Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

June 18, 2020 – 6:00pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, S. Steven, M. Thomas, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson, R. Dohoney, J. St. Peter, D. Singer, A Potter

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             B. Doren, K. Farina, S. Soule

Absent:                                     T. Lee

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  hour, 58 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

MINUTES:

• June 4, 2020

MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED JUNE 4, 2020         A. POTTER            SECONDED:  S. STEPHEN              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL

Superintendent’s Report:

• Dillon – The best news of all is we finished the school year and what a school year it was. I really want to thank the staff, the teachers and paras, principals, custodians, food service, technology and everybody who helped out.  It was a heck of a spring and people worked very hard.  There is lots of professional development going on already and more to come.  The food service people are continuing with their Friday distribution which is a big help.  I don’t think I made an official announcement yet; I want to acknowledge and recognize and congratulate Amy Shaw for stepping into the Director of Learning and Teaching role.  Amy had been with us for a year supervising the after-school and out-of-school time work and she was moved into the Director of Learning and Teaching role.  Rob Putnam and Dan Leibert were both working there part-time during this transition from when Kristi was in the role.  I am very excited about that.  I thought at her first school committee meeting when she is in the role, it would make sense for Amy to announce another grant that we received.  A. Shaw – recently the district was informed that we were awarded a $25,000 grant for developing a high-quality, project-based learning which is kind of interesting.  The grant focuses on the middle school teachers working with our after-school instructors to develop project-based learning as a continuation of what is happening in the classroom throughout the school year.  It is very exciting.  Ben is fully onboard and we are looking forward to developing some really great initiatives that our students can capitalize on.  P. Dillon – I am particularly excited about this because when we wrote the initial after-school grant maybe ten years ago, one of our goals was to use that as a laboratory for innovation and this funding lets us continue doing that work.  We talked a little bit with the school committee and I talked with Andy about this in his technology subcommittee role. We have been talking about moving to a learning management system and initially we thought we would go with Schoology.  We have since changed our minds.  We did a little more research and talked a lot with other folks, and we decided to go with Canvas.  Canvas is the system that much of the county is going to be using.  The neat thing about how this is structured is, we own the relationship with Canvas, the company; there are opportunities for us to do things collaboratively with other districts, but in terms of our own professional development, we really can structure it as we like.  What ultimately led us to shift from Schoology to Canvas was, from a technical perspective they are roughly equivalent; from a professional development and customer service standpoint, I think Canvas is much more supportive and responsive including 7/24 support which is really unheard of in technology circles.  Lots of professional development, self-directed or taught.  That was a big reason, there are a host of other reasons and I will send around the memo that I sent to staff explaining it.  I think it will be a good transition for us to move forward with whatever is happening.  We continue to wait for guidance from the commissioner and the governor around what school is going to look like next year.  Initially, we thought we would have something on the 15th.  Now it looks it might be the 22nd and probably you will read it the same day I do in The Globe then after we read about it, I will get a report and I will share it with you.  We will talk about this later in the agenda but Steve Soule is doing a lot of ordering of things connected to the virus to get ready for the start of school.

