Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee January 21, 2025

All right hello everyone it is 6 pm on January 21st and I'll call to order the conquer Carlile Regional School District to order call the conquered school committee to order great all right um all right so for our student update today that uh we do not have one today was a day off right the school yeah it was they well the teachers were here doing professional de right um which brings us to sorry we're Moving some things around here public comment public comment morning all right so as a reminder our public comment period will be

a period of 20 minutes this is a meeting in the public and not with the public so the school committee will not be responding to any comments if you are in the room and you would like to speak you can submit a blue form to me and you'll be called to speak if you're on Zoom You can use the raiseed hand feature when called to speak please state your name and address before you speak and we'll go every other starting with a comment in the room and then taking a comment on Zoom you'll have a

time limit of three minutes so I have one in the room uh Michael Williams see Michael Williams are the microphones working think so sure we can hear you Hello it's usually just for the zoom audience it might uh Michael Williams 1284 SB Road um just in a matter of weeks The Ellen Garrison building at conquered middle school will be filled for the uh first time with students uh the importance of that name and that name in this location solidifies the tide between conquered and Altadena uh you may not know that over 130 years ago Ellen

Garrison our daughter journeyed to California to uh find relief from tuberculosis she intoed dying there and is buried in Altadena with her sister and her husband uh the very Cemetery that she's buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena was chronicled just recently with the aladen fires in New York Times uh because of the meticulous care given to that Cemetery there was not a lot of fuel debris left and it served as A fire break and potentially Sav Southern Altadena so uh group of concordians uh at the uh Finn school and the robins house came

together mindful of the debt of gratitude this community owes to Altadena for looking out for our daughter and her family and they also wanted to try and ease the pain that Aladin has gone through as theyve suffered a grievous loss they've come together in Conjunction with the Altadena Historical Society to uh have the Altadena fire relief fundraiser and that's in the little handout I've passed out to you uh the fundraiser is going to be February 2nd uh 3M at Ward Hall at the Finn school and again it's it's our way of a sister Community to

say thank you for what you've done for our daughter but also to try and ease the pain that they're going through right now I'd ask you through your personal networks and Certainly through the wider conquered School Community Network to pass this information on so that the whole Community can participate and help to ease alad's pain by something as significant as a contribution as significant as a participation or something as simple or as meaningful as our students at the new ill and Garrison building writing their thoughts their concerns their cares and their hopes to try and

ease the pain of the community In Al so I would ask you all to look at yourselves look at the information pass it on to your community use the networks through our school system to help bring our community to help our sister Community 3,000 miles away thank you thank you very much any other comments um comment we have one on line all right one question online do we have I'm sorry that's okay forgot I had A roll in there it's okay she should be joining as a pist now and you can come off mute and

camera to speak I'm trying okay um I don't know how to un see myself but anyway I see you're unmuted but we can't hear you okay I'm I'm uh an shofler at 41 Millrun Lane um one of the reasons I'm tun in tonight is because I'm very concerned about the Meco program at the so we thought this room was fully functioning Today you can see her her mic's oscillating meaning she's speaking all right okay am I still on okay all right hello we can't hear her and we can't hear you we see you okay it

says I'm here I'm unmuted oh on this it's not working it's not working that's just off of my computer do you want hold on hold tight for just a second an okay we want To hear from you just hold on a second we don't have any sound off of The Zo yeah we can't hear it in the room put your computer on we can is it gonna Echo if I just turn my volume she just turns her volume up unmute I'm trying that again hold on and we can hear you on Zoom but we can't

hear you in the room so just give us two seconds oh okay okay so this is all we have Oh Lordy he doesn't know why Happening okay we should be able to hear her through the speakers all right did I speak you can just not talk it's going to Echo but just her maybe you can repeat what I'm saying I don't know's and we're gonna have you speak and just listen we're we're getting an echo here but we'll be able to understand what you're saying okay and you you could pass it on to the room

Um one of the reasons I'm tuned in tonight in particular um one was to see if anything was being done um to Ala Dena and I'm really glad to hear about that and I also was really concerned uh hearing about metco at the high school the problems that there have been I know there's someone standing in I I think we owe it to all the kids the Meco kids and to our community here to try to do something to rectify what shouldn't have happened which is a break In communication and a break in support and

um my children went through metco programs in Lexington and they were very positive they they have um kept up with their um Meco friends and it's just a really disturbing to hear that this community isn't putting more emphasis on making that work and making sure that all the kids can be comfortable and perhaps talk about what has happened amongst themselves they need some leadership there to be able to Talk about it so I'm really concerned and I hope that I hear some positive news about tonight about metco tonight thank you all right thank you very

much and we heard you here in the room um appreciate you coming on okay so that closes out public comment so we're going to move into the discussion section um of the evening we actually have a a pretty packed agenda Um really exciting one I think this is what um a lot of have been looking forward to um we have uh a Meco update uh with Millie here um I'm personally excited we've never met so nice to meet you or have you here um we also have Andrew here for our de deib update we're going

to go over our um budget in a number of different ways based on the feedback we had in the last meeting and then also just because it is budget season we have a lot to cover um we do Have a warrant for the around the amenities building as well as some updates on the liaison groups um I know the campus completion group met this morning um we also have a first draft of the calendar we're going to go through um the graduation policy ikf um and then we didn't have a chance to do it last

last meeting um but as we're closing out January we're also going to review our goals for the year um and just make sure we're we're on Track um so with that Millie I'd love to have you come up and do that the Meco update so just some Preamble as Millie's making her way up if that's all right um Millie's here at CEO and president of Meco Inc so she works in Boston and works with both her board of directors and all 33 Meco districts all of varying sizes and um locations it's really exciting when Millie

can get out to conquer this is her second trip in 10 days so we're really grateful for that She'll probably give you some highlights of the Friday she was here um a couple of weeks ago um through Meco headquarters Andrew and I are on different um levels of meetings uh both with other superintendents with other Meco directors um often the uh sitting Meco directors will join into those meetings um she's really the spoke to All Things Meco she's got a really big picture understanding of funding of the lobbying Work that goes on continually of the

status of the program and all of its components and I think we're really hopeful to have you share some of those highlights and then we're going to talk um at a very high level about Meco with Andrew because the program still reports to him but the only Parts he's responsible for is the highest level and um the directors do all the rest so um this is all meant to be a a conversation and collaborative um nobody's here to Just lecture you so hopefully you'll be able to really engage with both of them as they come

chat with us hi Milly welcome back to thank you thank you Lori and so nice to meet the people that I hav't met before I think I've met a good number of you already um and so happy to see our mecho um representative here with us and taking on that leadership role here and nice to meet you Julie um I want to be respectful of the agenda I know you said it's very tight so couple Of minutes from me what is it that you have in mind I think we we'd love to do like 15

20 minutes so I think most of it will be of a discussion if you're open to that yeah the discussion very open to that because I also want to make sure that we get to Andrew because he has a lot of specific things to share that I'll even be able to maybe chime in on some of that work oh there I am do I look okay already knows I have to always make A joke or something it's a long day we got to be be able to last here you know make sure everything everything always

you know it's too tall for me so hi everybody there on on zoom and on the audience I'm here as well um so you know I definitely want to be open to whatever you want to ask of me today because I don't get that opportunity to just have an open dialogue so definitely we should have some time to do that piece you know in general what I do want to say is that I know there there have been some concerns that we have we heard today and we just hearing overall but I have been involved

with the conquered Meco program for a very long time um I wouldn't say a very long time but since I started here and it's going to be seven years um in a couple of weeks and this one of one of the the Meco District that I'm probably the most engaged in uh to the point that the NM superintendent always tells me when are you going to spend some time Over here you're always over there at conquered or talking to Lori and Andrew so definitely spend a lot of time um here on a regular you know

on on a very consistent basis and have been in the midst of all of the work that's been done and I can tell you that I am very um impressed with the work that has happened here um and um I want to just set some context on that I mean first when we started meeting some years ago with the students I was coming here Regularly to meet with the students when the first um um set of issues came up you know that we needed to address and we met for many many hours over many many

days and months and I was coming here regularly I we had uh breakouts we had all the high school students we had a facilitator we had the entire leadership team um from Administration down to the high school um into the Mecha program present with our students and we actually you know heard a lot of Their recommendations that came out and the reason I say why I was impressed is because in many districts it does take some time for a list of um requests to actually get fleshed out and implemented fairly quickly on a systematic or

program level and I'm shortly after you know those recommendations came you know immediately there was a Saturday bus for sports that does I don't know if any other District that does that just for Mecca only don't know of any you know um There was a separ ation of um the Meco Staffing where before it was one person in charge of the program and you may remember that it was just Andrew um doing both uh you know un un um unlabeled Dei work because you didn't have the position before but definitely you know he was um

doing that Ro plus Meco and then within a short period of time the district actually opened up two positions for Meco elevated him to Dei director now having three positions Within a district that is looking at issues of race and Equity among other things but I'm going to focus on the racial part because that's what Meco you know is focused on on racial integration so I thought that was a very big um investment um not only District not only on the Meco program but districtwide you know whenever you have someone in charge of over a

hundred plus students and how many students do you have here Lori 3,200 no um in mecho 120 120 in multiple Schools and then a Regional High School that belongs to two districts that's pretty challenging you know so when we saw the K through 8 model um director and then the model of a high school person and then also with Andrews um overseeing you know that part and not losing the historical knowledge of the Meco program someone who's been there since I started and has gone through you know um all the all of the um different

things and variations of what has Happened here and also throughout our Meo communities because he was part of the Meco Directors Association and there's a wealth of knowledge that's shared there in that whole Community as well about best practices so I was personally happy when I heard about that because we're trying to get more districts to have more leadership not less so whenever you have more people paying attention to a program it's always going to be better and that was Also an investment that happened I know that your own um school committee um developed a

Dei subcommittee and you guys developed you know um I don't know the details of everything in in in very detail but I do know that you guys developed a committee you developed some protocols you developed you know a whole plan that I know that Andrew's going to give an update on that and that was very impressive too I mean we used to we just Had a Leadership Retreat at um at Gilette Stadium with all of our leaders about a hundred of our leaders went all all superintendents and Meco directors and this was one of the

examples that we used and Lori presented and I can tell you that after people presented we had like maybe five or six best practices conquered being one of them and once after we presented people broke into groups to kind of do a round table discuss mean I just kind of Round Rob it And go around the room and ask more details and Lor's group was so packed it was like everybody wanted to find out about the QR code the reporting mechanism how is that working you know just giving you some examples of things that I

have noticed that I've been that I've appreciated I know that when a an incident happened last year um with the bus in the um in the elementary uh School level there was an email that went out right away you know to to at Least acknowledge um you know and I know we can't talk about whatever happens in HR but things were addressed you know we don't know the details of all of that but I know that a letter went out immediately to address it and I know that when I saw that letter I reached out

to Lori immediately and I said wow you know I don't see that many superintendents immediately address an entire school system over something that actually you know that that actually Happens to an entire program when I've gone to some districts and asked them hey can you acknowledge what happened well we try to keep it which is within the people that it happened we don't need to like you know tell everybody else about it but she's been very vocal about whenever we need to address something as an entire school or as an entire program so you know

this is not to say to you that everything is perfect and it's not in any community in no Community I mean we developed a a Meco 2.0 pro um initiative that I'm happy to share with you after today um we have the entire um results of that assessment that we did systemically across the across all of our districts we developed um 13 commitments for um achieving excellence in school integration and we're trying to ensure that all of our districts are moving in some of those buckets not in all 13 because it's not realistic but pick

an area try to really Do a few years in that area and become a best practice and then pick up another area and that's what is our goal is is that every district is always taking something on on from that from those 13 commit because it took us two years to develop it and we had leadership on on that committee and we hired a firm from Washington DC to develop this blueprint for what does it mean to be a mecho district not a mecho program a Meco District you know we also the opening of Two

seats here for the mecho um for the Meco um for Mecha for the school committee it's also something that happened shortly you know after a lot of people you know were saying that list of things that they wanted to happen that kids asked for mecro room they got it we got two seats not one so I think we also have to look at celebrating our wins you know and celebrating not just our wins but just the progress that we've made along the way knowing that okay what Else do we have to do to do better

they've acknowledged that you know we we had we had a research that just came out and I don't know if you've seen it but also something that I can send to you after this but the Meco research um that just came out and um this past year from from Professor Elizabeth from T University professor of omics independent research nothing to do with us she had to get permissions to get data but it was her research and matter Of fact it's going to come in in my newsletter tomorrow that if you don't get that newsletter you

should sign up because your leadership um but um basically um she just got a President Biden presidential award for the Meco for the Meco research and it did show that it followed 10 uh 20 years worth of of um students that applied to Meco and got in and applied to mecho and didn't get in and the data did show that our students are doing overall in all Categories better than those who didn't get in but then when you look at the Suburban comparison there's there's the things that you've been hearing about that there's still some

gaps when it comes to racial Equity that we need to close we have reached some closing gaps from the Boston students and that's already documented but we need to do more to just close the gaps within all of our districts um and that's what I'm asking of all of our superintendent can We look at that data we now have it you know how can we have more targeted programming and ensure that we are you know that we are address in those gaps CU you know all of our scores affect um all scores affect the schools

including that one of our own Meo students which are fully enrolled in your program um so I'm just trying to go from my head because I don't usually speak from notes so I'm going just from all the things that that I that I can you know that I That I remember um I was here two weeks ago and I talked to the students and they were all very happy I mean so I I I that this was the ambassadors it was a conference room full of students they were happy they were actually telling me that

they love that their um their school leader and their guidance and their medical um you know director was pushing them to take AP and honors classes um they were actually um you know they actually get feedback from Their students to then talk to the principal you know periodically every couple of months um they also said that they were really happy with the current interco director because of overcommunication that's exactly what they told me and I put that in my story on the on my on my mmm mm is Millie's mecho midweek message I love acronyms

um so um and they actually told me that they said you know I appreciate that you know we're always um celebrating our Students in this Weekly Newsletter we're highlighting a student that needs to be highlighted we're celebrating each other's birthdays we're introducing a student that other people don't know so you know I have seen I have seen um a lot of progress in in all of those areas but I know that we have to have you know we have to do more on the on the academic parts and then how do we deal with that

you know with systemically addressing like the r you know racial um You know incidents or trainings and I know that um conquered is part of ideas and you guys have done a lot of training around that um and and also um that reporting mechanism how do we use that feedback to really kind of you know bring about you know some real some real um impressive systemic work that we can all then replicate because we are looking at all of our districts to be examples but we it almost feels like we're in a recent Buton after

George Floyd to like kind of really look and take an intentional look around this we've also given out many grants and um for racial Equity work and Conquer has always received those grants to either bring professional development or to do very targeted programming for the district and I'm sure that Andrew is going to talk about how those funds have been used um during the last couple of years yeah so I those are my mental verbal updates um but I'm happy to like You know reflect on more or answer any questions yeah that's great well first

of all thank you you um that was wonderful I have I have some questions but I'd rather take some from anyone um around the table anyone has any thoughts questions comments yes um so one of the things that I think is really challenging for us is we're so isolated in our own District right and We don't have a lot of as school committee members I mean like interaction with um other Meco districts to share sort of best practices so given that you're here you know I know for example last year we were lucky to have

mecho advocacy day in conquer so youa spoke I went um and I noticed that in those um in the speeches given by a lot of the other folks there from different districts a lot of what they were advocating for were things that we've Done again we're we are committed collectively to putting real significant financial resources behind everything that has we've articulated and specifically Andrew's articulated in his specific deib plan but I but what I'm curious about is like and you know what we've done you've highlighted it like what are we missing like what are like

do you have like one or two shining examples from some other districts that you think are really successful that um Other mecho District should be adopting because it's you yielded tangible success you know the tangible successes around Meco are all starting to I think be more documented now because of all of the is and programs like this you know historically the MEO program has kind of like existed I think the examples I'm not and I'm honestly I'm not I'm not sitting here to preach to the choir to boost you guys up but I use this

