make a motion? Oh, no. You’re here. Would you make a motion? Sorry. All right. I motion to approve the additional ESP requests. Second. Second by Jan Carr. Is there any discussion? All right.

01:17:28,230	Looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the five, six, five, five members present. I’m having trouble with the numbers. Um. Okay. Okay. Um. Next up, Vinnie’s gonna talk about our, uh, year end. Thank you guys for joining us tonight. I am here to present our FY 26 year end actuals.

01:19:46,300	Now, this obviously differs from our prior three quarter presentations because this is actuals. We no longer have any estimates incorporated in here or any projections. These are our actual numbers.

01:20:05,530	These will be the numbers that we report out to state agencies, to our peers for the next 5 to 10 years. And what they use, uh, to kind of benchmark against us and what we use to benchmark against them, at least financially. So in terms of our FY 26 year end close, uh, I would call it a semi healthy close. We ended with about 2.

01:20:26,470	5% of our residual appropriations at the end of the year, which for us represents roughly $630,000. We aim for something between 1 and 2%. From a financial perspective, I aim for more like 2%. That does accumulate into a lot of dollars, even though it’s only a one and a half percent residual balance. It does get you $627,000, which is obviously a large sum of money.

01:20:49,300	Um, here we have a presented in DC form, which is how we approve our budget during the budget process. And you can see at the bottom the 627,000. This is that same chart obviously broken down instead of by DC category by our five major schools, as well as all of our district wide programs.

01:21:10,100	And it includes our benefits and fixed charges, as well as our capital and fixed assets categories, which are technically not district wide programs. But we do have a dedicated deck for that. Uh, you can see the same $630,000, uh, distributed out in DAC form.

01:21:30,970	Now, like all of my kind of quarterly presentations, you do have four exhibits tonight. Uh, this first exhibit is a summary. Uh, but like all of my presentations, I try to give you as much detail as possible. If you go to exhibit number two.

01:21:49,630	It is, I think, a 52 slide presentation that literally breaks down every single, uh, DAC by every single 11 DC categories. If some staff member took one day off, that happened to cost, you know, $100, it’s represented on that presentation. So that really is the most detail you’ll find out there.

01:22:09,900	It’s I’ve looked at other school districts and that is the most detail I’ve seen so far. Um, so if you really want to find out where exactly that $630,000 comes from, every single one of those dollars in pennies is incorporated in that second exhibit. Uh, the third exhibit, like usual, is the complete account. I’m sorry.

01:22:29,170	I think that’s the fourth exhibit is the complete account detail with all of our roughly 4 to £500, ten metres. Uh, exhibit number three. Again, I know I’ve explained this before, but if I had a point to someone where to spend most of their time reviewing this information, it would be exhibit number three.

01:22:46,800	It’s a one pager where we display all of our variances, whether it’s surpluses or whether it’s deficits spread out in basically two columns. So you can see where all of our major variances are within there. It’s everything over $5,000.

01:23:06,500	So if anything shifted over $5,000, uh, it’s delineated on that, uh, exhibit number three is again where you can find kind of the summary of all the detail. But when I go to that third exhibit, I kind of go to the highs and lows.

01:23:23,230	So if you try to look at kind of the top 5 or 6 surpluses in the bottom 5 or 6 episodes, and you look back during the year, we’ve talked about. So if you look back at our quarter, one forecast that I presented, we already discussed in detail a lot of our salary savings from staff turnover, as well as our vacancies.

01:23:39,800	We already talked about all of our health insurance changes, uh, both changes to our enrollment, um, changes to our premium rate increase and changes to the district’s match towards their contract. Uh, our employees contribution to health insurance. That did change in FY 26. Uh, we was increased from 63, 62% to 63%. Uh, per recent agreement with the bargaining units.

01:24:05,770	And we also went into our out of district tuitions. Uh, in detail on that second quarter. Uh, I’m sorry, the first part, when you fast forward to the second quarter, we obviously went over everything from quarter two because all those things were staying true through quarter one, two, three and all the way to the end. Uh, we added things about neck cooperative transportation contract.