• Requests to Approve:
  • Resolution: COVID-19 State Funding – P. Dillon – in your packet is a resolution that many school districts or committees around the Commonwealth are doing. It is essentially asking the state to cover the additional costs of COVID-19.  I think symbolically it is important that we do this.  We are getting some money from the CARES act at the federal level that we can use.  There is a think kicking around by the American Association of School Administrators saying the cost to a typical district, and we are much smaller than a typical district, from this virus is about $1.7 million.  I don’t think ours is nearly that much but it is high or could potentially be high.  I think the motion expresses what Bill often talks about of the consequences of unfunded mandates.  If we spend several hundred thousand dollars responding to COVID-19 and that is several hundred thousand dollars we don’t have to spend on something else.  I think the motion makes sense if somebody wants to move it, that would be great and maybe discuss it and amend it to make it stronger than it is.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE SIGNING OF THE COVID-19 STATE FUNDING RESOLUTION           FIELDS              SECONDED:  A. POTTER        ACCEPTED 8:1 VOTE           R. Dohoney – I don’t understand the logic behind this.  The state doesn’t fund a large part of any of our mandates.  Why is this any different?  P. Dillon – I think the supporters want funds to cover the required shifts to open schools safely.  B. Fields – I think it just puts pressure on them to follow through and not do what they have done with regional transportation.  A. Potter – let’s be honest with ourselves.  It is symbolism and I think it is a good kind of symbolism.  I think it is something we should do.  R. Dohoney – I think it is encouraging the state to not let us open and I don’t want that to happen.  A. Potter – I don’t think it is going to have an impact on us if we open or not frankly.  S. Bannon – I think when the state redoes their budget and looks at this, if they aren’t going to give us any more money, at least they won’t cut it.
  • FY21 Revised Calendar – P. Dillon – We anticipated that they were going to run the marathon at the end of September but it looks like that is not going to happen. We have two options.  One would be to amend the calendar and take the day out.  The other would be to leave the calendar the way it is and use that day as a professional development day, potentially around technology which wouldn’t be a bad thing in early September if we are doing something.  I can go either way on it.  If we took out that day, we might substitute it with a day later in the year.  It would be a good day to use to help teachers implement new technology.  Fields – I like that idea.  I think the state wants to open up the schools; there is no doubt about it.  I think the more help we can give the teachers to adjust to this new form, whatever form it is, it is going to be new, is important and whatever gives them time to adjust is really needed.  S. Stephen – I think the more training and actively involved in online learning that teachers can get exposed to, that is what they need.  P. Dillon – if there is wide support for that, let’s do that.  I will revise the calendar and likely what I will do is take a day that would have been a professional development day in March and have it be a regular school day.  R. Dohoney – why doesn’t Peter go back and revise the calendar showing the 14th as a professional development day and adjust the March date and then we will approve it at our next meeting.  S. Bannon – that sounds fine.  P. Dillon – teachers, parents and students will appreciate that we take a day during the first few weeks of school to provide people with some more support.
  • 7/1/20 – 6/30/23 Cooperative Contract for Support Staff – P. Dillon – There is a recommendation to approve the contract for cooperative staff and support staff. Our negotiating team worked really hard.  Their representative was Paul Gibbons and a host of other people from the separate groups.  The one thing was around the greenhouse aid position.  Steve and I worked on that this morning.  It is on page 6 of the contract and we resolved that.  It is my strong recommendation and probably the negotiating committee recommendation too that you support that contract.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE COOPERATIVE CONTRACT FOR SUPPORT STAFF             POTTER              SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                    ACCEPTED:         UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL
  • Grant Positions/Mass IDEAS (.5 Special Education Teacher, .5 Administrative Assistant – P. Dillon – These are positions connected to the Mass Ideas grant.  They are already positions that exist.  Kristi can explain it in a little more detail but because they are grant funded and out of the budget, we would like your position to move forward with them.  Obviously they are grant funded.  Farina – The half-time education teacher that we put into the Mass Ideas grant budget is to increase our work in co-teaching classrooms next year. That was work we began last year and have data that is indicating it is successful supporting some of our students who need additional support in classrooms.  We budgeted for that and it would be a .5 special education position.  It would be a one-year appointment because it is a grant-funded position.  The administrative assistant in the grant is specifically to provide support to Sean Flynn and Emery Gagnon who are serving as co-leads for the implementation grant and that position is to take on all of the tracking of paperwork, appointments, budget and the like in order to support both Sean and Emery in their ability to complete the work around this grant.  It is a .5, one-year, grant-funded position.  MOTION TO APPROVE .5 SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER AND .5 ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT FOR MASS IDEAS GRANT                    A. POTTER                SECONDED:  S. STEPHEN                 ACCEPTED: UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL  P. Dillon – one add on to this is connected to the CVTE role.  As I think everybody knows, Sean Flynn worked in that role for several years and did quite a nice job.  He is going back to working in guidance but also supporting the other grant.  We are in the process of recruiting someone or some people for the CVTE role.  