District all the time for examples like The SLE day buses the two directors the um the ambassadors me um you know meeting with the leadership at at the high school on a regular on a regular basis you know all of those things that I mentioned like that's not happening everywhere what I would say what's what's you know what could happen at all districts here included is the whole academic piece absolutely like a targeted Approach at looking at the data what is the data staying how do we put Some resources around you know um ensuring that

that's that that's happening and how do we do more professional development for our teachers and our Educators and look at our curricul but that's systemically what I say literally across the board I mean those are the areas that are so large and so huge that it takes you know like a big systemic approach over a period of time you know um with a lot of intentionality to you know to do that But I think if now that we have the data to see where our students are scoring in comparison to the Suburban students can we

look at that and do something about that data specifically you know for example I can tell you that um reading um is actually investing um some of the money that we give away to uh A literacy program but you guys are doing something around that cuz I'm one of your speakers coming up for that uh but you know they're they're actually um they're They're they're they're hiring a company to come in and work with the MEO students in first grade and give them that intentionality of that support for x amount of months and then seeing

if their literacy level goes up um in other districts when the bus arrives early they're turning it into a tutorial so they're asking for um this actually is happening sharing and they're actually hired on a stien level um some of the Meco sorry some of the regular teachers To just that half hour when they arrive early on the elementary school level can they actually go um and and have some support around homework support um and um in Lincoln Sudbury they have like a math Cafe so when you know when PE when the bus drops off

people are there hanging out and just like have and there's like um there's uh Math teachers available to kind of support in that um I thinkk you guys to the calculus project here yeah so you know I love the Calculus project it's one of my favorite pro um projects um out there and because I go to Brooklyn my daughter goes to Brooklyn and and and I don't know how you guys have it here but there is very very very targeted with a classroom with teachers with Summer programming and every time I turn around they're like

pushing my daughter you know to like take Advanced courses to not you know she just told me today I need to be at school by 7:30 cuz my calculus uh uh you Know teacher from last year still won't let me go and she needs to prepare me for midterms so I don't know how that's running here but you know those are some examples but I would say let's focus on the academic pieces and let's focus on more professional developments because it's not because whatever is happening racially is for a couple of things one racism exists

and we're not ever going to get rid of it unfortunately look at what's Happening in our nation now um it comes from people's homes too when you're dealing with you know thousands of students and you don't know what beliefs people have about their own homes and then come over here and say an unappropriate comment and sometimes teachers just don't know any better yet because they haven't been trained we're talking I mean know Lori sits in several committees at at the at the superintendent level at Mass Massachusetts and on and on in um and on Desi

and there's even the training programs for teachers that don't even train around Equity you know and I don't know how how much you've looked at your curriculum to make sure that your curriculum is also you know um it's also inclusive like in for example we used some of the Meco uh grant money last uh two years ago in Brook line and we actually not I say we that's my district but it is our Meo money that I Helped advocate so it's we it's all we everything's we so um basically they hired an external firm to

look at their history curriculum their social studies curriculum to uh at the entire district and because I remember that I had a complaint because my daughter had a an assignment that made her cry because she had to defend slavery so that was actually but the assignment was written it was actually in the curriculum but also teacher should know better like Okay like use your common sense maybe we don't use that anymore so you know that's another example so I hope I gave you a few examples again that I don't know if you guys already are

Target in those sense you probably are in some way or another but those are some of the things that I would really like to see happen that's great teacher training and academic closing gaps in a deeper way that you can follow and track that's great we have about five more minutes And then Millie if you're willing I'd love for you to stick around for Andrew because one of the things that we're going to do tonight is we really the comparing and contrasting that you started to do with with reading with Lincoln Sudbury that that's actually

some of the questions that I had and that's what we're going to be looking at the budget as well to say these are the Investments that we've made can we make them differently still keep them within Investments in Meco but if there's things that are happening in other districts can we move some things around through you know a discussion of of looking at things um but does anyone have any other questions we have time for maybe yeah go ahead Cynthia so my experience a long time ago some of our my colleagues had kids in the

system we had many more M and we had them spread throughout our elementary schools now have them only one Elementary School I think that's already resulted in a different experience because two our elementary schools don't have students in them um it seems to me that enrollment is important that it sort of probably a number year in mind 5% I look at West has over 7% students smaller School smaller District Lincoln also has Lincoln has the largest percentage wise but they're small District but that's yeah there's one big thing about those two Districts are that's a

well West Weston and Lincoln are not considered to be close for parents I know somebody they say they just jump on the bike and get so they have that extra anyway it seems like it's closer for them I don't know but are you asking the question about enrollment yes so the enrollment question um so two so two things you asked me the first part of your question was about being percentage of me Students that makes it sucessful feel like weow now think it around well the racial imbalance is supposed to be a lot more higher

percentage than that to achieve racial imbalance and I don't and I mean at every Community across the state of Massachusetts we're actually going to have advoc we're going to have a legislative briefing in next month and we're having someone come and speak about the um the the state of Segregation in our um in Massachusetts which is sorry yeah which is actually you know it's it's it's happening all across our state so I don't have necessarily a percentage number because of a couple of reasons one is that historically the Mecha program is being funded by your

kind of historical real um numbers from from Forever from before my time and because we are state funded once you begin to actually increase that we will Need to find more money to at least give you the per pup that we reimburse which is about $8,000 and then you also get Chapter 70 money as well that goes directly to the school district so I when when we talk about expansion I have to take that conversation very care because other districts would um are not necessarily ready for that discussion because that means we have to spread

the money even wider okay but what I've done before is find out which school Districts want to expand because you have the available seats and then I used that for a lobbying request for example I was successful working um with our lobbyist a couple years ago with our legislators to increase enrollment in Reading in um lynfield and in Westwood trying to go through my head of so many districts you know but they were but they went through the school committee they requested it they got approved they identified where The where the things were and then

we had a good year for funding and we put it in the actual legislative ask we said we want to increase Meco by 80 seats in these communities so if we wanted to look at that here we certainly can you know can do that and then begin to craft a legislative ask um around that but we have to involve Desi we have to bring we have to involve the legislators and the whole me Community around about we have done it once since I've been here and we Haven't done expansion in decades but that particular year

I was like you know let me try it out and let me see if if if we can make it happen and and and we did as a one-time thing um and in terms of what you said about did you have a concern about everybody being in one District in one school versus being in another I personally think we had a more successful program but we need more kids we had more kids then so we couldn't split eight kids amongst three schools Right that that actually what's happening around that too is that a few districts

actually moved to you guys's model so it's happening right now like literally right now lexley and Lexington Welsley and Lexington just made the whole approval on that and they spent a year looking at you know at the data and because the you know when you spread um a small amount of kids so thinly it's not good for anybody so um I've been going back and forth on how I feel about That because I feel I can see both ways and I like both ways I would love to have a mro Meco students not a Meco

student students in every school so that the entire Community can benefit because once you have that whole Meco program it's true then you have an eye from the Meco you have an eye from the leadership you might have more you might do more cultural celebrations more PDS because you got to prepare for that whole inclusion um but I also don't want to Spread it so thin that then now this kid is going to feel a certain kind of way I mean when my daughter got into Brooklyn she was only one of two students in a

school of 800 that got in so you can imagine that piece it was pretty insignificant I was glad I got in I wasn't a mecho CEO yet I was in a whole different agency working so I was all before all this policy stuff because she's now I've been on the job seven years and she's now in in a jeers so I Like to say that I like people think that I had favoritism there or I chose um but but it was only two people the and it was five grades of kindergarten five classes cuz it

was Brooklyn was huge that year and it was only two so um I think think I I like to discuss both and see how we can actually you know um achieve that thank you great have a real quick question um so we had worked and I think Mo four of us I think were on the committee when we Put our school committee reps on and we had talked to other um committees that had school committee reps and at the time we were number four how many of your Medco communities have school commit reps not many

like not even onethird Okay so it's probably gone beyond the four yes gone beyond the four Welsley just picked it up Bedford just picked it up so the usual districts that are all trying to do you know um do do these kind of Right Moves are moving in That direction but um in the last couple of years it was Welsley and it was at Bedford that opened up a seat okay great great anything any final comments anyone well I just want to say I don't like so I I I see both sides but having all

of the kids at w Elementary School I hate that idea I just think that it does a disservice to conquered because some sometimes you know at the and we have we it's shown at the middle school and we have issues that have Risen at the middle school because you know this the first time some of these kids are interacting with um kids of color which it is sad but you know so I just think that having all the medical kids at one school you know does a disservice to conquered as a whole because you're not

you know we're not you're not they not getting the same experience so I would love to see me kids in all the elementary schools yeah no I agree I mean I want that in all of I mean we have 190 um schools within the 33 mition I would love to see them in all of them and now that some people started to move away I got really concerned about that but I understand the logic when I you know and I I can't I can't um you know interfere too much with HR matters and space matters

because everybody knows her District better but what I what they did justify to me was like oh now I can have more staff for our Meo students like for Example you have Latoya in the in the elementary school and she's now doing a um a a a lunch group where she got a special curriculum from a black author on coloring books and she uses her lunch clubs to actually use those coloring books to see people that look like them to talk about future career options the kids are loving it they're saying that person looks like

me I can see myself in that pathway so that's a win right there like if you would have have to be Everywhere when I see people um everywhere like you can't even find the medical staff sometimes uh when they're spread in too many schools let me just say that when I've seen it another districts like well which day are they supposed to be here well now they told me they're over there but now you know I know I had had a principle that told me I really want my own meal person here because then they

can be in IEP meetings they could be at lunch groups they could Be at uh report CS or parent nights so there's a catch to everything and that's catches Staffing and also how the person feels if you have a person dedicated to support in you it goes a long way like you know Brooklyn is Big so my daughter has a specific Meco person there and if it wasn't for that Meco person I don't know what we would do but imagine if they had to split themselves in a in a high school of 2,000 people like

that's my my kid would just be a number you Know but they have they have they have a bigger budget they have a bigger program they have 300 students therefore they have more Staffing so I think the Staffing part justification of it and the PD to that particular school like in kassa for example they use one of our meical grants to train the entire school on on on what's the thing that I'm doing restorative justice so that was much more doable because it was one whole school so they can grab all their Educators to get

trained on that versus if you spread it thin and I get one person from every school what is one person gonna do yeah well it's good feedback and I think that's why it's a great commenta I think when we go through the budget and it's going to be ongoing we're not going to solve it tonight but I think um we can start looking into it and and seeing what we can do um Milly thank you well I just want to say thank you to all of you for Approving all matters Meo for supporting Lori and

Andrew in this work for allowing you know two Spa two seats here um for our Meco parents to have a voice and for what you do um in terms of the budget decisions that you make I am very aware of the budgetary um decisions that you make that benefit our program above and beyond what the Grant provides and it truly is impressive in some other communities I hear this is the MEO Grant the me Grant has been exhausted there's Not anything else left and there's anything else that can't that we can do and I'm like

that is not what the me Grant or program is supposed to be we fill empty seats with diverse students and give you diverse staff and give you a marginal Grant because it's called a marginal seat program and then once you made a commitment to join the Meco program you have to understand that that commitment is all the way it is not just as far as the dollar goes or as far as The grant you're in Meco district for a reason you know in most communities people pay to bring diversity in you know as you know

I mean in more not Community some programs you know what I mean they'll pay somebody like I'll pay if we can get um a person here we give you some money we don't give you all the money and we are aware aware of that you know but a true Meco district is one that doesn't go you know nickel and diam and say the Meco Grand has been Exhausted um and you guys have shown over and over again especially on your transportation cost um you know that you really you know in your Dei efforts here splitting

that and adding to more people that that you really care about this and that hasn't going to notice at least by me just want to let you know that thank you thank you thanks for driving out no problem I will be here till the end okay great you might might regret that as Andrew comes up I just want to Note um our building level metco leaders are here either online or in person Solange Benjamin's here in the room from alott um our coordinator Andre Thomas our coordinator from the middle schools online and our interm director

mulen Fernando from the high schools also online so we appreciate their time tonight I think they're here to listen and support but uh we're really glad they're they're available it's great thank you and welcome nice to see you Good evening everyone evening how it so Andrew just to set the stage for for everyone that um we got your the documents um a good amount of information so thank you so much I know we're going to really focus on maybe the three to five key things um you know what you think is working um and anything

you want to highlight so probably about the same maybe 15 minutes or so if that's all right including Q&A absolutely so yeah definitely good Evening everyone um folks online good evening my name is Yer I am the director of deib for coner public schools and Conquer car um pleasure to be here with you all um so I think first uh shout out to Millie you know she's she's been she's great um and a hard act a difficult act to follow um data got the data but of course than I think it's important that you know

I definitely acknowledge here today that um You know here in Massachusetts particularly in public education uh the EI efforts are 100% supported uh by desie the department of Elementary and secondary education um they issued their educational Vision back in June of 20124 um and I just want to start by reading that educational Vision because I don't know if many people have taken the time to look at it um it pretty much summarizes the work that I do and the Work that our admin team and our teachers and staff and you all as school community members

are striving towards so Desi's educational Vision uh states that all students in Massachusetts particularly students from historically underserved groups and communities will have Equitable opportunities to excel in all content areas across all grades culturally and linguistically sustaining classroom and school practices will Support students to thrive by creating a firm in environments where where students have a sense of belonging engage in deeper learning and are held to high expectations with targeted support and it's important to start here because again this vision is what our district strives towards every single day and I see that in in

in practice every single day across all of our schools um and you know particularly with with with The limited time that I have and and I hope folks really take a moment to look at the 50 slides that I've put together and it and I promise you it doesn't capture everything that we do um but at a high level it captures a lot of of of the great work that we're doing across our schools and so for today I'm really just going to focus on my goals and within each goal I am going to share

an example of of of how this work um has evolved in practice um and so with each Goal I'm also going to pause and then have a conversation or a question that way we can just sort of balance the time um so you know one of my first goals this year and of course I think it's important to start with this is really collaborating with our admin team our teachers um our support staff to support the needs of our students even our employees and of course our families um you know this work does not get

sustained over over the years that I've Been here in Silo I do not work in Silo I collaborate with every single stakeholder in this district and that's just the expectation that Dr Hunter sets and that's the work that our admin team um sort of follows and so um W within this goal you know one of the great work that we're doing and I'm so glad to partner in this work with Shelly chenar our interim assistant superintendent of teacher and learning is reviewing the um ver literature that we adopt in our Curriculum we now have a