01:24:23,500	For those of you who might not remember, um, all the superintendents in the area came together and decided to issue one request for bid to a companies and increase our purchasing power and have them provide all of the additional transportation for all of the school districts in the area.

01:24:45,300	Ultimately, because we came together and had more purchasing power, it lowered everyone’s daily cause for each one. Because it ultimately saved us over $100,000. By doing this cooperative agreement. Uh, we introduced that before two. Also in forward two, we talked about the $90,000 priority transportation credit that we received when we presented quarter number two.

01:25:07,170	It was on February 26th. So this was after we, uh, approved our FY 27 budget. As you obviously know, in our 27 budget, we reduced a lot of technology out of our request at that same, uh, Q2.

01:25:28,200	Um, presentation, you guys had authorized us to transfer funds to purchase some of those, purchase some of that technology, and replace some of our aging equipment now. So we had those supplies, uh, for FY 27. Uh, so that was obviously something we went over as a deficit and everyone obviously knows about the work that’s been done at the middle school, high school, around the boilers family.

01:25:46,230	Uh, during the school year 25 and how we had to get replacement boilers in to give us heat during that school year. And then last full year, we completely replaced all three of our boilers. And that price tag came in just over $1 million. Fast forward to quarter three.

01:26:03,230	We talked about a lot of those things, but we had one additional, uh, a couple of water main, uh, sprung a leak for the second time in less than one year. So the decision was made to completely rip up all of the parking lot and replace that water main.

01:26:22,430	And because we are because we ripped up an already completely deteriorated parking lot. We made the decision that we had to repay the truck. So again, when you go back and look at exhibit number three, all of these items that we’ve already discussed in Q one, two and three are still the same. Large variances even through year.

01:26:39,500	So tonight I’m trying to focus on what’s left, what other items above or below the $100,000 mark? Haven’t we discussed enough or just haven’t discussed in depth? Um, and those three items really are our additional circuit breaker state reimbursement, our athletic department balances, and some additional maintenance and technology purchases.

01:27:00,030	Uh, that popped up in your. So in terms of our additional Circuit Breaker state reimbursement, it’s exactly what it sounds. It’s state funds coming to us. It offsets our budget. It offsets our appropriation that we need to assess the town’s.

01:27:22,770	If you look at our FY 2626 approved budget for our Circuit Breaker offset, we set that budget at roughly $1.6 million. This was already an increase of 17% over FY 25. So we knew our expenditures were increasing around, um, special education.

01:27:41,770	For those of you who don’t know, sorry, Circuit Breaker uh, is directly related to how much money we spend on our special education students. The state reimburses you a certain percentage of those expenditures. So if you know your expenditures are going up, you could assume that your state reimbursement is also. So when we built the 26 budget, we knew that was happening. So we adjusted it by 17%, which is a large increase for our offsets.

01:28:02,870	But you can see that clearly was not enough. So at the end of FY 25 and the beginning of FY 26, the state came out and they realized they had large, large surpluses in their minds. They issued supplemental payments to districts for many things. One of them was Circuit Breaker.

01:28:21,500	Uh, so Hamilton Wenham received additional supplemental payments for the Circuit Breaker above what we were already ordinarily going to receive. Ultimately, we ended up offsetting $1.9 million in Circuit Breaker offset, which was an increase of $331,000 over our budget. Again, that may seem like a lot, but we saw this coming.

01:28:45,500	So again, we adjusted for it. If you look at our FY 27 budget increase, the Circuit Breaker by 40%, $600,000 was increased in the FY 27 budget request. Because we saw this happening, uh, back in kind of the February time frame.

01:29:10,730	So we’ve already adjusted for we’ve already increased our 27 offset and already decreased the amount we would have normally assessed. The towns, because we received an additional circuit breaker. reimbursements. Uh, next up is our athletic department balances. Again, if you look at exhibit number three, it’s just the next item down. Uh, this is a little larger than what I would have anticipated.