I just want to run by the committee and Steve I don’t know if I need a formal vote on this or just an acknowledgement, but as we look to fill that role, much of the work happens in a particular time period in the late afternoon, from 2-6 and our thinking around it is we might be more effective having a couple of three people work part time in that role as opposed to having one person work full time in that role.  Just one person doesn’t have enough capacity to be in all the places we need them to be.  This would include, and Kristi could add a little detail to it, but somebody specifically involved with internship coordinating and visiting sites when young people are there often in the late afternoon.  K. Farina – Sean and I have worked hard to categorize the work he has done over the past two years and there seems to be three buckets of work.  The first, Peter described around the internship work.  The second is the work around the grant specifically the innovative pathway grant and the development of the advanced innovating pathway, the healthcare pathway and the reporting connected to that grant, the project lead the way grants and the perkins grant.  So there is grant work connected to what he was doing.  The third area is what you would most likely think of when you think of CVTE coordinator position is the actual work within the program with the CVTE teachers, the curriculum development, accountability connected to the chapter 74 programs, the work with the advisory committees.  Those are kind of the three buckets we have outlined for what the job descriptions would be and what we are thinking is it would make more sense to have more than one person sharing that work.  It could be two or three but we would like the option to fill it that way if it makes more sense.  S. Bannon – are there going to be new job descriptions or is it the same job description?  P. Dillon – I think it is largely the same job description but instead of it being 1.0 it might be .5 and .25 and another .25 or a .6 and .4.  S. Bannon – how does everyone feel about that?  I don’t think that is something we have to vote on.  S. Stephen – is this essentially saying Sean is not doing the CVTE job and we are hiring other people to come in and do it?  P. Dillon – yes.  Sean expressed an interest in going back to a guidance role.  He was very effective in the CVTE role but he missed the direct connection to kids particularly in context of the college and post-high school process.  He wanted to do that.  He helped us move forward in this process and he is ready to pass the baton to somebody else.  B. Fields – I think Sean’s role in guidance; I’m on the sustainability committee and he is on that too so we haven’t lost his connections at all.  The internships are part of what is going to be presented to us later on in August in regards to the sustainability of Monument.  Kristi knows a lot about this so we are not losing Sean.  He is still going to be connected in many ways to what he has started in the last few years.  K. Farina – specifically, he is still serving as co-lead of the new Mass Ideas implementation grant which is a big role he has in addition to the guidance counselor work he will be doing and he will still be involved with internship placement from the guidance side.  What we need is somebody to do the internship in connection with the placement and site visits which he can’t do effectively from his role as a guidance counselor which is what he had been trying to do before the new position had been created three years ago.  The position was posted as a full time position.  S. Stephen – so what we are asking for is a full time position of multiple positions at this point.  K. Farina – we are asking to be able to fill the position, not as a single full time position with one person but to be able to divide it.  R. Dohoney -are any of these part time positions include benefits?  P. Dillon – if it was half time or more, it would.  The worst thing I could do from a financial perspective is support Kristi in doing two half time positions because that would cost us more but if we do one half time and two quarter time positions, the cost would be the same.   There is the possibility that we might put somebody in the role that is already receiving benefits so there would be no cost.  S. Stephen – I just want to make sure Sean is still involved.  He has been doing a phenomenal job since he started it so I don’t want him to just go away.  K. Farina – I can assure you that he also wants to see this work carried on because he has invested a lot in it.  It wants it to go well.  R. Dohoney – is this an administrative position or under the contract.  K. Farina – it has been a part of the unit A contract so it will continue to be.  S. Bannon – so this person will be a certified teacher?  P. Dillon – yes.  K. Farina – that is correct.
• Updates:
  • COVID-19 – Reopening Planning – P. Dillon – we are still waiting for guidance from the commissioner and the governor around COVID-19. We are doing some scenario planning.  Steve Soule is ordering a bunch of stuff.  We will do some training.  We will see what the directives are and then we will come up with a range of proposals and bring them back to you for your questions and potential approval.  I am frustrated that we continue to not get guidance in a timely manner but they are juggling a whole lot of stuff and there are a lot of unknowns so I try to coach everybody around the uncertainties.  The only certainty is there is going to be a lot of uncertainty.  Hopefully we get guidance soon enough so we can develop a plan and test it a little bit with people before we are implementing it.  It is putting a kink in all of our work; our scheduling is a little tied up because we don’t know what model we are building for.  Fields – I looked at what the state is requiring in regards to ordering supplies and I was aghast at some of the things they are requiring.  They are talking about face shields, PPE equipment in every building, supplies, I know we have already ordered 15,000 masks but when you space that out over a year, that might not be that many.  I am wondering where is the money coming from in our budget in order to order these things and pay for them.  We just had a resolution in which we hope the state and federal government is going to reimburse us but that is questionable.  I just want to know, are there transfers going on or how are we ordering all this stuff and the second thing is every other district in the state is doing the same thing and is every district in the country.  