14 member and that's been sustained over the years over the last three years actually we have a 14 member um um uh sort of team comprising of Educators across all of our district K through 12 and you know what we do is we have teachers who bring to the committee uh diverse books that they really hope to adopt in in the classroom books that represent the intersecting identities that our students have and their live experiences Right and so these are books that are meaningful not just for the teacher but also uh really representative of the

students that are in front of them and so you know this year we have worked very closely together uh uh Shel and I and also partnered with um Dr Paula Martin who is an ideas instructor she actually runs our implicit bias training uh course for many of our Educators every year and Dr Martin myself and Shelly uh we you know together help Facilitate this committee and so that work you know continues and I know in the coming months uh shil and I and the committee are hoping to really ensure that the work that we're doing

internally is public facing so folks un have a better understanding of what we do within this this culture competency and literature committee and again that's K through 12 um so I'll pause there because you know I can go on and on about all the great work we do there In terms of collaboration but I wanted to pause there if there any questions comments keep I I have one question I think for me when I went through not only the preed that you sent over but also just the discussions that we've had since I came over

here to the region there is an incredible amount of uh professional development around deib I've been really impressed with how much is invested in it and then I look at some of um the activities in the Community like I'm going to go to the anxiety discussion tomorrow m a health discussion tomorrow night at the high school um there seems to be a a huge focus on deib do you have a sense of the percentage um of professional development and activities that is either completely focused on deib or has an um a component of it yeah

yeah so I'll skip ahead because I'm gonna answer I'm gonna answer you know my third goal And that's that's focused on PD so let me start by saying that you know in in many school districts it's very difficult to offer PD to support support staff often times support staff you know our tutors you know they're just forgotten right and you know when we think about who within the school district that students interface with bus drivers right cafeteria staff even custodial staff right and so we have to what we Have done at least here in conquer

is that we have beg to um provide professional development for our support staff as well and the fabulous thing is we've over the last two years and Millie sort of referenced this um I have written a grant uh to Meco in through their racial Equity integration REI uh grant program and we have received $20,000 for the last two years to support specifically professional development For our support staff and they go through an implicit bias training it's a halfday professional development uh program that is facilitated by ideas they sent us anywhere from four to six facilitators

and over the years the last two years we have had um this year we had 63 support staff attend last year the first time we did it we had over a 100 right and so again bus drivers custodian staff admin assistants tutors right are Offered that um but let me give you some numbers last year 23 24 school year we provided 16 professional development opportunities for our educ Educators nine of those uh PD offerings were focused on deib and we saw 51% participation rate just for the deib uh professional development this year we took a

different approach uh where we worked very collaboratively with our department chairs our Educators to really design um Professional development that was focused more so within departments um and also some work that happened over the summer particularly at the high school where each department came up with their own Equity goal right and then with very concrete actionable steps to achieve those goals and so taking that different approach different uh professional development approach we offer 32 professional development opportunities largely facilitated by our Educators uh for their colleagues and within that 32 14 of those professional development offerings

were deib focused okay um and we saw an 82 % participation rate and we currently have a professional development offering happening right now through ideas and it's our yearly annual um sort of implicit bias training uh for our faculty and that's actually happening starts started this week um and so you know what what what what I gather is That two things when Shelly started in the fall uh rather in the summer um one of the first things things we did was we surveyed our faculty to say hey you know what do you think is most

important to you when it comes to uh uh uh our professional development and in that data cultural competency was ranked one of the highest right so we know what our Educators need right and so I think that helped us as an admin team understand That we need to put more emphasis in the PD hence why you see that that jump right and and numbers uh in comparison to last year in terms of those deiv offerings and so you know I can offer I think between shy and I we can give you um the document that

outlines all the professional development opportunities we offer this year um but I did reference many actually many of them are actually referen in my slides um you know and so and so it's great it's great That our our our faculty fully understand that this work the only way this work is is is going to be effective for them is US providing them professional development um opportunities that are practical and that they can walk away with real concrete tools and skills to implement um in your teaching practice and I think we are seeing the benefits of

that um if this was a discussion about culturally responsive practices we can Shel and I Could probably give you examples after examples of how that is being uh um how that work is evolving for each department for each teachers whether it's our faculty member or support staff um so you know the work around professional development is important and and I think when you look at our U Deb strategic plan and even our districtwide strategic plan it's it's it's one of the pillars um in in our strategic plan so great work happening There and it continues

Andrew just to clarify on the um PD opportunities for both last year and this year are those um K to 12 they targeted at the high school yeah so no so some of the PD um we kind of again we took not only a departmental approach but each school also created their own professional development uh offerings and so um there are a set number of PD that were specific to high school number of PD specific to the middle school and the Set number of PD specific to the figured I just wanted to clar yep and

we can again you know we can we can share that information afterwards yeah good Alex um you know Millie focused and thought one of the things that we should focus on is the academic piece and and whatnot so um it looks like we're making nice gains in mcast scores um but where we're sort of lagging behind as participation in honors level and AP level classes and you know one of the things that I wonder And this is not necessarily a conversation just for you but for everybody is you know and I am totally biased here

in so far as I'm like kind of a rotten math student for example um so I think like is there an opportunity because I think again I'm biased math I think is very hard science is really hard is there an opportunity that we should be discussing from an equity perspective about expanding our honors offerings in the Humanities which again not to diminish that subject matter but it is a little bit more subjective I'm G to stop you because those are conversations we're having but they're not Prime Time ready yet I don't know I was just

we're having those convers we're definitely having those convers that's something that I would personally love we're definitely having those conversations okay all right you're totally right have some more questions and I guess like when I Was looking at some of the mcast I have to say your slides exceptional I loved them I'm like I literally anything that I want to know is in these lines I mean seriously and I have not found that in other districts because I do poke around sometimes I think Andrew makes fun of me where I poke around and look at

things but I haven't seen sometimes I haven't seen it in other districts like so like it's it's really it's all there and I think that that's what we have to Remember like we are doing some really great things here and um your work and your efforts are definitely appreciated I mean I think back to that Dei subcommittee it was called the Dei subcommittee but you were adamant about putting the B into it we are one of the only districts that has that b into it because belonging is really in the middle of that and I

think that that is probably you know the best thing that you have brought to us and I thank you For that because it really does help us to focus as a committee and it focuses on all students um but you know I was I went off on a tangent for a minute I was actually going to talk about English because I do think that honors at the high school honors English at the high school we've seen significant growth in mcast and how can we not say that well actually they haven't taken it yet have they

have they taken it yet but they had it last year they had it last year they Had it last year they did have it last year so we've seen an impact already on programming that has changed and that has been under your leadership so I just wanted to you know focus on that and really when you look at all of these slides we can see your goals in there you see the Dei strategic plan and we've been there from the beginning I mean I feel like I've known you since you're a med Cod director so

it's been a while um but but I think we have to remember that We have a lot of great things happening here and sometimes it's not the story that we're always putting out there front and center on everything because we just do it as part of who we are exactly and I and I'll steal something from uh uh Dr khis warnham and and and Dr Carol Blake when they were here doing their um Equity audit their racial Equity audit and one of the recommendations that's not formally documented in in their findings but they Left here

saying we've got to do more in just marketing you know marketing all the great you know communicating and Mark all the great work that we do because we do a lot so that's that's actually what I was going to say so one of the thing we've obviously been having a very public discussion about a lot of things that are very charged and I think what sits with me is what we talked about in the last meeting where like all of us not just us from the school Comm I Think everyone in this room wants to

see either the 0% or the 100% meaning 100% of kids feel like they belong 0% of kids are contemplating suicide or any of those other horrible things we know we're not going to get there just like Millie said we're never going to eradicate racism even though we all want to so what I'm trying to figure out is like I'm an impact person I want to know what is going to have the biggest impact so we're running out of time um I knew This would happen um but I think for you like like like Jas said

I I got went through this there's a lot of stuff I have questions and I but I think for me what I would love to know is out of everything that you're doing what is having the most impact on what you said at that opening statement about that sense of belonging because you're doing everything you're doing sense of belonging for for race for gender for a number of different things um so wearing Your de Dei hat where are you have seen the biggest impact like what programs what things are you seeing that's a tough one

I see see I'm seeing wins across the board I will focus on what's happening this year and I think um it started last year Dr Hunter myself the admin team we really started to look at academics academic achievement and really sort of deconstructing sort of the systems and Practices that have sort of perpetuated this under representation of our subgroups right of students we're talking students of color loow income students students with disabilities Etc and when you sort of step back and look at it from a 50,000 foot view you begin to understand that there are

some things we are just doing that just prevent kids from accessing honors level AP right and when we really That courageous to have the conversations we realized we just have to be bold in terms of just dismantling those those practices those gatekeeping practices that are keeping students behind and one of the markers that I sort of was sort of my that sort of empowered me and and and I did ask Brian Miller uh co-principal at the high school to share this data when we look at the AP exam pass rate Rate by subgroup black students

85.7% pass rate Hispanic students 97% pass rate lwi income students 89.3% pass rate okay and that is data looking at uh that is historical data okay and the conclusion that I arrived at was and and and if Brian Miller was here and Katie stall was here they would agree that when we provide access for these students particularly in AP they do well when they take these exams right despite the historical data that shows that there is a massive under representation of these students at this level of of of of courses when we provide them access

and the supports that they need they do well they rise they rise right they rise to the occasion MH and so we can have that mindset that growth mindset for every child in this district and begin to point the fingers At ourselves and and and and and and just be honest about what we have done to perpetuate some of these barriers for our kids we can then begin to say okay you know what perhaps these subgroups of students need a program like the calcus project right where they not only are getting those targeted supports that

is reference in Desi's educational Vision but guess what they are now cohorted with kids that look like them and there's a sense of Empowerment and confidence that comes from just that yep right we're not talking passing exams like we're just talking that sense of belonging yeah right and so there's a lot of work that we're doing around that piece and we're we're definitely seeing improved marked results and actually one of the things I would love Dr Hunter and I have been talking about this is is find some time for Dr Mims and uh founder of

the calcus Project and his team because they just met with us last last week and shared some highlights about our program and we are seeing some drastic changes and it's been just eight months maybe less than a year of us just boldly making some changes that are impact in so that's great so the reason that that stands out especially on for tonight is there's two things that have stood out to me since June one is what Aisha said when we were doing our goals around I like figuring Out IEPs early and and I think we've

started to dig into that with shelle's help with Dr Hunter's help so I want to keep doing that and I think we're set to revisit that next month so that's one so that's gets to what you're talking about and then I think the second one is what Alexa mentioned either the last meeting or two meetings ago which is we obviously can do a lot of things in school committee but one of our biggest responsibilities is the budget and so Hearing from you about like investments in different academics or supporting you with the with the grants

or going above and beyond and some of the things that Millie mentioned earlier like that's what we want to make sure that we're we're talking about because there's a lot that we can control within the 68 hours that kids are either on a bus or in the school but there's a big world out there and I think all of us want to Be a part of things like whether it's what Dr Williams said at the beginning during public comment like or the things that we're doing at the high school tomorrow night um I think we

just have to also be realistic about like what we can control so that we're having the impact that we all desire and so um keeping that in mind I think whatever we can do to continue to hear from you about those three to five impact things that you need um that's what I Personally would would love to see and then if there is an investment that's missing um then let's be loud about you know hey we need this and prioritize it because we want to make sure that we're we're impacting in the right way absolutely

um it's 7:06 we have a lot to cover does anyone have any other final comments for Andrew or questions thank you yeah thank and I I've been sitting here really quietly Wasn't that impressive how long I didn't talk um you know I think the biggest impact Andrew has is the work he does with others and I think one of the challenges we're having with the marketing of the role and this is the vision that it's where and you said he said it to me five years ago right in my face was this is not a

black person's problem to solve the white people need to solve it and that's how we've LED so he's empowering the rest of us to Understand what we're doing and how we have say and impact and by we I mean the leadership team the teachers and so it isn't just a oneperson job which is not normal in a lot of districts right now and I think that's why we're having a hard time showing you what he's doing a lot of the time because it's coming out in all these other ways um but you know for me

Brian Miller and Katie stall got up a year ago and said it's a tale of two schools and they put up the data Disaggregated to their faculty in one of the courage most courageous moments I've seen in leadership in 25 years um it was really hard for people to see that the white kids of conquered are soaring and the kids of color are absolutely not soaring to the same level and it's changed everything it's changed all of our conversations at the high school so it's just really worth noting that and I think the part you

say in have is the support of the budgets and the the Asks that we bring but you've also created a dynamic where the union the CCTA brought you a pretty I was say difficult proposal last spring that had some funding attached to build in a recruitment pipeline of diverse staff you didn't have to support that at the bargaining table but you did and they're moving along and giving me updates and getting ready to get to the next phase of planning you didn't have have to support the um FTE that took on the Creation of a

black history course but you did and now the course is running there's 22 kids in or so in it as of this week tomorrow most of them metco conquered kids of color I am so excited to see kids finding themselves in that room that was developed by a teacher of color and other kids of color and what that's going to sort to you're doing it I think we just all have to keep maybe putting more names to it and saying this is part of that work um but it's never Done right it's never done and

there's still things that go wrong here and teachers make mistakes kids make mistakes that's really hard because it's really painful and has negative long lasting impact and so we don't want to pretend that all isn't happening it is um and the goal I think if if the if the work isn't proactive with the kids and the teachers to avoid those things that when it does happen we've got a foundation to look to staff or kids and Say remember what we talked about in The Playbook initiative remember what that PD did for you do you see

what we mean by unconscious bias can we step back and think about this now it's giving us a different set of tools when problems happen um the goal is no problems like you said of course and we'll keep striving for that so awesome well thank you again absolutely we'll be here you thank you absolutely thank you all right we are going to move on to the budget We're going to do um I'm wondering if we can swap C for D if we could start just because we do have Milli and Andrew here if they want

to stick around um but you don't have to um is this the time we can be release or no if you can stay for like five or 10 more minutes there's some budget tell me when you want okay there's related budget things want them if you want to join us come yeah come on up Mill you too yeah I think I think it's just important Because it goes back into the budget's kind of a um it's pretty set but at the same time there's a lot of wiggle room so we want to make sure we're

having that discussion you okay I don't like that he he's On My Level slightly higher that's why I went with [Laughter] it yeah so I think yeah we're Meco or deib whatever you want to start with whatever you have up so Millie we tried To compile at the committee's request what we're spending towards Meco at both CPS K8 and the high school so they've got that data I'm just going to put an asteris all of these were really hard there's some really direct things that you can easily track and pull out and then there's a

lot of more indirect things that um we actually didn't try to capture so you've got really the mo most direct costs um and expenses that we're subsidizing for Meco and uh deib with Great intent of serving kids well so yeah so it's precisely wrong that was my big disclaimer precisely well read there so Bob's going to pull that up your favorite statement you say that a lot it is directionally accurate all right it's up so um I'm displaying the um the metco program costs and funding information I included this in the um school committee uh

posting of the agenda online um and uh just wanted to Highlight a couple things before we're diving into it um this does not include core instru administrative and operating costs um that support all students in our district schools um whether they're from Boston or conquer or car we we have uh core staff U that educates our students and um that's not included in these numbers these numbers are intended to highlight um costs that are specific to metco uh separate from that in addition to that um and we've Highlighted what is Grant funded and what is

covered um through our budget um so you can see kind of the difference so I have um I'm going to start with the high level um our two districts and this is fy2 uh information for the current year um conquered Public Schools is on the left conquered Carlile is on the right and what I've uh what what what this essentially shows is the orange um highlighted uh section is the costs That are born uh by The District's budget um and the blue in the light blue uh part of that is um metco funded grant funding

part of its Staffing and part of its um non-staff expenses the light blue is the non-staff the dark blue is the staff so um in CPS um this has been a little bit of a a gradual um change over the past couple years where we've gotten to this point uh a lot of the costs in the orangee section are for things like uh transportation Uh teacher costs AIDS and tutor costs and I have more detail on the following slides but when you look at the two districts and Conquer Carlile um at the high school um

most the grant covers most of our costs um so Transportation the director um so that's kind of This was um we had an inkling of this but until we put pulled the data together it was a little bit surprising for us to see the CPS uh piece at least to me um So I'm just sharing this to kind of be give some visibility to it um the next part um on the following page I'll show gives you detail on uh the different positions uh that are funded by the metco program the uh red highlighted items

are items that were funding from the budget um and um so you know the metco grant supports a director it supports supports staff uh an adjustment counselor which we added last year um Latoya um an academic liaison um in both The middle school and at Alcott we have bus monitors um for the middle school bus and the two Elementary buses um and then also funded by the grant is all of our transportation um the reference to weekend Athletics only refers to um that's really for for the high school um and then all of our Contract

Services uh not as much there um is funded by the grant some some of the PDS PD we do you know for the whole District but there Are certain PDS uh memberships and enrichment programs that we have specifically for Medco students um and then we have small budget for supplies and materials um so our overall costs are about a million two at CPS um and the grant funding um covers about I don't that's show shown here it's about 691 th000 at CPS and out of the budget we're funding 545,000 Um and at the high school

we have a similar model um similar staff we have one academic Leo Zone not two it's in one building um we do have a director we have a counselor um we have the same support staff person is really just their salary split between both districts so that's the same person um Barbara um and uh again the transportation we we've added late late buses we have uh two buses in the morning at the high school one in the Afternoon we have two late buses one for kind of regular after school activities that might end at 4

and one for uh when there's athletic events at the night and then we have weekend uh buses that run um when we have Medco students in um that practices on the weekend U for certain teams so if so just interject so if I'm reading this correctly if I look at something like transportation and strictly for the high school because that's where my purview is Um if I mean there's wiggle room for example if you have limited attendance in either like could you if you Consolidated one late bus that's something that we as a school committee

don't necessarily have to have our hands in but it's something that from that investment that's that's here that if there's some of the programs that have been talked about that Andrew's talked about or that Millie's talked about we could consolidate that and move it Around as such but that doesn't need to come to this committee for approval to do that is that a fair assumption to make I mean I think you know we responded some of what happened a few years ago in the listening sessions that have been referenced tonight was really hearing um accessibility

through Transportation especially to the high school and Athletics so we really triy to respond to that sure so I think if we were to shift from that we would want it To be a very um significant conversation include the Meco parent community Meco sta students even and really understand how that's going to play out and also proactively talk with them about what the other options are um you know it's a hard world to have kids on the te alone at 10 o'clock at night after a basketball game and right now we are running a bus

for those late games to get them back to the city so or after a Friday night football game we are Running a bus best way put like I don't want to make those decisions for the micro Community like I would defer to Aisha or to you like I I don't want to I just want to again just I'm looking at this and I'm seeing it's part of the grant it's in your purview like I want to be clear on what we put our hands in versus what you could get our advice on and then again