01:29:30,900	I thought we were going to have an athletics balance, as we historically do. But this is larger than what I anticipated. So I wanted to take a moment and least try to give you some of the background and why that balance is there.

01:29:49,570	Just to kind of get the small thing out of the way, when the athletics department set the FY 26 budget request, uh, they incorporated an estimate for our athletic training services were required to have an athletic trainer at all of our games in case someone gets injured. When we eventually went out and submitted for bids and submitted four requests for quotes, uh, those quotes came back and it was $18,000 less than what the athletic department.

01:30:10,270	But that’s obviously good thing. Agreed. Surplus funds, uh, leftover. But we clearly should not have requested that much in the budget. But we didn’t know that because we didn’t like fit.

01:30:36,030	Nonetheless, if you remove that $18,000, you’re left with approximately $150,000 left in the athletics department, $145,000 of that 150 comes directly from one account to athletic user fee match. In FY 26. I believe the district contributed 55% of the fees to offset the athletic. Cost. When you look when FY 26 ended, the district actually collected approximately $50,000 in additional fees than what we anticipated from students from not participants, from our athletes, I assume. And again, this is just my assumption.

01:31:06,530	I know it might not be completely true, but why would we have an uptick in participation where we have brand new facilities? We just implemented this, uh, massive, uh, rehab of our athletic facilities. So it may have attracted more students to play that may not have ordinarily played. On top of that, $50,000 that we collected.

01:31:28,370	Don’t forget, we have the $25,000 scholarship match that the district puts aside for families that can’t afford that fee. That is considered a revenue within our athletic revolving account. Um, and I sorry, I forgot to expand this card.

01:31:48,670	Uh, the reason we were able to do this is because our athletic were evolving without account, revolving account had additional budget capacity. Because of this increase in revenue with our revolving account, how most of them work, that money is used before the appropriation is used.

01:32:06,770	So we use the money we collect from the fees before we turn around and use any of the taxpayer, any of the taxpayer money that doesn’t get used kind of falls into the end pool. So because we collected $72,000 in additional revenue, we didn’t have to match that up. So in addition to that increase in revenues, um, the athletics year end balance actually came in $64,000 less than what we anticipated. So through the budget process, the athletic department breaks down every single sport.

01:32:31,530	How much it’s going to cost, uh, how many coaches we need, what materials do they have? Facility rental needs. Uh, but one other thing is transportation. If you rewind back to FY 25, uh, the district purchased a small transport van with the hopes that this van would help defray the cost of field trips, but also to defray

01:32:51,630	the cost of athletic events. Although the athletic department did not use the bus as much as we would like, because it does have to be used by smaller team, it’s only 15 passengers. Most of our teams are larger than that.

01:33:09,700	It did defray some of our transportation costs and added a little bit to that $64,000 balance. Uh, just one way we tried to utilize money in one year to kind of lower these communications. That is the bulk of the 145,000. But to me, the last item kind of stuck out was the additional piece.

01:33:28,970	Again, one can assume that that’s because of our brand new facility, because even people there didn’t have children playing in the sport, wanted to come and watch a game under the lights because we’ve never been able to. We did adjust our 26 budget and increased what we thought we were going to take in for gate receipts, but clearly it wasn’t enough and we brought in an additional $8,000 for both the budgeted.

01:33:47,700	And again, we use that revolving account money before we use our appropriation. So when you add it all up and then the athletic department came down with $168,000. We knew this in June.

01:34:06,900	So if you rewind back to June, we came to you guys and asked to set a universal athletic fee, which was lower than we than what we had budgeted in the FY 27 budget requested, because we knew they had residual balances, because we knew participation was increasing. We thought it was best to lower those fees to help kind of ease things.

01:34:29,800	Um, so those were the kind of the last of the surpluses, over $100,000. Uh, we get into a briefing about additional expenses at the end of the year. There was definitely an assortment of maintenance and technology purchases that came up at the end of the year. Uh, one of the biggest big things was around one of our maintenance trucks.