Are the supplies there?  We have heard horror stories about this.  I will throw it to you; where do we stand in this and how are we ordering all this stuff.  P. Dillon – Steve has done a really nice job on this and reaching out to people.  He has some sources.  The state also has activated a state bid list with existing vendors.  B. Fields- that’s called a big buy, I read.  P. Dillon – right.  I think it is a little like the toilet paper thing; there is a shortage because everybody is buying it but there are no shortages in people’s garages.  Somebody has 400 rolls of toilet paper and I can’t seem to get any.  I think we will watch it.  The potential source to cover it is some of our CARES funding and that is more than $100,000 that we will get from the feds probably in early August.  If we purchase some stuff now we can transfer that to cover it.  We are going to do a very careful job, as we always do, around coding things that are related to COVID-19 so if we are able to get reimbursement for it, we will have a coherent want to see that.  Sharon, are there any other things from a financial perspective around that?  S. Harrison – I think you have covered it.  Unless we can get some FEMA or MEMA reimbursement which is difficult because that is supposed to be for immediate emergencies.  P. Dillon – I heard and I can’t totally verify this but there is the possibility that cities and towns are receiving money discreetly to cover some of this and they in turn have an obligation to share some of the resources with school districts whether they are town, city or regional school districts.  I haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty on that but I will be looking into that as well.  When I get a clarification on it, I will reach out to the town managers and administrators and see if there is an opportunity there.  R. Dohoney – I am concerned about the financial planning.  I think it will work out in the end but I will agree with Bill; schools are opening in September and I hope on the educational side that everyone is preparing for that; administrators, teachers and on down.  I don’t want to get caught short with “I didn’t think school was going to open, so this or that wasn’t ready.”  P. Dillon – I think we will be in very good shape and people are going to work very hard.  I do want to manage expectations around the learning management system.  I think on August 30th our implementation of it will not be perfect and I think at different grade levels and different areas, we will build our capacity over the course of the fall.  People always ask about athletics.  I don’t know.  People ask about buses.  I don’t know.  Hopefully we get some clear information there soon.  R. Dohoney – on the athletics end, the level of outreach and organization that typically went on in the spring for the fall sports, hasn’t happened.  That is indicative to me that people think it isn’t going to happen.  I’m not banking on that either.  P. Dillon – maybe it will be differentiated.  Maybe you can run a fall golf season in a socially distanced way but you can’t for some other sports.  R. Dohoney – but we have a bunch of 8th graders that don’t know there is a golf team.  P. Dillon – we can do some messaging.
• Next Steps – Social/Justice Dillon – Recent national events are clearly provoking all sorts of conversations.  There is a national conversation, a local conversation, conversations in work places and homes.  We all have a lot of work to do.  What the district is doing is what we have committed to do for a while.  I broke it up into really four areas.  I am going to talk about it broadly then I am going to let principals share more specific examples.  I think we have an obligation to look at all our policies and practices in particularly places where we have gate-keeping things.  I think we have work to do there.  Are our policies and practices reinforcing problematic behaviors.  They may be.  I think we need to look at hiring, recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce.  That is not an easy thing to do in the Berkshires.  Pittsfield has done some interesting stuff partnering with the historically black colleges and universities and there may be more opportunities for us to work on that.  I think generally, we are well thought of in how we interact with families in our community but I think it is worth us taking another look at that.  In recent years, we have done a whole lot more with the immigrant community and I think that has been well received.  The last bucket I am looking at is our curriculum and approaches to instruction.  That is really a building based thing.  We are doing some work at the district level but principals and teachers and teams of teachers and paraprofessionals are looking at their practices.  What I thought I would do now is start with Tim and work our way up and have the principals share some of the things they are working with students and staff on.  Then after that I think we can respond to some questions.
  • Lee, Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School (not present)
  • Doren, Du Bois Regional Middle School – We have been really appreciative of some opportunities that were brought to the district several years ago. The Anti-Defamation League program was an opportunity that was brought to a lot of kids in different districts across the county and I know that Monument had taken advantage of it several years ago and we were able to take advantage of it a few years ago.  We had students trained as peer leaders.  The Anti-Defamation League’s World of Difference program really teaches our students and we had 5th – 8th graders really focusing on this on how to have difficult conversations with their peers but to make it engaging.  They talk about identity, experience of marginalized communities, racism, sexism, homophobia, and many other things that come along with discrimination to students and families that have to live in poverty and disabilities.  It is really great because it makes talking about this with students something they can do and not something that is mystifying or overwhelming or scary.  Dom Sacco, our school adjustment counselor, really implemented the program, had some success with the students getting trained and doing work with their peers but it really took off this year when we had the training.  Pat Boland, our health teacher and coordinator, really took it head-on as well as Annie Alquist.  Annie was our intern with Vicky Shufton, our district psychologist.  