I would lean to Aisha because she's the Meco rep so I just don't know how how often we would pull Parents because things have could have changed since you did the Deep listening session how often yeah so we have a survey out right now okay so we're asking some of these questions Andrew and I um and the Met Co leers who are here tonight had a meeting Wednesday night of last week and had some conversation there we didn't Point Blank talk on sure Transportation it comes up at almost every discussion though because it's such a

critical component Of being able to participate here so I hear you it's like we can't do everything so are these the right priorities I think we should keep checking in okay yeah I had like a similar reaction like the I just did the math on the number of students at cchs and were spending close to $5,000 per student just on Transportation um which is a huge amount of money on transportation and obviously these buses are um serving a huge need getting kids I'm really curious what you think in particular but if the to Millie's point

the academics like really focusing on the academic needs are there ways that we could um think about some of that funding or or is the best use of that funding truly getting kids to and from school when they need to get there because sometimes that is the biggest barrier is just being where you need to be what's your so I mean not to put you on The spot you move from the microphone to I think that um transportation is important and um you know if there's ways to consolidate buses of course um that would be

great but also I don't want kids on a tea um at 10:00 at night either like no you know that Forest Hills is one of the late bus stops and we've had two shootings there this year so um at you know one being a homicide so I don't um you I I want the safest plan going forward so you know if we can Consolidate of course but but also keep in mind of safety as well yeah and when I say consolidate I think you're saying the same thing like we're not we don't want to consolidate

to end it we want to consolidate the transportation budget yeah and then move it to something like academic yeah yeah yeah and Millie I'm Cur yeah I'm curious what other districts do with Transportation uh probably not as much as you guys do in some cases um but I Would say that I did talk to Lori about this a few weeks ago when I was here because we were talking about you know the expenses and um and also I like what you said Julie that you basically said that what happened a few years ago the need

might be different now but I think everybody's advocating appropriately and I'm so glad that that uh Lori is not saying yes let's actually have this conversation and try to see if we can decrease it by really saying to have That deep conversation because you're right things could have changed like one of the things that I talked to Lor about it like if there's only one student running in a bus and that bus is costing $700 like we need to start looking you know I don't know if that's what the cost is per you know per

day I don't um I think it's around that amount actually I'm about 700 for a bus or less for if it's a late bus but um but that's something to look at because if the Usage is much much lower is there another way we talked about you know do people feel safe doing an Uber probably not is there some car pooling is there a van that you know like one one thing that a few districts did buy and I don't know if you guys have this but a few districts bought a Meco van so whe

when we had an increase one year like is that something that maybe you want to own your own van and then just pay for the driver you know or someone from within Like on Sports nights to go back and forth that's a way that you can then own the thing just pay you know maintenance and insurance and just have someone identified to be an hourly person you know to just kind of like or maybe even a parent volunteer and get those friends of Meo to try to maybe help out with that so I don't know

you know you got to think about those pieces because I do like what you guys are saying that we if we want to really make some can make Gains on academics if we also don't figure out you know where that money is going to come from and all of these are very very targeted programming you know that we're that we're thinking about so I think it's worth looking into I think it's um you guys have the survey out and I think also looking at the data because I was asked for example at my own office

to stay late for any late drop offs and I was like oh my God that's going to be Like I need a security guard I need a PM secretary I need a cleaner I need a staff person and then I was like okay I'm going to try it because like Lori is like I have to respond to the request right and to the need I used it for six months one person used it I was like okay not doing this right now I was said we're going to take back that money and if people need

it they'll call me and I'll make arrangements on that day versus leaving it endlessly open you Know Monday through Friday so I think it's worth uh looking into that especially if parents here that is going to be used for other things and if can people come up and maybe you know um say that they'll volunteer to like bring a kid back or even a meal parent getting a stipend you know what I mean and and and get permission from that other parent if it's just three students to go and bring the student after the game

a lot of parents come to that so but those needs Personalized conversations yeah okay that's good feedback some districts don't have a bus in the high school level because they proximity to Boston or don't have a late bus at all in an entire District there's no late buses at all that I know of okay that's only that I know of there's more yeah yeah survey coming back is that coming back yeah it's open for another um let's say the 22nd Closes this Friday actually I think we're going to extend it one more week just so

give some a little bit more time but um I would say I will say that you know transportation is definitely one of the bigger cause drivers but also understand that you know when we talk about belong in yes right Transportation serves more than just getting students re totally right it also opens doors for them to access Extracurriculars and and particular at the high school because of the work melen is doing and the relationship that she's built our student engagement in terms of after school activities gone up right students are staying after school more yep you

did have that 90% number in there at the high school 90% of kids are participating correct and then Co happened and we had a sharp decrease and now it's back up because students number one communication has improved right Students know when the buses are available and they just know it's it's it's accessible now like they can stay after school without worrying about how they're going to get home yeah and so it it it serves lot you know many more per yeah that's great purposes um I want to be mindful of time which I hate doing

but I do um I'm wondering if we can close CL out this section and move to the deib unless there's something urgent yeah yeah please yeah yeah just this Last paragraph that or two that oh that's what I was put in about the changes in the metco grant funding thank you Andrew yeah do you mind if I this is a meeting I had last week with desie um they've had a hold harmless formula which is a rolling threeyear average um that's used and then a small amount on top of that which has allowed essentially really

chime in if I get this wrong um level funding desie is sounding like they're going to change That and go to a strict um October one enrollment and just divide the money out which for us with the declines we've had the small declines um probably equates to A50 to $60,000 lower number than what we've had so Lori did you um or Bob um the email that when Desi sent this out they a worksheet already um that had this year of f next year you guys we saw also there is a $50,000 is for you guys

both District each district yeah um yeah yeah Yeah so this is why I need you guys to like help with advocacy day because we're about to have two very big ask around that but um basically like like Lori said because in order to make sure that if people dipped a year in enrollment they Desi added $40 per student on top of their per pupil and as a result of that that actually um brought up some districts to get several thousands of dollars more and now um now the fund the Formula is getting complicated because we

can't predict anymore like that is a straight like what the per people is because some districts got more of a hold harmless than other districts so in order to be fair across the board they want to get rid of the hold harmless and just basically a straight perp pup across the board so everybody gets the same amount there's no hold harmless and you can predict your Meco Grant if you had 100 students and the per pupil is 9,000 let's see next year then then that's your Grant but in some cases just to kind of get

readjusted um to make up for the whole harmless being available being in this year's budget some people may need as an adjustment for next year to kind of get to that but that's only for level funded you know right now I'm I am actually now that I'm here with you guys we are asking for 3.2 $2 million increase on the Meco budget this year I forgot I should have actually probably Brought that up to you guys because I we're just um crafting our our our lobbying request and we're asking for 3.2 million and last year

they only gave us $500,000 increase our Meco Grand right now was $29.9 Million for the entire State um but um but we but we asked it to be 32 million and we're only and we're still at 29.9 so I you know we really have to ask our legislators to come through this Year because if we get a few million even a few million dollars more this this wouldn't impact anybody yeah everybody will get a little bit of an increase and then we can kind of Rectify as straight per people across the board because we have

some districts that are getting even much more than what they're supposed to be getting like you know like few thousand dollars more per student because of that whole um harmless formula so we really want to Like kind of what they want to really fix it and I think it makes sense because if you see the real numbers some District you I go from 8,000 to 10,000 because of that per student and it just really isn't fair when we're all advocating and we're all doing the same type of work y okay you have the date of

medar yes March 20th at the state house and what we're going to do we're going to do a hybrid a hybrid of um what you saw last year of regional day and the Big Lobby day which your your St one of your students was the speaker a couple of years ago and she did amazing the fastest students in the state um so uh basically we're going to do with the big rally speakers you know here from our testimonials and then we're going to break into four rooms to do Regional advocacy so all of your legisl

all the legisl from Metro West you know Metro um but we're going to do Metro West now North and South I know that's really Kind of crazy but it's because Metro West is too big for Meo so we're going to do the the South and then the north but we're going to do Northshore and and Southshore and then we're going to have Boston legislators there plus your own legislators for those five or six communities in one space and I'm looking for people to help me either lead those breaks breakouts tell say some testimonials and I'm

working on a committee around that that's March 20th And then we have the legislative breakfast um which is for the Meco leader um for either their superintendent and the Meco director and their supervisor or the chair as well is considered to be like you know right right right there um um to go and speak in a more intimate room with our legislators and we're going to have um a two presenters they are are researcher and the riak report there to talk about what to make the case for Meco okay and I will definitely talk with

Dr Hunter and we'll get all these that one is February something February 25th on a Tuesday morning at at 10 o'clock in the morning at the state house and that is a very intimate legislative briefing um with our legislators and just um leadership at the district level alone and that one is is a big opportunity but I need you guys to talk to your own legislator and bring them in I know you have a supporter here too of mexo but They got to Advocate stronger we can't come out of there with $500,000 of increase a

year for a program of this magnitude and last year the um the angle was the um fair share tax dollars and we said hey you have a new tax revenue that didn't exist before and it's all for education and transportation mecho meets that criteria gave us $3 million out of that which only equal just by the way to one quarter of 1% of the expected revenue for the fair share guess what They ended up with an extra 1 billion above what they had budgeted and Meco got nothing so now they're trying to figure out what

to do with1 billion dollar and the governor right now is proposing it's coming out tomorrow morning she's proposing that it goes to the MBTA into some C like 800,000 800 million to the MBTA and about 200 um um um million for um College okay so um there's still money there from last year and we have and that's that even Counting on the FY 26 expected Revenue got thank you car J and and you also have your Senator yes so we need all of them sub yeah so in the interest of time I want to just

make sure we're we're cognizant Andrew you had a question and then Carrie I guess I I'm I'm just confused like I I look at these numbers and I'm not sure what what we do because I mean Millie if you read our paper or you listen to the public comment I've been on the committee eight months it's You know there's a group that's so critical of the Meco program so then you look at the numbers and you know we're making Investments you hear all the good things that you just rattled off from the top of your

head so like I don't you know we get the survey back my head's going to explode I don't know how to translate that into budget or action to have some sort of different impact or if it is a communication marketing issue that you said so I don't know if there's A question in there I'm I'm just understand your frustration yes I understand your frustration we said the same word and that's why I wanted to be here today as well is because I don't want you guys to feel um discouraged because I see you know I

work with with with 33 communities and 190 schools and I know you guys are not not lagging behind any your efforts and any your budget and in your commitment as a school committee and as a staff it's Just that there's just a lot of work to do in any educational system right and we were always we're always appreciative when parents speak up and tell us you know because with their voices we can impact change and that's what we did in the last previous years um all of these things that happened you know let's let's acknowledge

those things and continue to build on that but we just can't turn an educational system around overnight and I think people need to you Know also see that and see what investments are being made um and also that communication like you said around just really make sure that people understand understand this piece um but there's there's a there's work to be done but there's also not there's also not a lack of work yeah and that's right I sent I sent uh Lori a question and it was too late but I would love to see this

over the last five years our investment you know and see if you know And I don't know what the lag period is but you know if we put another dollar in this year do you see benefits in three years years or if it's right away or next year you know so maybe that is another piece of analysis we can do and see when we really started as you said becoming a mecro district and making these Investments like what the whip effect is and when you see the progress yeah that's and I think good to year

by year so so yeah so I think as as we Transition Carrie said they just not need to speak although you can always come back to it if you need to um I think just as we transitioned Andrew again once again Millie thank you so much you made a very rich conversation um I think just a transition based on what Andrew mentioned but also again cognizant of what Aisha brought up last meeting is we are making an investment but Meco is helping us greatly and I think this would be something that I Personally me I

live in carile we don't have a mecho program k through eight so I'm learning on the fly as is Brian um here I mean I obviously know about it but seeing it firsthand through here I think the biggest piece is we are a public school we are a public District we cannot control who moves to the town so I do like some of the efforts that are being made by the the communities of of conquered and Carlile and I think the investment is definitely goes both ways But I think one last question maybe or maybe

a question to you Andrew is like what can we do in the town government versus in the schools because like I said we are going to take whoever comes to to live here or to who applies for the metco program whoever comes to Carlile and we're going to educate them and we are going to do it in the best way possible but how diverse the town of conquer that's a broader conversation than what we can do here have you seen This is to both of you socioeconomic yeah housing conversation and I believe at the Town

level I mean I've heard Rumblings of topic on housing and expanding on that and whatnot um but I you know I just I just said this to Lori before we got in here is that you know it is investment right it's it's an investment that was made decades ago right when the the the town of conquer and Cal decided to to sort of enroll Students from Boston and not only for them to experience this community but also for folks in this community to experience you know what mecho is all about yeah so it's a shared

sort of responsibility per se um for everyone um but I do think that just based on the numbers that you know Bob has presented today um it's very clear to me and it was clear to me on day one when I got here that's one of the reasons why I came to conquer was That there was a there was a clear commitment for the program and it wasn't just you know coming up with transportation for a few days to help accommodate students no we were thinking long term that is why you see an adjustment counselor

there that took two years for us to get to this point to have an adjustment counselor when I first got here I remember having conversations with Dr Hunter and saying We need a social worker that was my big t i guys said we need a social worker because we we understand the academic piece what we need to get better at is understanding the the the challenges that our students come into this District whether is feeling as though they are the only person of color in the classroom right having an adult that looks like them in

the guidance office that can have those intimate conversations with right so we have Since made an investment for for an adjustment counselor and so what we think about the program I think it's really making sure that every dollar that is spent has an immediate impact on the student yeah right and then taking a step back okay how can we then support better support the student and you do that by adding additional staff right that not only look like the student but also they have a colleague that also looks like him they can collaborate that Is

why we also now have two Meco directors right because now they can collaborate and they can have conversations and and and and organize programming that helps students transition from 5 to six and and 8 to nine right that is why you have uh uh Salange Benjamin here today right she's our our elementary coordinator and she has a partner that she works very closely with alad Alysa Silva is our tutor right and so when we begin to to Sort of um understand all the needs of the program yes there are very clear student needs but the

support staff that work with those students every single day we also need to make sure that they are being sort of empowered and and and have colleagues that they can bounce off ideas with and not leave them in a silo to figure out this work because I did it as one M you sure did and it was challenging and so um at the Town level I think again you know it's budget Seasoned um you have this data to to inform yep everyone but again understand that this is an investment and it's an investment that is

paying dividends because our students you can go back to the data grad when you look at graduation rates yeah when you look at um mcast scores right we we do see our data is not declining I'll say that we are see outboard Trend whether you're looking at AP honors mcast uh um you know uh students Matriculation into into into postsecondary uh opportunities it's an upward Trend so we know the program works and to use me uh Millie's hashtag it's worth the ride it's a great invest worth the ride it's a community effort right it's great