01:34:44,830	So at the middle of June, um, one of our maintenance workers was driving a truck. All of a sudden, you know, something heavy fell from underneath the cab, rolled over on the side of the street. It ended up being, uh, something with the catalytic converter or the exhaust we got to send to the mechanic.

01:35:01,000	They gave us back an estimate of $11,000 to fix the truck. That truck is 11 years old. We simply just pulled up the blue book value. It was under $9,000. That fact that it was going to cost us more to fix it. And 11 year old vehicle.

01:35:21,970	And the fact that we, um, were told over last winter that these trucks weren’t sufficient to keep up with that snow last year, if you remember, there was two big snowstorms. The trucks couldn’t handle, uh, plowing those out in the parking lots. So we already had a request last winter, uh, for a bigger vehicle.

01:35:37,830	So when this vehicle came back that damaged, we decided to get a bigger vehicle to help in the hopes of lowering our future snow removal. Costs. However, uh, in addition to the maintenance truck, we also had something pop up at Winthrop School. Uh, towards the end of the school year, there was an issue with some tiles, uh, when after, uh.

01:35:56,500	I’m sorry. Once school ended, um, we got the, uh, materials out to a lab and came back for positive hazardous materials. We were advised to carry. Encapsulate the area, which is basically just, uh, you know, to cover it. So nothing further gets damaged.

01:36:22,630	Uh, instead of doing that, uh, Eric myself encouraged me to the the decision to fully update the two classrooms. Uh, so the, uh, abatement team came in and completely removed the tile from two of the classrooms. And then we had a flooring company come in and lay down the tiles so that those two classrooms had been completely updated.

01:36:41,270	And we’ll be able to further issue instead of making the encapsulation failing a year or two from now, after 3 to 5. Um, next up is windows for both Buker and admin. If you look around here and the rest of the building and also admin, these windows are over 30 years old. A lot of the seals are breaking.

01:36:57,400	This is the third year in a row that we’ve replaced approximately 40 windows around the school. We try to do at least 3 or 4 classrooms a year. This year we did the same thing. We started in the back, uh, fifth grade wing this year.

01:37:13,830	And then we also did a few windows at admin, because if you go into some people’s offices in the middle of the winter, there’s about a quarter of it, not a quarter of an inch. That’s drastic, but there’s a gap in the bottom of the window. You can’t close the window and you get a nice breeze in the winter and allow your heat to go out.

01:37:27,670	So we decided to replace some of those meeting, and we didn’t replace all of them. We just replaced them ones for the most part, that we’ve not closed.

01:37:45,830	Um, last but not least, this was the second year the FY 27 budget cycle, which is the second year in a row our IT department putting their request for two new servers. Everyone knows how last budget cycle went was a very difficult year. That request didn’t even make it to you guys. Uh, it kind of fell through within the leadership process to not fund it.

01:38:03,530	Um, however, Allen came to us towards the end of last year and said that, um, these servers are now past its useful life, and he would not guarantee that they would function throughout the next school year. I asked him what this server does for us, and I am not going to try to lie.

01:38:15,800	I do not know what he said. I do not speak it. What I got out of it was is the backbone of our infrastructure, and if it goes down, I plan on not having school for two weeks. That was pretty much all. Eric and I had a hurry.

01:38:29,600	I had had two here and we went ahead and replaced those two servers after the high school. So hopefully those will last 10 to 15 years and we won’t have to do this again.

01:38:48,770	So when you incorporate all of those, um, surpluses and deficits from the first three quarters and all of that year end activity, uh, we’re left with four DC categories that ended in a deficit that you can see here. There’s a very small deficit in our instructional materials. Uh, but then there’s larger deficits in our operations and maintenance. Our assets and, um, per DESE rules. You have to fund your, uh, deficit. Deficit categories.