Annie was so taken in her pre-internship work with the ADL training that she asked the trainer to come back and train new cohorts this year.  The reason I am spending a lot of time on this is it had such an impact.  The students in 7th and 8th grade led along with their 5th and 6th grade student leadership peers several advisories, and what I mean by several, is pretty much once a week for three weeks so about nine different advisories in the 5th grade.  This was our 13 and 14 year olds and some of our 10 and 11 year olds going into 5th grade classroom and doing the hard work, anti-racist and anti-biased work with our own students.  They also went to the WEB Du Bois homesite.  They were also chosen to go to the Strive conference which is put on by the DA’s office every year and to present, not just to be participants.  We are sending eight students to the high school to be trained.  In term of our curriculum, we have always had a strong curriculum throughout all the grades and understanding diversity but also overcoming adversity and then specifically when we move up to 6th, 7th and 8th grade, very specific pieces of our curriculum, the african american experience, the latino experience as well as a lot of global issues that have come along with poverty and hunger.  We are really starting to jump into that.  We had also planned this year but got shut down by COVID, a really exciting engagement with our 6th and 7th graders going out to the archives at UMass Amherst and the 8th grade around understanding the black experience in America as well as national and international stuff but specifically about WEB Du Bois.  What is very exciting is the instructional leads have decided that we need to spend time having conversations as a faculty and we have invited Albert ….; he is a trainer who works with the Collaboration for Education Service from Northampton to do some direct development around culture responsive teaching.  He will be doing some workshops with faculty and really confronting us with how we think and our curriculum then continuing through the school year working with the teachers to really think about how we integrate diversity.  We are jumping in to the top of our heads and take this really seriously.
  • Farina – Monument Mountain Regional High School – I don’t want to reiterate everything Ben said but I will tell you that there is a substantial amount of alignment between the work happening with what Ben described and what we have been doing at the high school. As he shared, the high school was actually out in front of the ADL work sometime ago then the ball got dropped for a period of time and this past fall, we have reengaged and have students at the high school who are really ready to go and having these conversations.  Unfortunately, those were supposed to begin in advisory during the second half of the year but that didn’t happen yet.  I will tell you something that is happening soon connected to that.  The curriculum work that Ben described particularly connected to the WEB Du Bois initiative we were just getting involved in March.  There was set to be some professional development that some of the high school teachers were going to engage in and again that was cancelled.  We are doing curriculum planning this summer and shifting some of the social studies and humanities work and making sure we are bringing in culturally diverse techs into both social studies and our english is our major focal point for the work our teachers are doing this summer.  What I really want to focus on highlighting is something that is connected to the Project Summer program that is happening.  Ariel Woolis-Pink who is one of the faculty members who was involved in the ADL training this winter, she has connected with Beth Walker and they through the Project Connection program are starting a social justice conversation with students this summer.  We have over 25 students signed up already which is a very positive thing given that it is summer and it is remote and virtual experiences but the plan is over a period of four weeks.  Beth and Ariel are going to be coordinating with multiple community partners.  We are working with Railroad Street Youth, Bridge and AACP, we have representatives from the Elizabeth Freeman Center, someone from Hevreh working with us as well as Leigh Davis from the Great Barrington Selectboard.  The plan is, each week there is going to be a topic of conversation.  They are going to divide the students into smaller groups so that they can have circle meetings, virtually.  The topics are, in the first week, social justice movements in the US and the history around that.  The next is around how to organize for change.  The third is looking at who is in charge and they will look at democracy and how within a democracy one has conversations around social justice and the final is around what is youth leadership and youth voice in this context.  The goal is actually to get these students thinking about their roles beyond the walls of the school and how they can connect with some of these community organizations and get involved in the conversation around social justice beyond what happens within the high school experience.  We are pretty excited about this work.  At the end of the sessions, they are planning a community conversation, a closing circle.  I asked Ariel for the date but they don’t have it yet because they are trying to coordinate with the community partners.  They wanted me to extend the invitation to all of you as school committee members and administrative team.  As soon as I have that date, I will get that out to you.
• Sub Committee Reports:
  • Policy – N/A
  • Building & Grounds – N/A
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation & Advisory – N/A
  • Technology – N/A
  • Finance – N/A
  • District Consolidation & Sharing – P. Dillon – For Southern Berkshire/Berkshire Hills, there was a meeting the other day and that group has hired a bunch of consultants in different areas: a facilitator, some folks around consolidation, an attorney on retainer who responds to some legal things, and NESDEC to do a more complex demographic analysis. I imagine in the next six weeks, there will start being a lot of interesting work products and we will move past the process which we have been mired in.  We will report back to you on what is going on there.
• Personnel Report
  • Certified Appointment(s)
  • Non-Certified Appointment(s)
  • Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