I'm just grateful that you said it so well tonight because I hope I hope people out there are listening to exactly the way you articulated it because this is I know what makes all of Us proud to go and advocate for the budgets that every year at town meeting despite um the fiscal challenges that conquered has that other towns have but you know when you say it and articulate it so well it makes that job that we all have to do every year more meaningful and dare I say easier um because you know that's what

we're here for and that's why we advocate so fiercely in the face of all those challenges I did want to Say I know you have to move on but this is actually ideas for the budget part that I think would be helpful um well one I just also wanted to say that um that thank you for talking about how everybody benefits because we can't only talk about how this students um you know but but to hear a district person you know a resident person say that it's we want to hear because I can trust and

believe that's one of my other trust and believe there's no way that your District will be doing all of this work around Equity if mecho program wasn't here I believe it because which district is is being pushed as primarily white to look at all this Equity work if the Meco program is not the you know the the the the center of gravity for wanting to do that so I like you said so all of us are benefiting the district is becoming more you know um you know more your curriculum you know more ways to address

racism you know more looking at Retention and staff and hiring of staff I mean you're going to be an example if you keep in this direction for a primarily white District to be doing what it needs to be doing and you know in terms of what the town like like what you know in terms of what he was saying I mean you're talking about decades and centuries of either racism or red lining that District still don't want to sometimes you know accept people we're still trying to recover from Red lining So that's why there's not

a lot of people of color living here so those are all things that we're you know that we're we're battling here and and and other other entities have actually made it so that you can build housing around as you know build housing around the train or um Section 8 is moving for a Mobility Program right now that I'm working with that they can move into any like high performance school district and they will pay and match the the the Cost of any rent in that Community but not if all the landlords are opening up their

doors and I'm working with Boston Housing around that piece not that everybody that moves here needs to have voucher but that's one way that that is being looked at but there's this other piece around money um and it's like I was talking to Desi because Desi always has these grants that are coming out and um in some of the grants um I'm trying to work it out to see how does the District apply for that Grant but identify the MEO students as the recipients of that like for example if you don't need to close literacy

uh gaps and I'm not saying you don't but I'm just giving you an example on a particular grade but you've identified that the meal students needed and there's going to be a literacy launch coming out out of the state very soon and they're going to be dedicating you know millions of dollars in there I Talked to Des and they're like well if you're if the district applies and says I want to do this to you know work with the students of color to close this particular Gap you could do that you know like for example

they have acceleration acmy I can't apply for that money I'm not an Lea yeah right I was say Ela because I was an Ela student but you know um Ela um but you can apply for it for it to then hold a site in Boston and say the conquered you know Acceleration Academy over there and it covers Transportation Staffing and it covers the entire thing and in the Summer covers two full weeks so we have to find ways to get creative I haven't talked in depth with all superintendent about this but if thisi has a

grant that you don't need it for your entire District but maybe you need it for a subgroup then there's no reason why you can't say that the recipients of that Grant is mecha or that you want to send The students to a Boston office and we can support them there on your behalf but what we so don't have is the money to do all of this targeted approach I think we need to keep an eye on Dy funds and then and then do that piece Mak sense what I'm saying about those about acceleration grants Dr

Hunter and I have looked at any ways in which we can um invest in there but you're selling yourself short the Meco REI Grant at Millie's office um helps distribute we Actually applied for $5,000 REI Grant this year to support uh uh transitional program for our Meo students transition from 8th grade to n9th grade and we actually did received the grant um and so Molen is working really hard right now to make sure that programming uh for this program which is going to happen in the summer um is effective as staffed um she's hoping to

work with teachers uh to be part of this this program um we're going to come in The summer meet our riseing ninth grader nth grade medical students get ahead start in terms of speaking with them about um sort of the academic rigor at the high school expectations um you know different skills and and practices that they need to learn yep prior to the start of the school year so what about Liv I think you have a grant $10,000 I'm I'm gonna pause this here because we can do a forum all Night I'm Gonna Hold Us

in so I think before we uh that a any class comments from you on anything I'm just G to say so I you know some of the questions brings up the importance of like the marketing um the marketing portion and the like celebrating our wins and you know celebrating our current wins our past wins um just districtwide so everyone knows you know M does an awesome job with celebrating our wins at the high School but if we could do that districtwide and in the community so that it kind of you know it would answer a

lot of questions yeah it's great feedback this great I'm pleased with you guys just know that okay and just hearing you that what what do you want us to prioritize let us know so we can make it a priority on top of what you've seen and you still said tell me what else you might need so that we can think about it that's pretty it's pretty Impressive yeah we're all don't lose your don't lose your motivation this someone will always have a positive article like you guys just did a fiveyear contract with Lori and then

say but on but this other thing is going on like just let's keep it in context you know just keep doing the work that you're doing thank you all right Bob if you're okay with it let's shift to the the deib we're going to probably have to move pretty quickly on yeah I would stay High level on this one you've talked a lot if if you don't think we need to do it we can forgo it and we can come back to it there's a lot new there that we didn't touch on still you know

on track with the Investments that spoke of so okay I think the biggest thing is just for everyone I think that the ask that I heard come through loud and clear in the last meeting was not taking anything down um it's more is there a desire to move things around or if there's Something that is really impactful do we need to make a greater in investment because this is the time to make that ask it's speak now or forever uh you know came to the right meeting yeah so I mean like my take can I

just ask a question about that Livia prep that was a grant so because I read it in your your message also with a bunch of school districts that could have it do we get it again Next year do you apply for it again me that's that's our money that we put so we put out $980,000 in Grants we I almost took a million dollars of the Meco whole Grand and dedicated to any kind of academic closing gaps or racial Equity work and we gave $980,000 of it and I don't have any more money this is

the last year right now this is why I need your help because it's part of my ask of that three million this year can I continue to do this work of either REI Or closing achievement gaps you know with our students or our districts with REI work racial equity and integration so I don't have it anymore but I gave $980,000 out already um and we expended it out and then with $500,000 increase that's not enough to I couldn't take that money away from the district getting at least a small per pupil increase so I need

additional money for that which is why we're asking for the $3.2 million so that we can go back to Giving these grants out to the districts okay and is that a middle school specific program is a middle school specific program yep and they were offering enrichment programs and academic now they have transition actually they're offering um tutoring uh for for our me students so maybe we can take that offline I think also given what Aisha mentioned as well um because there's other places we can go for Grants I'm not going to name them Publicly because

I don't want to put people on the spot but um I have some ideas so um all right so I think that just to close it out I think a lot came through um but you need help with a 3.2 million you need some help with advocacy uh the March 20th date I think it was February 26 date fifth thank you um and then I think just the transportation cost is on ongoing love the feedback on um professional development heard the comment from aishan the middle school so I think there's a lot of work to

be done but I think it's a good time to pause and say there's been some really great things happening as as well so thank you both um I think we're going to move on from the budget because I think we covered it kind of together so um why don't we move back to to part C and thank you again app it you you go yeah okay we're gonna do the second quarter budget update the CC RSD okay switch my Screen that was a good amount of time anyone else need to take a bio break we

can do that all right Bob okay so um this is the roughly to Q2 it's it's actually through January 16th update on the FY 25 budget for CCSD um I'm just going to highlight a few uh key things um what I typically focus on is explaining the transfers and adjustments we've had to make uh to the Budget um which is kind of these are where the variances are to our original budget um um within District leadership and administration that's essentially mostly savings from one position uh retirement that we didn't fill for a tech specialist um

one of the larger uh adjustments is in instructional leadership the 2000 U code which has uh We've reduced the budget by 246,000 we had a uh8 uh Special ed teacher um it's actually a bcba um who um transferred to CPS to align with student needs there over the past couple years um there's been a shift in in student needs where that person's been pilled U to focus more on CPS so that results in about 100,000 that 246,000 savings the rest of that is savings on retirements um or uh resignations and replacement hires um those uh

the other school Services is We don't budget for homeless transportation we end up getting reimbursed later there the key drivers of the other school services are homeless transportation and to some extent special ed Transportation as well um on the uh fixed charges um we've been able to draw 222,000 out of that budget uh portion of that about 60 to 65 70,000 was for us eliminating uh social SEC security contributions by enrolling in adopting Orra for retirement for non-pensionable staff um and the other 200,000 uh you may recall I mentioned this in our last uh meeting

that we would need to pull from the OPB trust contribution to fund um our some of our deficits in the out of District tuitions so that's uh 200,000 that's been transferred out of there uh into out of district tuitions and then at the bottom you see a of District tuitions we've already transferred 4319 4 14,000 uh into that Account um a portion of that is um is not actually special ed tuitions it's for uh Charter tuitions and school choice tuitions students can elect to go to a charter school or to a school choice Public School

in another District those costs have gone up um by about 63,000 and and the remainder is out of District tuitions um we still have a deficit of 360,000 in this account we will be funding um 100,000 of that from uh Circuit breaker carryover funds and I'm recommending now that we um um we just pull the OPB trust the remainder of the OPB trust contribution which is 200,000 to cover this um there is some possibility that we we are getting close or maybe we've exceeded it but there's a worksheet that we have to go through to

to to verify this to extraordinary relief for circuit breaker um and if we qualify for that we may get some relief to help cover these out of district Tuitions and we would get that in addition to whatever we would normally get next year it's kind of like a little bit of a windfall it's not a windfall we're paying for it but um it it basically helps um offset some of the budget deficits um so but I I do think that um we should not plan on getting that um there's absolutely no guarantee we'll get that

um so that we should pull the remaining 200,000 opep trust contribution to get this to a manageable Position for the remainder of the year and so um I'm requesting our best practice is to have school committee vote on this quarterly um and we've been doing that the past three years so I'm requesting in the action item section that you approve these transfers as presented the um discussion sure um the opep the um so we're ahead in contribution so the not funding that 200k that still keeps us ahead we are probably in the 998th 99th Percentile

in the state um we are I believe it was 60% funded um there's no requirement to fund it um but you don't want to fall behind right uh me personally if you ask me I I'm I don't think we need to contribute nearly what we're like there's other priorities okay we have a problem without a district tuitions I mean the only way to cover this is you know difficult very difficult decisions that we would not want to do right um we still have it in Next year's budget um yeah I I mean I I think

we're in a pretty good position okay so let me ask the question a little differently are we zeroing out our opep contribution for FY 25 or how much yes okay I'm recommending that okay I mean we've already taken no no I just want to be clear 225 I can't remember which one we took but we rest it's the rest of the contribution you're taking out because you yeah yeah it's either 200 or 225 I Forgot how much we transferred so far it's one of those two sort of hand inand with that in the last week's

presentation it was highlighted that if we needed to make adjustments to the FY 26 budget OPB was one of the things that we might um reduce again for next year so I'm just concerned that we're now talking about it for for two different years but you you feel confident yeah so I I understand the Question I I would look at it so the way I would look at it is a little different I would look at it is it's in the budget we can contribute to to it um it if if we have problems um

I I don't you know we don't necessarily expect we've think we have support for our budget um next year which enabled us to budget for the out of District tuitions um you know there's a trade-off of do we do we budget the full cost do we budget more not a district tuition so We don't have to worry about that or do we have the oped Press contribution as a little bit of a buffer to offset bumpiness in the budget um I mean I I think where we are is um pretty much every other District would

like to be in this position okay um we're also going to have investment earnings on our portfolio it's like over10 million so the opep trust you know assuming the market continues is growing and we're not drawing anything from it at some Point once it's fully funded we'll draw money to cover retirement benefits but we're not taking anything out of it so um in fact last year our growth um was twice what we contributed so it it went up like $900,000 and we contributed $425 so you know I we'll see what the market does but yeah

okay okay can I have a motion hear a motion to approve fiscal year 25 CCSD second quarter budget update so moved Second all in favor all right oh sorry discussion we already had it discussion all in favor I all right great thank thank you Bob um all right so now we're going to move to the warrants this is specifically I have a couple budget questions in general and maybe Dr Hunter needs to be here but or Bob I just was um I feel like we got a letter some some this year asking about filtering of

devices outside of school and are we doing that filtering of What can you you said we were going to discuss the budget and the budget item that's what I was told in my email today yeah we can talk about the budget this one is fy2 but yeah no no C was the budget okay right wasn't it okay so I'm sorry what's the question do we filter our MacBooks outside of school can I ask how I'll answer it but I'm just curious how it's relating to the budget we do not well that's I it's really important

to me that we do that So I just would like to consider that for the I think it's a different convers that we haven't we can put the stuff together to explain what we do and why we do what we do and hear other suggest well can I just ask cuz I'm a little confused is why is it a budget question because I think it should be in the budget and will cost money oh to filter the devices correct it's software that you're asking about yes so let's put that on I'm because I would love

to Learn a little bit more but I I I know now when you're explaining it yeah um I think let's make an ask to go through it and have it for I don't want it tonight I just we have another meeting sure if it's going to be significant amount of money that would add to our budget that's what I'd like to understand right yeah and I think if we're going to do that I think to Tracy's point maybe a broader software line item if we want to go through that in general orvw to be Determining

software items that the district should be using abolutely ask it yeah we control the budget let's take this let's take this let's take this offline because it's I don't I'm not prepared to talk about it quite alone lead the discussion so um I hear you let's talk off offline because I I didn't realize that that was going to come up so let's let's do that um thank you yeah no Problem um okay so moving forward I I'm eager to talk about the warrant because we have deadlines coming up um can I go now yeah two

minutes and I'll be back oh yeah okay well I tried it before most thought take a break do we need do we need a long time two minute two minute break break two minute break two to five minute break perfect 804 maybe we could mute you're gonna Go yeah yeah I'd love to go let's do that for sure we're still in we're still in session e e e e e yeah thank you just careful um so I Thought Andrew has a strip over here if you want to go under the table yeah really let go

for it I mean it's like a foot off the ground I can see is me going all right so I think um I I know we're a little bit behind but I think that was really good discussion um so happy we did that um all right we're moving into the amenities building and there's a for the warrant um I'm going to give a very macro View and then I'm going to turn it over to the campus Completion subcommittee um but just to give some background and I'm kind of bleeding into the liaison update or chair's

update but um Alexa and I both joined CPC meeting on January 14th in conquered um that is actually going to probably be the primary focus for this this evening's discussion um car we definitely cover and I'll defer to Brian on that but the CPC timing um doesn't align in both towns Carl's just opened conquer is long closed we made the ask To be considered um an off-cycle um candidate um or application I should say um which is in the the rules we just have to make sure we we fit um within the the ask we

had a really rich discussion I just want to say thank you again to um to Burton who chairs that for even allowing us to to go and being so openminded um I think I presented in less than five minutes but we had probably what a 25 minute discussion as A group there's a lot of interest and I think and again please correct me if I'm wrong I think there's a few things that are in Motion One um this isn't done often so I think people were just really kind of figuring out what what we can

and cannot do um I think there was a lot of thoughtfulness by the um the entire uh CPA Group or CPC I can never remember the acronym um just thoughtfulness on setting president and being fiduciary Steward so it was a really it was a Really good discussion um I said to them and I'll say it again publicly I it's really hard being the last people you ask in a town because you shoulder the no um and we there was a lot lot of other funds that could have supported um that didn't come through for us

um for a number of different reasons um so what one of the things that I um that changed so that the night of there is a vote um to even consider our application and they deadlocked it four to four because One person couldn't make it which is unfortunate um long after I think we comp we concluded our discussion we both stayed on for a little bit um somebody changed from no to to abstain so it actually made it so that we potentially could apply um nobody said yes or no um but the window is open

and we are going to apply is I think how we left it um the other thing that I'm diving into and I I again maybe Tracy you can cover it but there was a discussion at the December 2nd select board meeting that I um listened to I just didn't have a chance to listen in completion but I think the general feedback that I took away is that for the town conquered and I have no say I mean I am not going to reap the benefits or the um uh I don't know the pain if it

doesn't happen I'm not a a conquered resident um but I am an advocate for the school um the the issue is that there's Millions of dollars in the fund and I I can say that without hesitation it's not hundreds of thousands there's millions of dollars in fund and it will be contributed to again this next tax year um and so I think that's why the committee who did vote Yes to consider it did open we're pretty open-minded about it um and again I think the other thing we talked about is we're really talking about toilets

um that are Ada accessible and obviously just on a Multigenerational campus um that I cannot say enough so I'm saying all this because it is going to impact the warrant it is going to impact our path forward um because as of right now if this doesn't open up conquer would strictly be going to a warrant with no other funds supporting it whereas in carile we are going to apply for CPC funds feel fairly confident in a path forward but nothing is guaranteed nothing is guaranteed but we can at Least apply under the normal circumstances maybe

the better way of putting it um and so does that fair fair to set the scene and I can turn it to does and I think that the one thing we talked about this morning so we had a meeting this morning and Alexa and Brian feel free to jump in was that the warrant language because the warrant is now open right that we would ask for the total amount because even if we were and I'll only speak for conquered and you Can speak for Carla um even if we were to get CPC funding that's not

voted on until town meeting correct so it's like this whole chicken egg situation as to how much money you're asking for and we can't go up at all so we don't want to ask we can't make any assumptions and one of the things we were saying was perhaps we should we apply um for this Grant and should the CPC recommend to town meeting to award us some money we thought about urging The select board to put that vote in advance of the warrant so that when the warrant is moved it's for the right amount and

we could modify the number on the floor yeah so those were the only sort of moving parts that you suggested I think yeah the only other sort of thing that I think we need to iron out and this is something that Bob brought up is let's say there's no CP CPA funds from Conquered there is from carile that doesn't offset the Carlile assessment only that would offset the overall project is what that's my understanding yeah and I think we need to look into that because what I can say having had a conversation today with the