01:39:12,930	So tonight, we are requesting these following, uh, four transfers that are needed to remove the deficit from the deficit categories. I do repair, transfer. I will answer any questions. If I’m understanding this correctly, our athletics budget overperformed in terms of revenue. And for the upcoming year, I believe as part of our cuts to the budget, we increased athletic user fees.

01:39:45,930	We did. We didn’t. Okay. All right. We did both, right. We reduced during the budget process to reduce the district’s match would, in theory, increase the user fees. For the families. And that’s what I meant. We increased what the families were going to be paying and. Do, lowered it a little bit. In June because. Because of. This.

01:40:07,730	Okay. Could that. Yep I remember that. Yep. Okay. So I just wanted to revisit that because I know we had a lot of discussion about the impact that that would have on families to increase their share of user fees. So I just wanted to make sure confirm where we were at.

01:40:25,430	With that. And this will be something that we look a lot deeper with. With the new athletic director, at least during the fall season. Um, it’s a little difficult because like I just said, we have a new athletic director.

01:40:41,070	We make the budget basically in October, November, December, not even the fall season is done by then. It’s going to be very difficult for him to supply us a budget for the winter and spring season, when he’s never even been involved in Hamilton-Wenham season.

01:41:03,330	So I would imagine just being completely honest that our FY 28 athletics budget request might not vary unless something is identified between now and budget time. I would imagine it’s kind of the budget cycle after where we really implement this.

01:41:23,130	However, we are still going to be looking at it if in the fall, in that October, time frame, we’re realizing that at least the fall season has higher participation and lower expenses, we still might implement something for 28, just not as drastic as 100%. Okay. Thank you. Um, if I remember correctly, there was a 10% cushion in terms of participation he thought it would be.

01:41:44,030	He gave us a number that was 10% higher than he thought it would be, in terms of how much it would cost for the students, and it ended up being like more than that. So we had him estimate only 5% cushion instead of 10% cushion. Like you hear me say. In my budget process, we always try to be a little conservative. You never want to short yourself.

01:42:09,170	Um, in my opinion, we did that too much with that. Just like you said. We became that down for next time because I did. It was being implemented on. A higher percentage. Um. I know I’ve probably asked you this three times already. Why is Winthrop so far over budget? Like, that’s not a small amount, but that’s not all abatement.

01:42:38,870	Uh, they had abatement, but they also had the additional staff transfers from other schools went to Winthrop in the higher programs. So their additional, uh, staffing issues there as well. Um, there are also pre-K offsets and grant funds.

01:43:06,870	So our, our IDEA grant went down the roughly $80,000 Winthrop School, because that’s where most of our special ed programs are. That’s where most of our IDEA grant goes. Um, so with the large reduction, Winthrop gets the brunt. So that does contribute to a lot of their deficit. But I can certainly pull up the account detail and probably see where the bigger. I think we’ve gone through it at least once. Huh.

01:43:24,730	I just couldn’t remember, like, because I know we talked about it being a transfer in between schools, but I wasn’t seeing like an equivalent surplus that any of the other other elementary schools. So that’s where I was confused. Yep.

01:43:44,100	If you again want to know more, I definitely suggest going, I think, to the third exhibit, which is the other PowerPoint. The first one says it says detailed by category. If you go to Winthrop School, that will that literally breaks down whatever that balance is. Every single dollar is is covered. So, um. Looking at the third exhibit.

01:44:03,200	Yep, I can I can be wrong on my number. It is. I’m pretty sure it’s. I think it’s. The second. Sorry. Yeah. I thought I was looking at that because this is one of the reasons. I think the fourth exhibit. has some of the. Labels of by Building and by category.

01:44:25,600	I think, I don’t know, but I think what you’re looking for is the second exhibit that has sometimes goes through that whole, you know, it’s got like Winthrop instructional materials, pupil services, how much each thing went up and went down. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So just look at that.

01:44:47,200	Just the teacher’s desk category. We did make some transfers. Uh, some of the big ones were. Right down three additional piece. That’s listed is 85,000. Sorry, I don’t know what I just said. Yes. I did 100,000. Okay. What that thing says. Okay. 85,000. Sorry. Uh, and then I can probably. Yeah.