Carlile CPC chair is that if it's not moving forward in conquered on the CPC side there would be some pretty big red flags on the Carlile side because yeah um so ideally we're Seeing these move forward in tandem um you know we would make our requests sort of proportionate um at the at the get-go um but you know there's going to be some moving pieces between now in both towns uh Town meetings but um we should personally I mean I would like to see us be ready with those warrant articles because yeah the deadline is

quickly approaching right and I don't have the history I I hate to say the Doug white Fields was was there CPA funding for Doug there was CPA funding but Carl did not participate correct which is correct of where they're conquered owned only I don't think it even occurred to them okay you know I think CC play was like oh we can ask car oh it's a town it's the town of conquer project project project so I think we need guidance to see like that's the first thing we need is the guidance to see how it's

going to be applied I mean I think we still move Forward in both towns and I I really can't emphas it enough and I said it our meeting this morning we only had a couple people watching our meeting but maybe like me they watch meetings at home I don't know um you know later on people will be watching but they are toilets and it's plugs in a sink this is not a fancy building it doesn't have heat in it it is the we're going to make it the cheapest we possibly can make it but you

know having witnessed people There and I'll I'm just going to keep saying it again having witness people not able to get into a yes we do have handicap accessible toilets there they still can't get into it so porta potties porta potties yes we don't have a functioning toilet they're porta potties so I can't say that enough it is very personal for me um and I think that we just have to Advocate as a committee as strongly as we can and that means Outreach from all seven of us to whoever Our networks are to really bring

light to this before the town meetings in both towns okay so I have a few more questions on the mechanic so I assume CPC is going to add meet again and add this to their warrant article is that correct yeah uh nothing is confirmed I think the next step that we have to do is put in the application complete yep we agreed so the subcommittee meets on Monday morning again that we would have final drafts of Both applications ready so that the subcommittee can review those on Monday morning and then usually the full committee would

review it but give it the I think the time crunch and the I mean we've been kind of break so the way subcommittees are supposed to work on school committees did you come sub comes to us wen't you the petitioner like did we review the CPC grant for the thorough field did not we informed you of it but we didn't actually bring the but aren't They different isn't this coming from the school committee versus coming from the administration no she still the signature we were we were debating oh okay I didn't realize I thought this

one was coming from the school committee for the I think we could we could either way yeah I getting it in is the most important piece I think I think the the biggest I would normally agree with you I think it's the same thing we had in The conversation about this use of extraordinary to reopen and conquered and I I think the thing I look at is again I'm not a conquered resident so but when I look at your the taxes um for both towns or just the state of Massachusetts when there's two to three

milli ion dollar sitting in a fund that's no I know it's not I know it's not but I'm saying I just I want to reduce the ask to to Taxpayers as much as I possibly can agree I know you do I know you do but that's I'm saying I'm looking at this the word of extraordinary because it keeps kind of getting brought up to me who is the petitioner this lens so I think that's something we should talk about but I I think you're not an entity a subcommittee is not an entity no no no

no no correct so it's either going to be Dr Hunter you or me or we would have to do as the school Committee I'm just saying why don't we meet quickly on Monday and approve it that really shows our full support otherwise it looks weird does does I think that's fine or why couldn't we why couldn't we on Monday we have a subcommittee meeting so why couldn't we make that into a full committee meeting at 8:30 on Monday morning sure do it quicke anyway if we're meeting anyway why wouldn't we do it at the same

time all we need is a Quorum we only need seven of us yeah yeah done does that make sense I mean as long as we have a quorum so is so out of out of the other four Julie Carrie and Drew Cynthia can one of you come we just when Carla one of you you have to do it quick because we have our car coffee which is part of the goals y um we were doing it yeah we we need one of you so can can you you can can you come yep okay so s

you can come You don't have there be there you don't have to be there if you don't want to you don't have to be so we have a quum so we'll just do it then okay I am sometimes late because I'm a chiropractor but you'll be there for the vote you were there at like 8:3 fine as long as we're there for a vote if you can do the reading 8:45 I just why you just post it for 8:45 or n well because they have their Coffee I'll just do it and if I don't do

it at 8:30 and if we can just have at least four people be there right at 8:30 that would be wonderful I will be one of them you can send around whatever draft you have without yeah if it's really 8:30 com but there have to be don't no just two conquer okay four we can we can but we are posting that meeting when are you posting that meeting tomorrow tomorrow so the draft would have to be complete tomorrow you No it doesn't need to be complete sometime before the meeting night whatever okay I I I

appreciate it that's I think that's that's a good recommendation let's do it y right um okay so back to the mechanics yeah so I think we submit an application I think the question that I wanted to do is I thought it was good the way that CPC did I think we should go around there I think it sounds like everyone's On board to submit the warrant I think to Tracy's point we can still make edits on the specifics um for the amount and given that we're we're hoping for CPC funds CPA funds I'm sorry act

and it's the committee correct it so CPA funds through the CPC yep um I I think yeah let's try to do that so we're going to ask for the full amount in the warrant the warrant oh yes the warrant yes no assuming no CBC funds With either town okay correct then we just would be helpful to understand the what happens if or what happens if yeah because I can I mean speaking as a Carlile resident I mean it has a little I'm just going to say it it has an sense if conquered shows up with

with nothing and we spread car money given given the fact if it was one thing if the money was depleted and conquered but it's that's not the case has anybody talked to Carmen about the warrant and okay we've seen her at the chair breakfast but can you always reduce a warrant right but just the wording and the increase it so I think we have the warrant wording for we do from a year ago last year okay same and we're just plugging in what number yep possible because we won't get actuals until March no no I

understand so what is the number right now okay it was on Option three a yeah top number on option 3A so hold on though wouldn't the warrant only be since it's for conquer town meeting we put it in for the whole amount and then we discuss the and then that allocation goes after it's weird I don't we discussed that this morning help Bob helped us with that morning yes it doesn't make sense but it's the way it is y okay change and again I'm not trying to be rude I just no I I just Think

think you're right we talking about taxes in both towns I just especially when the money is out there people are willing to do the work I I literally cannot say enough positive things about the CPC group and what they're willing to do to even look at our application so um yeah let's just I just want to say as like a member of the committee thank you to all of you for everything that you are doing you guys are going above and Beyond not just like for our both of our towns but to make this a

reality so thank you you it's very clear that you've put a lot of work into this it's important I think especially we're talking about you know I mean obviously I think everyone would like like formal bathrooms at the um you know at the at the campus but I think to Tracy's point it's personal for a lot of people in town even on the meeting there's people talking about personally recounting Stories of people being carried up to the BD Center and that's just like that shouldn't be happening well it's also the law I mean correct it's

the law it's the law thank you for saying that it's the law it's the law exactly so I'm really hoping that we can get the support I think people want to do the right thing um and I think we're going to figure it out and if nothing else we're doing everything possible to make it happen is there language on for a Motion not today I thought we had to I put the vote because I want to make sure everyone is in favor of putting the amenities building on the warrant oh okay we the amenities build

I'm just gonna move it I move that we put the amenities building on the warrant second conquered and Carlo or just conquered and car conquered and car Bob's making a good point you probably have a ballot vote to follow in yeah conquered right at least yep oh because the amount yep If you go for the can you clarify that so it wouldn't be a can you clarify the amounts it wouldn't be a ballot vote in Carla but it would be we're not sure about Carla conquer's very traditionally going to have a ballot vote after that

kind of number of excluded debt the number I think if it's if it's excluded two and a prop two and a half excluded debt town uh bylaws require a ballot vote okay is there a number on that yeah yeah that's what I the Former the town manager was here when I got here and he'd been here 25 years he said a million was a definite so if we get CPC money we would not need to have a ballot vote if it comes if it comes below million dollar yeah that was his rule of thumb I

can't say specifically cpcs so like so again like and were you want to talk um you know one of the things that we we talked about like even some specifics that might like so when the Gale gave us the range right 15 to Eight we talked a little bit through like wh why why the discrepancy and what might drive it in One Direction or the other and we um all agreed to urge Bob and L their discussions with Gail as they start honing this design whatever it takes to get to five do it and like

so for example if Poss Mak sense possible like so one of the things that was bantered about was different um codes for the types of food that you might serve so we were like we're fine With not having hot dog machines and that kind of thing even with the you know you you reference every chance you can these plugs these like M you know um so like you know so we've we've already of urged I think collectively let's we're we're aiming towards the lowest possible number so to your point if it comes in let's say

closer to the million five then we've got the distribution to the two districts then you've got potentially God willing the reduction of The CPC to your point if if all of the right things go our way it will be under a million because it is the individual's name s that sticks in my mind present it to us um he did say that town he's worked with have gone for additional waivers because they have a one-time big event or two-time big event but most of their other events are this number of people okay so they can

reduce the number of bathrooms additionally I didn't hear it That way well can you ask him said we're talking with him this week the code's been reduced I don't know if this is what you were thinking of but the they didn't make a they didn't make a waiver for the sinks so the ratio of sinks to toilets is excessive and they can get a waiver in the sinks he did say that if you have only like two or three big events per year and the rest of your events are relatively this number that you could

go for an additional waiver Because you don't need those many you know you just need them like a couple of times a year I believe he did say that don't remember we're talking with him say so why don't we so I think there's two things happening I think the questions that you're bringing up are good ones I think we'll get that when we get the formal quote in March and we should discuss that I think for the warrant are we it sounds like there's a motion number should not go down we Should put the warrant

out there for 1.8 yes I agreed I'm not I wasn't trying to debate that no I know you're not but I just want to make sure we're focused on what we we can control today um so all in favor well I think there's we need a second I don't think Alex second you did we're in discussion I'm just I'm just worried what what if it fails at town meeting and then we have to go back next year that that's okay yeah it is what it is it is what it is okay I mean I think

To to the to the committee's point point I think we have to do go out to our constituents and talk to them about this especially I mean Brian and I will do what we need to do in Carl it's pretty straightforward because our process is open and that's what I mean it's we're in the the traditional process I think we had a couple letters that came through correspondents that gave some really great feedback um I know people have written letters to the bridge like We've gotten letters to the fincom I think we need to continue

to do that um because I mean somebody brought in today like even just inflation wa waiting um there's money in the CPC funds I think it's just convincing people that this isn't going to open up the floodgates to this happening every year right it's a not to exceed number basically that we're okay I'm good with it I'm just okay strategy I'm just thinking yeah and I will say just Depending on what we vote on right now we do need to coordinate with Carlile select board uh soon or rather than later and probably be prepared to

come to a meeting um to walk them through in Greater detail yep agreed and I guess my my other ask Bob and Lori can you get clarity on does it need to be a ballot vote in conquer y like what triggers that I don't know if that's legal or if that's Carrie ller or who it is but we will I think we need and I just like to Know how much that costs what a ballot vote a ballot vote Yes it's not cheap but that's not our but that's not well we we would trigger such

a vote unless there's somebody else that's triggering that you know what I'm saying I think let's get people to approve CPC yes they have a big payent project that they're bringing forward all right i' just like to know if we're not triggering it then I need to vote all in favor yes I okay good we're doing the Warrant um all right let's move on to F uh 2526 calendar first draft yes so uh we worked with the calendar committee Tracy was a participant it's representatives from CTA and CCTA and and us uh so this is

our first draft I'll just pick a few highlights it's Labor Day is very early as early as it can be uh so that puts us at a return to school for students on August 27th we have the 29th off on Friday per contracts for a 4- Day weekend there That first weekend um there's some highlights here of early release I'm not going to go through all of those we can do that more specifically at another time if you'd like um conferences have fallen such that uh we have a conference day in November for both elementary

and middle school I thought that was new that's new see we have not lined those up for K8 before pre8 so great I mean personally I think It's great because December could be too long Middle School is historically December yes yeah we moved that back this year actually um so now we're going to sync those up in November so I think that's good news that's great uh other highlights there's a PD day in January for middle and high school actually we skipped over their conference day in October October 20th uh second conference day for Kate

oh that second one that 10th needs to Just be oh it is it's just Elementary sorry prek 5 um they have two conference days which I'll be transparent to say I started to ask some questions about whether we might consider going to one Elementary conference day and picking up a PD day again so that I would I don't understand instead of having two conference days in elementary oh in like the fall and the spring you mean going to just one but then would you only meet would you just scatter those meetings Throughout the spring or

would you only meet once would probably we didn't get very far in this so this is just me not anybody else You' probably move it later in the year and only have one formal conference day just up for discussion I we have a lot of PD needs and we're starving for time so not that parents don't need information they do but I think we have other choices there more to come on that not right now and then just to highlight the Breaks you can see where those fall it's another Long December break because of where

the holidays fall so we would not return to school till January 5th as of this this draft graduations on the 30th and the 188th day is June 12th staff would stay till the 15th that's the first draft we can take questions and then come back is the do have one question and just because I've also been working on the Carlile side um For December was there any conversation about just taking the full two weeks because my concern is just having a day and a half before yep such an extensive period what is attendance going to

be like what is content in the class is going to be like was that considered we went back we have historians on the group who went back to the last time it fell this way and this is what happened and people seemed content with it um I we kind of did that this year coming Back the second and third uh we thought that was a nice way to come back and got our feetback on the ground um in a little bit more gradual this obviously weans you into vacation there may be more absences I I

I've experiened two we breaks I think they're really really long and I'm not necessarily a huge proponent of them but okay it's your vote on the calendar um I'd have to reconvene this committee if we were going to consider that because it was More just what what was the conversation about that one so yeah I do think um I do think you might get some push back at the high school because of exams because that would be a admiss it I mean a day of instruction definitely that half day I'm not sure much happens on

the half day you know in terms of instruction but on that Monday you could certainly have an exam or something I don't know that would I would assume that would be the feedback from high school teachers but I'm not they come back and do exams that first week or is it the next exams just ended so like we just had exams and so then they had a day off today a week of stud reading period and then a week of exams yeah are we ready to talk what what happened in car or no it's still

up for debate I gave my feedback on that I also gave my feed so in carile that first Friday in um the 29th the day before Labor Day I don't believe That's covered in any contracts that's just been traditional and basically qu feeling there'd be more value in having three days and I always compare it to if start of school is getting a 747 off the ground and we're basically flying from Boston to New York like you get up and then you're back on summer vacation for four days so I don't like the Friday but

if it's contractual then it is here here it is um the only other thing that I Would say about this and I worked with carile um already is it would help to know professional days in advance because where it makes sense to Al line I'd like to see us Al line because if you have your Carlile elementary middle school student off on the Tuesday and the high school on the Wednesday car sprinkles them so that Services um and specials sort of don't get impacted so I think for next year if there's a way to get

the groups a little More aligned on some of these things would be good yeah um and high school one just so you know we do the full PD day at the semester break yeah that's intentional Newton is doing the same schedule as we are are they 24th yeah to the second so probably going to be another bag this year was pretty mixed that it's nice to have those two days and not lose them know the Monday and Tuesday y just have a different different setup because we don't have The Wednesday half day we just have

different we just have a lot of different differences yeah just leave it at that for now but we yeah we moved some Carlow it took us all this time to align our own Elementary and midle was just got to say I think that's Aug decade to get car in the that's a huge change it is a huge change a lot of over that was a change from both K5 and the Middle School to end up in the same place yeah great yeah can I asking car Do you have Wednesday half dayss or Tuesday half dayss

they don't we have Mondays we have Wednesdays we have Thursdays we have Fridays we have Tuesdays we have mday interesting okay the feeling is because if you have speech and your speech is Wednesday afternoon all miss too much okay you actually my favorite thing is we do a lot of half day Thursday full day Friday off for professional development day Thursday Full day Friday but they also don't have one half day a week like every Wednesday is a half day here they don't have that they don't have a half day we they don't have a

half day right right no no we like the ones where it turns into long weekends yes I love that but it's also like I think one of the pieces that I would love to see that you've done really well and is like having the umbrella do programs for the kids um so anyway in the interest of time unless There's something pressing can we move on from calendar sure all right so we're going to vote on that at the next meeting okay there's like couple we're missing something in the key I'm I'm assuming you just wanted

the dates and you uh what do you think we're missing in the key the early release early release well the early release is a really hard communication issue because there's multiple iterations of what that is We've tried a few different ways and we got actually quite nervous we were going to make it more confusing and have asked the buildings to really deliver that um we've had feedback that people they want a person wished it was there but coding it cuz there's two or three different versions of early release and getting the times right I I

just and the other thing is I had a couple people ask me if there was school today the 21st and the 20th on next year because it's gr out Like so the high school doesn't have school says confusing so I don't know if there's a better way to Yeah the code there okay but this is not important right now no it's just no but that that it actually is important right now because if we were going to to do anything we'd have to meet again but it says so if you look in the January no

it says PD day out so like if you're just looking at it you're like oh is there school or Not school it could be a me problem someone else ask pjay no no uh no AR really any other the two before school starts oh before school then so maybe maybe what would solve that would be professional development days and then in parenthesis just right no school the trick is the one right like today was just the high school so own we don't have to talk about it a little there should really be an asteris that

say please check your building Information there's no way to put it all on this so maybe maybe that is it maybe we'll like check You're Building information on exact T just I mean it's very clear at the high school Instagram it's very clear hope you guess the right one okay are there other professional development days that will added to this because it seems like this is light no uh we didn't mark the last day for teachers is one she could grade that in On the you have a lot of afternoon PD stuff too like the