01:45:20,830	And then some maintenance items, like the abatement was 25,000. It does. Um, it does add up to 150,000. Yeah. No, I looked for the abatement because that was something I hadn’t seen before, but that didn’t explain the whole thought through. I think three abatements last year and all of them came in five. Okay.

01:45:44,670	All of them were three, two classes, pretty much. And this is it’s budget adjacent. Yeah. With the new boilers in the high school. Middle school. Are we saving money compared to where we were with the old ones? And do we have any. If so, do we have any estimate how much money we’re saving. All right.

01:46:11,330	So we met with National Grid to ask them that because we anticipated that question was asked. Um, they do a calculation based on my comment that was this winter. Uh, they estimated that we had used about 8% less in natural gas because of the new boilers. Uh, chump change.

01:46:33,800	It’s not I, I to be honest, I don’t know how accurate that is, because they even started with. We don’t know how accurate this is. Um, you guys had windows open.

01:46:51,600	Did you leave your doors open? You know, they even started looking at what direction most of our windows face to see what the sun comes in. So they they did say there are a lot of factors that could sway this amount, but they, they did stake out their time. It’s to see with the new roof if and the better.

01:47:08,500	With the new roof and the new AC units up on the roof that got put in the new fans, right? Yep, yep. But that would, that would mostly be electrical. Because right. Yeah, I would imagine both our electrical and gas. Now kind of would be great. Can I. make a.

01:47:40,570	Motion? The Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee approves the FY 26 operating expense budget transfers, as recommended here by the Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Administration and as presented on the previous slide entitled FY 26 Year end Transfers. Second uh second by Amy Kunberger. Um, is there any further discussion? Okay. Looks like we’re ready to vote. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Of the six members present and the motion passes. It’s good to have that FY 26. Thank you. Nice work. Vinnie.

01:48:10,400	Thank you. Nice work. All right. Um, okay. Uh, I’m not sure what we’re gonna have for committee reports, but let’s go through them. Um, I’m not sure anybody’s really up and running yet. Capital finance. Uh, we need to schedule our first meeting. Okay. Um, policy. Same. Okay. Uh, negotiations.

01:48:37,600	We are not negotiating anything. Not yet. We are not meeting. So, yeah, we are, um, yes. Uh, we don’t have a secretary report because we just started the year, so it’s going to be stellar. You guys are gonna. Perfect right now. It’s perfect.

01:49:01,670	Um, I will just say to you and hopefully to you to support, um, we did not achieve the goal of getting our executive session minutes. So if we could have that the very next time that we have an executive session. Um, ideally, we can do them all as a chunk in executive session. So. Um.

01:49:27,200	Can we get a list of the dates for executive session that are missing? I think they’re in that. Yeah. I mean. I think yeah. I mean they’ve we’ve have a document. That I knew the regular minutes where I wasn’t sure whether the executive session members were. Yeah, it was actually listed on the executive session that we had in July. It was listed at the top of the agenda.

01:49:47,300	All the ones that we had anticipated getting. I. But I can send it out again. Um, thank you. Um. So, um, I don’t really have a chair's report. I’m excited to start the new year. Yes. That’s it. Um, does anyone have anything for me? Questions. Okay.

01:50:19,600	Um, anybody have any topics for future meetings? Obviously, there’s lots of things that are going to be there, but if you have anything that we need to, um, bring up. Okay. Motion to adjourn. Anybody have anything else? Otherwise we’re ready for motion.

01:50:43,770	The only thing I want to say before Julia goes is that we have, um, some state primary elections and other things coming up just to flag for people. It’s during like a vacation time. So just I’ve been just trying to remind people to vote or vote early for whomever you know. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Good to participate in democracy. Exactly. None of us are on the ballot. But just. Know, um, hey.

01:51:02,330	Um, I move that we adjourn at 8:52 p.m.. Second. Second by Amy Kunberger. All those in favor? And we are adjourned