Wednesdays yeah yeah we only have say percent percentage of ready to move to ikf yep okay we tried to put this in a way that made sense it was a lot though so I I'm going to take a minute to talk through it so we're bringing I'm bringing you ikf which is the graduation requirements your policy so we have two proposed revisions for two different Reasons one is pretty straightforward the state voted to eliminate the mcast so all districts need to uh create a competency do determination we have some experience with this because in Co

when the mcast wasn't given that is what we all had to Pivot to um on a dime the state said you all decide what courses they have to pass in these certain areas and we will ask you to validate that kids have taken that so I worked with the high school Administrators um in Lou of mcast this is what we're recommending that um would be in the policy two full two full year English courses presumably 9th and 10th um we purposely didn't say that though just in case a student need needs a year for some

reason two of the following math courses Blended algebra and geometry geometry or and or Algebra 2 um eventually Blended algebra and geometry will phase out because all of all of the conquered eighth graders will do algebra In 8th grade um but for the time being we need it there we'll also need to connect with car and make sure that's the case so two out of the three of those that's very aligned with mcast standards the law says that uh the course is just have to represent the Frameworks so we're still accountable for the Frameworks um

and then for science we are um saying one of the following science courses so we're a little unique that we have earth science Among the mix so we're actually pretty excited that can be one of the one of the course options so either earth science bio physics or chemistry um so that's what we're proposing that you would consider in terms of in lie of the mcast you have questions on that because the health and fitness part's a little more specific can you just outline um how this is different like how does this what is changing

so there's no mcast Threshold I know that yeah but like is this do you think that this is like about this like is are we expecting more or less the same I think these are most of our kids are meeting these quite normally and how does this compare to other districts like how are they thinking about that um I've seen a good number of the samples it's very similar um we had the earth science be a little different others are saying bio physics or Chemistry um otherwise it's quite so we're reducing the required credits in

addition to removing the mcast is that what I see well the health and fitness is a different thing so I'll get to that in a minute these are just like the academic these are the same as competency determination topic number one Sor so these aren't changing except for we get to our pH that discussion no they are Chang these Are new because of the mcast right so right now the policy says if you go to the last page it shows in the red markup that it used to say um they had to pass the mcast

passing sore and the mcast is required we're deleting that and going to put in what I've just gone through but did English social stes math science or World languages change from our current policy I didn't no if you go to the red line you'll see none of them have changed except we're going to get To Health and Fitness in a minute because I didn't want to open up that can of worms but like it seems like other districts have higher requirements for like math and social studies and Science in terms of years I'm not I

don't want to I wasn't ready for that conversation I think if you want to do that level of review I'm gonna are you going to make that part of the um portrait of a student and all that I mean we're going to kind of Examine a lot of these things high level or you don't I don't know how the graduation requirements fit into portrait of a student that's a there is a little noise in our process M ASC you know people are asking because they're digging in and some even some districts are going to require

um passing mcast just a few stuff far that are going to do that at a local level yeah um and I I'm not proposing that I'm just saying that people like you could make it polic There's a lot of there's a lot of noise on the list Ser yeah we're all getting the super con did not support removing holistically our voters did not support removing correct I didn't I didn't I was going to look at carow that is not my recommendation no no no I understand go to the confidency determination so I I didn't want

to I just I know we just want to review the P the PE and the Health Fitness Requirements tonight but I just sure okay these are timely that would be a longer term so how does this work like you you could a student could just take one science class in their four years at the high school and yeah right now graduate up until now they've had to pass the biology test okay but they they have course requirements the number of credits so they need 10 credits in science so they can't just take one and Graduate

if you look at the program of studies they have a pretty strong recommendation that if if you're applying to UMass you're applying to most for your colleges they are looking for this on your transcript don't yeah don't determination is different than the number of credits you're required to gather it may be less in some cases it's truly a replacement of the mcast yep got I'm not an educator but I took all these Classes at cchs I don't think earth science should be there for science just because it's a different science but I'm not an educator

so that's just optically I think biophysics and chemistry is a certain skill set that people should you know pass one class of and Earth Science different are you putting the lens on through though that somebody that wants to go to a four-year College I'm just thinking to graduate you know one of those is Important to pass in in my mind but I don't have data so I probably would say there's probably I mean the major I mean correct me if I'm wrong but the majority of kids are taking more than just earth science oh yes

you probably have and to get the credits they need they're going to need more than our science we have the DAT just to replace the MCAT right which was a year essentially a Year's curriculum yes yes and the state had said it was Bio there was another test for many years that was more General than it was not bio we'd all defiled it to bio but there was a different science test that had other things on it um most people we still require 100 credits 20 of which are in English 10 of which so so

right so yes so I think that's maybe what's what confus and I don't I disagree with you but I wasn't ready for that discussion we're teaching sustainability we're Teaching all the core functions of the environment correct yeah science yeah um okay now I understand so yeah makes sense yeah I just okay then just describe the PE thing the PE thing needs some talking so we've got two things here one is we're trying to correct an error that was here so if you go go to the Chart the current correct credit allocation in yellow that's what

it should have had the whole time and it didn't because if you go to the actual Policy it was five and it should have been 8.75 total following yep so the five was wrong the whole time got it so we're just trying to correct that but we're trying to do something else also um so now your Baseline 8 75 is where the policy should have said we would like to reduce the junior year requirement for PE to one semester twice A week um we think given the amount of PE we demand PE and health um

we have one of the highest requirements of any anyone in the anyone um and we think it gives us a little more wiggle room in student schedules we think we can still meet all of our health especially our health needs PE we have such a high participation in athletics that we we feel like there's a lot of ways that can happen some District some have the wave Cambridge is One of them it's on this page they would just wave it if the kids are in athletics um would it allow kids also too to take more

science yeah it would because the two days the one semester with the two days in it kind of jams up that block and this would free that up for other enrichment yep there's a staffing component that isn't our top priority but this would eliminate a need for any other increased Staffing given some Contractual agreements we just made I largely am in favor of that especially yes the junior year so important yep yeah also don't we have a really high number of students participating in athletics yeah it's about four to four to 500 of 1200 yeah

we will you know not diminish the program for the physical component but we feel very strongly the health component is really really important This day and age um agree we've had kids say because I talked about that in health here's what I'm bringing up and that's really y powerful y so that's the draft we can vote this next time um program of study is sort of out so they'll probably edit that on the Fly the um graduation requir ments the competency determination is for the class of 2025 right away C went away right away the

Tim um the health and fitness you Can see it's more of a gr a roll in because it's going to pertain to the incoming um will the health and fitness have any impact on Staffing this will allow us to um have level Staffing we would have had to increase if we left it in place because of the contractual arrange agreement we made last spring yep y but there there's there wouldn't be a riff in health and fitness oh no okay no are there W is there a waiver like because some of these require full Year

and if we're putting this into effect now would that affect anyone graduating and it's going to be a gradual roll in um so if we look at my summary here yeah the it would not impact the classes of 25 and 26 okay it just needs to be in place this year yes the the competency deter because we want them to yeah we want them to know what's coming 27's our 10th graders now yes next year they would only have this in their schedule Yes so they need to know what to plan for yep what to

schedule for yeah make sense makes sense thank you for the thoughtfulness thank Brian and Katie still yeah thank you a lot of the superintendent got a lot of coaching scheding software good luck to you you go that's great all right we're we voting that's um because it's a policy it's a first read I will ask for a vote in two weeks all right um we have spend an hour On goals no we're gonna spend minutes so I think for goals we can do a more robust view next week I think the biggest one is the

ones that are are due um this I'll say this month I don't I didn't see anything pressing um at all um I think the biggest things are the coffees like I mentioned Brian and I are going to do January 27th I decided to post that um but I will be I'm going to create um like a call it a Social tile that I can send to everyone if you want to share it on don't laugh at me Tracy I love it um yeah you can share it on your Instagram Facebook or whatever um maybe I'll

send it to you Dr Hunter so you can share on the school just so people want to come um we did do that still nobody came to our C I know but it'll be it's okay if people don't come great if people come well we're going to have a school committee meeting right before it so maybe it'll be Exciting Julie's cooler than you are I maybe attct more people about we'll see we'll see um yeah so Alexa and Aisha I don't know if you have any ideas of you were going to try to combine yours

with some Outreach right in Boston okay let us know when you have a date and we can create something as well this my partner I'll be your partner can I help you um can you just pick a date yeah and then I'll just be there yes I have so I have I did have a couple of um yeah I Have some interesting ideas that came to me through Emerson today um I think the other one was you're you're chugging along on the story of the school just getting feedback and that's not till March but you

were just starting to to work on that yeah speaking of marketing we met last week and I think we meet again on Friday yes oh and the a couple of things that we're changing is that we are going to start posting our meetings um so if we Are meeting on Friday Lori we probably need to post that think we had said every other Friday from two to three usually meet though two to three yeah I didn't have that so I don't know why so we don't have to meet this Friday we can move it to

the next week but I can Al I'll follow up offline with all of you about that but um so we'd have to post in the morning if you want to meet Friday yeah so okay well do you guys want to meet Friday two o' I can I can I'll be away so just zoom but either is fine Brian you prefer Zoom anyway right I also move it you guys you can do it a week week later up to you we're really trying to get some traction really I feel like if we we we got to

just we just got to do it mean you don't need me I'm gonna been the new school until 2 so I might don't know if two is going to work but let's do this Frid I think that's f I get meeting to kind of run through all of The materials because Carrie gave us homework that we didn't realize was homew so I think it willor the bullet the bulleted out sorry well it wasn't Friday Night by Friday I'm sorry you calling yourselfe we're calling I think we decided on the uh Communications working group okay Communications

working group to post and there is in that email a draft agenda the same thing you have to post do we need a charge and did we do the charge In the chair because it's not a oh it's a working group that's right it's a working group right however I did Lori I'll just email you the I did like a agenda we can just repeat okay and then let's make sure um I know the schedule I lost track of that um I'm just going to forward this my email to all of you and then we'll

well it's all in the document in the drive which is wonderful yes yep and then I think the only other Thing is just for the second half for the policy subcommittee we should probably look at a date I think at this point probably March but to go through um the cell phone policy was the other one we had on here that cell phone thing what's yeah I think's I know but I think we'll just talk about it and and then Title Nine is gonna have to get redone somehow or another it's getting more and more

redone every day yes that is for sure so I think those too so I think maybe just looking um I'm not trying to skip February just I'm aware of how much stuff we have going on so I think March is probably the most realistic yes I vote for that okay perfect um all right so we have completed our discussion um why don't we move to superintendent chairs and Leon's update um Laur you want to start sure I'm going to stay very high level um obviously we're starting the second half Of the school year this week

so we're all excited by that um that gives us as Leaders at least a half a foot into next year already so of course signups are starting at the high school um we're already actively looking at um Staffing as best as we can and enrollments and all that obviously connected to the budget build as well um two or three positions at the leadership level that we've posted assistant superintendent of teaching and learning um so we can do That permanent search and wrap that up and then both met Cod directors were posted last week both CPS

and the high school so we're going to keep those moving um and then just you heard some great highlights last week we met with the calculus project we had a good parent Meco parent meeting Wednesday night um I'm going to save my new school comments till the conquered part but that's much of my time right now um in The last month of getting ready to get in there are so many vehicles there today it is really really busy um awesome I'll wait for the conquered part but it is really really busy so I'm looking for

to any of you who can come tomorrow and um no formal meeting just to see what's happening in there and it's just fun there the finishes are coming along and that's the building's really starting to come together so awesome yeah you want to go I just have A couple of things from um last week's chairs breakfast I won't go through all of them but um the one was at the fincom meeting Lori and Bob will be there on the on the 13th to talk budgets again I think this is the hearing um and then the

CPC said that they approved six of the seven projects that came to them obviously that is now there's an eighth maybe there is an eth that might be coming um and including thorough which was $441,000 for their new um campus project which is awesome so thank you for all of your work on that um um the town meeting subcommittee or the town meeting committee is finalizing their recommendations including the use of electronics electronic devices which I think is great andth not worth noting and then um the rec committee said that they are moving forward on

Doug white um artificial turf the goal is to do it this summer um they're going to have Multiple conversations around what kind of turf but um the discussion is not whether or not to do Turf yeah I am actively at the table with them great so schedule's the Big Driver there because we have needs that have to be planned around yeah do you need any help are you good no it's a profession Town leadership meeting so um yeah yeah that's what I thought but I think that's about it okay that's great um I think for

me on a on a fun Note on Heels of coffee um one of the things that was great about having the the Boston conversation we're going to go into have our meeting late February what do we decide on what what's the center name Center oh yeah yeah so we're going to do that um the 26th of February um I just asked the question I figured it would always happen but when do we have a meeting in Carlile um I guess it's never happened we're going to do it um so I'll send out a a doodle

to see Which meeting works best for everyone to come um I will tell you that the town clerk is very excited for to come over to carlle um but we'll probably look at maybe like in April or May meeting um to do that so that's one thing um we also uh went to the capital um public Hearing in conquered um didn't get a lot of questions about the amenities building that was really the only one that um we brought forward from the region um the Only question that I personally had was just how we decide

about what gets earmarked for fundraising versus what gets earmarked for budgeting um I I Eric Dober had the same reaction to me I don't think we have a policy on that as a town in either Town um but just might be something we want to look look into as more of these projects come up and the demands that we have um I think somebody did try to answer you that we did have a huge study in conquered on Public private Partnerships which that was some of their conversation they have a full report I don't know

where it is yeah um so I got I got a couple emails that that didn't have that kind of clarity so that would be great if you have that if you want to send it to me um just to set expectations with people and nothing else it's not a top priority for me um it's a general curiosity um and then I think uh just the last piece again is the uh CPA CPC And then Brian and I have been um working with the carile fincom because we they move their date because it was the same

night as the conquered public hearing um so we're hoping to connect with them on the 30th correct January 30th and they sent through uh some information that they want ahead of time right I saw Victor's message yeah so we'll do um so we have that upcoming that's that's it um we went through the the campus completion Project any other liaison updates I know we spent a lot of time on mecro tonight but anything else that you or anything on the election election oh you get any candidates C we've all been trying yeah yeah I have

would any feed well we're happy you're here yeah thank you yes any other committees I can't think of do you guys have a new Carlo School Committee Member when does the select board do that uh good question it sounds like It's on the agenda for February 11th do they appoint so it's not a special election they appoint in car the remainder of her term which will end in May oh okay right yep so we'll have somebody I was hoping is gonna be next week's meeting but for whatever reason four of you gonna have to Soldier

on oh yeah our our meeting last week I think it was like 45 minutes good job Jim that Great just a level of complexity is just different um conquer Town caucus is Monday at 7 I okay great all right um correspondence uh um from the region like I said we had um we did have a question coming about Title 9 we answered that and then I think the second question again not question was feedback we've had a couple notes come in in support of the amenities building in the region anything for CPS only thing at

CPS is we got a request from Welsley school committee about air conditioning in our building so got back to her but we have air conditioning in our all of our buildings as of February 24th yep all right consent agenda sure I've got hearing seeing everything make a motion to approve the consent consent agenda second uh discussion all in favor hey we did it all right uh can I have a motion to adjourn the you can Just adjourn right can I can just adjourn right I never know when you guys are still in session so all

right the region region is ajour thank thank you have a great night you too a minute or just power through yeah can we power through yeah yeah let's do it it's not working all right good night Brian and Julie thank youa even I had dinner before this learn um okay see we are gonna Start with um running up oh is Justin joining us it's so late it's not on I think we lost track of it in the that's okay and that's fine yes absolutely okay so CMS updates yeah I can talk or you can handle

it I can handle it um and I will just talk a little bit on some of what he's planning he's got a wide array of um Visionary activities planned as we consolidate the two buildings um unification and unity as the theme and he's using that everywhere he's got a Logo of a heart merged together with a photo of pey and sandborn now merged um just a lot of fantastic ideas um very personal personal he's going to be collecting audio Snippets from the kids to put together into a collage of podcast kind of thing the Highlight

is turning into this walk roll run whatever he's calling it from one building to the other on the afternoon of February 13th after the kids have had their last days together He's open that up as a fundraiser for the DC trip exceptional isn't that just brilliant a good idea then last week because we started to get quite a bit of Interest as it got said out loud a few times we're just opening it up to the whole community and we might actually have a substantial fundraiser on our hands which is exciting um and I think

people are going to come out because this is a you know generations of kids and now adults have come through you Just say the detail like so from one from I think sandborn TP buy at 3:00 they're we're closing the road Old marbor Road and there's going to be a walk run roll whatever to get from sandborn to peab Buddy however you choose to get there you 13 uh the road closure is actually at 3 after the it's February 13th February it's Fe at Thursday February 13th okay yeah after school and um his suggestion was

people donate based on the temperature which is Good thing we're not doing it um but that was just a suggestion so he's uh really putting it out and that's awesome really selling it I think it's going become come it's going to be a really great Community afternoon um and the DC subsid is fantastic DC stuff I think you know in light of how thirsty I think people are for like a renewal in Civics education I think it dovetails with that and um I know it me a need we have some funding To help with those

subsidies well exactly I think because of that you're wise to expand it to the community another thing that really um Andrew and I were both in the CMS uh building committee meeting the way that Justin for those of you guys that weren't there was talking about sort of his approach to um the public I guess around the schools he's being you know he said you know the kids it's exciting but it also is like a little bit anxiety producing So you know his his messaging out is really student Centric and to help support the kids

and and manage their expectations as they make this big transition so um I just thought that was worth noting that that is always the lens through which he looks at things and I think that that is lovely yeah so really fantastic you talk about a DC fundraiser how does that how does that work as far as is it are you a fundraising for your own individual trip Or it goes to reduce the cost it's to give us a a fund for people who request financially okay okay great great um so that's the student facing part

the backside of the house is in the details um every town agency is involved in some level of Permitting and um you know everything required for certificate of occupancy so we're deep into those details and I'm on Bob and I and I don't know how many emails a day between those leaders um things are going well in the Building little bits of flooring left to do um little bits of wood finishes to do kitchen equipment's got to go in that was one we were all anxious about it's in the building now and will be installed

over the next few days um there's internet Furniture's arriving internet internet internet yes internet is in which actually triggers all the systems being able to come online so that was a big step forward it's just really exciting so um You'll see tomorrow when you walk just how fantastic it looks we were in there I don't know I've been in maybe twice a week last year it passed the leak leage test uh we're waiting for the formal results but apparently it went quite well Saturday sweet yep so there's a 12h hour test on Saturday to make

sure it was water Sol and no no water could get in essentially um um so lots of great things going on just really really busy and a lot of lot of minutia at this Point um is there any way we can help I don't think so um just understanding how much time is taking is probably the theas I guess um the auditorium will be offline when we open that probably a month is which is okay um the sign will not be finished at the street so just not we've bought banners and we're going going to

hang banners Ellen Garrison building at conquered middle school because seems really important you have a a signage out front even if it's not The formal sign um it's just going to be great it's great great yeah and then we'll quickly move over to phase two and uh start emptying pey and sandborn uh the movers are moving teachers out the afternoons of February 10th through 14th 13th so the hope is their stuff gets moved before they have the PD on the 14th and can just set up their things in their rooms um so excited by how

that's looking like it's going to come together teachers are packing and feeling really Productive and the um time we've given them they're having no meetings essentially for the month of January and February um so they're feeling they have access to the building over break if they want it probably okay if you the certificate probably if we've got certificate of occupancy and have taken ownership um that's it's the bottom line okay just a reminder like we're on temporary septic to start so we're into all of that spare you the details uh There's just a lot of

moving pieces it is a huge effort it's huge huge and obviously it's possible but even when the high school did it it was one building you have two buildings going into one which is different and kids are different even I I mean I back to the high school you probably do too some kids they were stressed about moving because they really felt connected to their High School yeah so you know I'm sure big change it was lot of complaints About the stairs yeah still are great still it's a three mile walk every day to classes

so lots going on all really positive and excellent a lot hang in there yeah no you can see the goal post it's motivating it's very motiva you letting the kids draw on the walls at P I don't know we talked about it at one point because a lot of places do that as they highway from my neighborhood when the high school closed little graffiti On the way out back yeah that they couldn't do it in the new school yeah yeah building I know an elementary school that did that only with APR I'm a little worried

about what they're going toite scary there a wish I don't know people who had uh saws and they were just saws and cutting up the I was like what is going on so we are opening the buildings up this Saturday morning of the 15th of February 10 to 12 um not the new building the The old buildings and sandborn yeah the new building we don't know when the community get in we're hoping to get the middle school kids in over the break if all things Al line um so we're starting to publicize that where almost

anything's up for the taking by cchs high school desk my husband like what did you put my plants on it outside I might need something from the musical room I don't know oh my gosh Tracy oh my gosh G to stand there And just chuckle at what people think they want today we're going to talk about the Surplus yeah that's coming up here because you have to vote that before we can give it away all right uh do we want to just go to Surplus either way do we have anything needy to talk about regarding

the solar I don't see a doc no we can talk about I was just thinking that's fine we can go I just didn't see a documentary I think I miss something about that the folder Yeah I attached it from the drive folder but it wasn't attached to our agenda so the public couldn't see it right yeah okay uh I don't know kind of my goto it's the draft Jason gave us not anything that's been edited fine as of yet okay I'm sorry do what you want well let's just let's just do Surplus since we're talking

about it um do you want to talk through that sure so the um what you have attached there it's a lot yeah it's the inventory of the builds and you Can just be sure you stay in the dispose of column um they combined all the lists of what the things they're going to move but you don't need to worry about that uh so it's both material wise Bob went over and helped um work through the balcony I'm assuming a lot of you know what the balcony is yes um where things go to die Middle School

we found a eclectic group of textbooks there so we need to ask you to declare those Surplus and then attached is the very detailed Inventory of what we will be disposing of um again disposal a generic word for for donating or recycling um but we do need you to vote that so we can keep moving forward does anyone want to make a motion can well can I just have a question on yard sale that's the yeah ignore their com that they used an old template so all you care about is the actual yard sale no

okay uh Tracy I got an email to at least my personal email I don't know about Yours but someone's asking if we can donate to home HomeGoods oh yeah before people come and take it I I'm just that was a comment I got I I don't agree with it since it's tax Fair money I feel like people can come and take what they want so I could follow up I I'm not sure that it's to household goods I'm not sure they would take anything even what we have in a school to help people furnish their

h Homes and they're picky they like Primo stuff been turned away I know Turned nice you know it's it's towels it's Furnishing but then I was thinking I was like thinking about like the stoves in um the food science rooms just so old they're like they're commercial no no no the ones for the for like oh my gosh probably from 1950 I have to start connecting with them because time will be I I just I personally think that it's it's tax money so taxpayer should have first that is supposed to be how it works yeah

so But but certainly if it if it were a does it matter if it's a conquered resident or carel resident because this particular resident is a carel resident does it matter if if household goods decided to come on the Community Day could they do that that's just my question we were in theory only opening up to conquered residen con but if they were con pay for it all is this a person or a company it's a It's a it's a person that volunteers for an organization that's based in Acton a great organization was not benefiting

concretor Carl student people necessarily um no it might actually because I'm not sure who the clients are that go I I think we'd have the day on the 15th so the community had access and then if somebody wants to give us a contact information we can start to vet if there's any options there yeah I agree I agree to keep it I'm just I'm Just advocating for the emails that we got but but I personally don't feel like that should be I think people should take what they want and then we figure out how to

dispose of the rest we're donate Y and time will matter cuz we got to get out of the buildings yeah in no time does someone want to make a motion sure um I move to approve the list of surplused CMS furniture and materials as articulated in the document attached to our Agenda second any discussion good luck yeah seriously all in favor hi great thank you um okay so cmlp um solar agreement with about CMS yeah I think we can just give you a process update mostly um so Bob and I have looked at it he

started to put together some suggested edits we're sharing those with Jason Buer we sent it to legal council for review even just to back up beyond that we received it December 9th December 9th we had Jason here on December 10th right and now we're in the review process before we vote on it before we bring it to the committee yeah we'll bring you the draft as it's compiled here and feels like it's close to good but that's going to take us a little bit of time which will either is there any addressing of like battery

Placement and whatnot in this mou or no is this just the panels we separated them out if I'm remembering no it's it's not ready battery portion is yeah it's got some reference to the parking canopies that we got to decide if that's staying or not battery per se it's more generic in terms of access to equipment and things it doesn't designate there are no canopies currently as of right now no they need the battery to Havey right that's the order of operations so what's the timing on this is there any urgency they cannot go to

bid on the solar project without this agreement signed off they would like to go out to bed now they would and I just trying to I wish we'd had it earlier because this is a really hard time for us to focus on it so right um trying to keep it moving so maybe next time you could just tell us what the important Parts of all this are yeah I mean if yeah I'm hoping we're moving it along and we've had legal council and a pretty good draft for you but that might be very ambitious in

two weeks so I think we should on the end of February yeah that's um just given everything that's going on right now right what right I mean you have to open the school yeah the certificate of occupancy is by far the priority February meeting the February Meeting is in Boston right the February 26th meeting just remember that Croc center closes early we 8 o' yeah got trapped make it a really light meeting I would say March honestly everything that's going on don't you think I think that's go to on March 11th you mean no no

March 11th okay because that meeting you I think that gives you a chance to move into the building and our only intent I think this is worth saying Al Loud because I've had a lot of feedback on this our only intent is to make an agreement to share the building and the space and the solar there's been a discussion of whether this committee was looking for financial benefit from the solar just putting it out there since it's swirling that's not that's not not been our intent part of the agreement right now you'd have to propose

something I don't think that's their assumption either right um I think They're not sure oh okay okay we should make that clear yeah we need another like discussion discussion so maybe at the Jason come back I was gonna say he'll come back he asked if he should come tonight and I knew we were no big good J maybe what's the next February meeting look like February 4th your budget hearing and all the warrant votes and all of that the fourth of February yeah the warrant closes the 19th well the chairs can decide if they can

squeeze it in yeah so I'd like to just get the big picture clear with them oh yeah don't move that meeting I I have to the parent driver's ed classes that night so my husband can hat a ticket very pleased with that we're not we're not moving the February 4th meeting okay what else I think if we were to bring Jason on February 4th we would still not have a vote on it yeah that Would be a discussion I think the vote would if if we were to do that it would be February 4th discussion

March 11th vote does that yeah see okay okay thank you guys for this work thanks and then um the last pieces job on the budget transfers all right share this with you okay so um CPS budget uh for fy2 is um I'm just going to highlight a couple things the instructional Leadership we've been able to transfer out 27,000 uh about um 165 of that savings from replacement hires and retirements some of those happened um after we budgeted last year and some over the summer um in addition about 52 of that is supplies and materials um

were were cut uh during the year reduced um other school Services is primarily 155,000 of that $200,000 uh Transfers increase is homeless Transportation which we're monitoring um 70 we did um you might recall in our town um presentation to the town last year in our budget get a supplemental funding of 76,000 so 76,000 of that was actually provided by the town um through the um homeless Transportation reimbursement from the state to the town and the REM remainder of that is special education Transportation um there's some smaller Items I mean the fixed charges is is primarily

um Insurance costs property casualty liability the maintenance is is really essentially driven by uh trash uh recycling costs what we've been um budgeting is less than the town's been charging us we've corrected that U but during fy2 so we are seeing some impact this year to that um fixed assets is down because the timing the arrival of the buses uh is Later than we had projected so we're essentially missing a one oneyear lease payment um and the tuitions is up um 50 in addition to that we anticipate that we're going to have to cover another

100 and um 163,000 in our district tuitions um which um we may use $100,000 of circuit breaker carryover and then we'll see um how things shake out in the other budget lines whether we have the ability to offset it further um So that's where we are overall and um we are requesting school committee approve uh the transfers as presented can I ask a sort of off topic question are we anticipating um still having students enrolled from the shelter into the 26th school year so like there's they're not going to like I know that our shelter's

kind of been like a model of um it working well so I know it's going to be among the last has to close so that we're not anticipating That anytime soon so I talked to the state a few weeks ago um we are not in the first round of closures but we don't have a definitive timeline there's still 22 empty rooms there so they haven't filled those and it's unclear what's going to happen there um we do based on what we know at the moment which feels a little uncertain but based on what they're telling

us at the moment moment we will have some students for the fall um we are already talking especially With Willard who has 12 staff that are Grant funded um we don't have any assurances of that grant money right now so we're already trying to figure out how to have this Crystal Ball where we meet students needs without a definitive timeline or um funding stream so okay it's going to be tricky I think is the the governor pretty strident in her most recent letter yeah yeah it's saying that she would like to See some pretty significant

changes made which is kind of a 360 from where we were two years ago so sure I agree yeah I mean and and just even like some of the community organizations who were curious from their planning perspective too so what we know right now kind of asking for that reason been hard definitely seeing families get housing which is fantastic is fantastic um so and much of and some uh regionally yeah regionally one and conquered that was Exciting um but regionally so it's just hard to to know okay it's just hard to know yeah so we're

already counting on having to make some guesses here and and just remember anybody who does start the year with us has the right to stay the rest of the year and be transported back so if they are here when we open it's commitment potentially can I just ask a question about the waste recycling services that 51,000 it's trash and waste it's trash And waste and is it because the town changed their service or uh same no well I think they have a method for allocating their costs to the different departments so we're one Public Works

is another they can look at us as a department of the town uh they changed their formula um a couple years years ago um I think we were being under allocated um so um that's really what's driving it our share was some of it was the contract came up and got renewed so There was a price increase I think it was a three-year contract okay um so part of that is price increase another part of it is the the method they're allocating um and yeah it's it is expect that same I mean it's a significant

increase would you expect that next year's budget and every budgeted it next year so it's not going to be an issue next year um it is a lot of money um we don't get a lot of benefit back in terms Of the recycling right we just pay for the pickup okay okay there's there's no reduction with the one school in in the amount of waste when we go to uh it's possible next year there'll be a little bit um don't know we don't know yeah yeah I you know we'll see marginal yeah I think um

until we kind of get through a year I wouldn't necessarily want a budget for that no yeah there may be also like construction containers where We have some additional waste where we have to throw things out in a rolloff container that is additional okay thanks so we got a vote vote yeah so I move to approve the CPS uh fy2 second quarter budget transfers as written seconded any discussion no we just had it all in favor I great