Meeting Adjourned at 6:58pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

June 4, 2020 – 6:00pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, S. Stephen, M. Thomas, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson,

R. Dohoney, J. St. Peter, D. Singer,

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             B. Doren, T. Lee, K. Farina

Absent:

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  1 hour, 0 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Minutes:

• May 11, 2020 BHRSD/Richmond
• May 14, 2020

MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD/RICHMOND SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED MAY 11, 2020                        A. POTTER               SECONDED:  B. FIELDS      ACCEPTED UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL; A. POTTER ABSTAIN            MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED MAY 14, 2020         B. FIELDS            SECONDED:  A. POTTER              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL

Superintendent’s Report:

• Dillon – I am going to let Kristi handle this one. It is a little information about the high school grant.  I don’t think we met since we did our press release and it is quite remarkable.  We are one of three schools that were awarded it in Massachusetts.  It is over $330,000.  It is all for one year.  It is based on really rigorous planning work that they did this year and previously.  I thought Kristi could give us a high level overview tonight and in two weeks, we will go into the nitty details.   K. Farina – You probably saw the press releases but we did receive the implementation grant from Mass Ideas.  This is following the planning grant we did last year that we had the $127,000 for coming from Nellie Mae and the Bard Foundation.  The idea and the purpose of the grant is to continue our rethinking of the educational experience at Monument with some focal points around making sure we are providing equitable outcomes for all of our students to be prepared for whatever future they are going to pursue.  We are trying to build in community voice, parent voice and student voice in the process.  It is a process so that is all continuing work coming out of the planning grant.  One of the pieces we are talking about is how we make sure that we don’t just include the voices we typically hear from, but the voices of folks that are often marginalized or not included in conversations about how school works for them.  We are looking to continue to examine our practices around student engagement and how we make sure that all students really have a voice in their own educational experience.  To do that, there are four main areas that we are devoting our time to.  The first is, what would an academy or team based model look like at Monument and what would the benefits of that be.  In the grant we wrote about pursuing an academy model.  That is not clearly defined at this point so that is work we have to do over the course of the next year.  The next is some structural change specifically around what a more innovative high school schedule could look like and how that could benefit us and also what sustainable governance structure could be so we really do include community, parent, student voice in the process of decision making in an ongoing way as we move forward.  We are looking at all of the work we have been doing over the past several years connected to the wellness that you heard us talk about; social/emotional learning and our initiative we started during advisory.  We are really thinking about how we can leverage all that work, build on that work to make sure we are supporting all students to be successful in their high school experience.  The final one is around examining how a shift to thinking about instruction and assessment aligned to proficiencies and how that might actually help move our work forward in a different way as we look to make some change.  We are very excited about this in spite of the fact it is all happening in the middle of a pandemic.  S. Bannon – I think we will want updates all through the year.
• Good News Items:
  • Farina, Principal – Monument Mountain Regional High School – you probably have already heard that we filmed all of our seniors and Paul Kakley really stepped up and is remarkable so I have to give him kudos for everything he did to pull together our virtual graduation ceremony. He filmed the speakers, our valedictorian, our salutatorian; he pulled the whole ceremony together, coordinated with CTSB and the Pittsfield Community Broadcasting so that it will air on Sunday at 10am.  It will also be available through live stream through CTSB and also through our MMTV website.  That information has gone out to the public in various ways and we are continuing to get that out.  It will be this Sunday at 10am.  Following the airing of the virtual ceremony, we are asking all of the graduates and families to join us at the high school for the distribution of diplomas.  Folks will come up to the front of the building and then we will wind cars down into the parking lot where everyone will be lined up for the parade.  The parade will depart Monument, we anticipate around 1:30, head north into Stockbridge, then on to West Stockbridge, into Housatonic and then into Great Barrington ending at the intersection of Main and Bridge Street.  That parade route has also been published.  It is also on the Monument Facebook page.  Folks can come out and support our graduates as the parade procession goes through our town.  Wear maroon and white.  Bring noise makers and really help us celebrate our graduating seniors.  The class of 2020 has been fabulous and it was wonderful to see all the seniors and their families when they came to get filmed walking across the stage.  I have to give a shout-out to Doreen Hughes who actually ironed every single cap and gown so the seniors didn’t have wrinkled caps and gowns.  I think everyone stepped up and did a great job in challenging circumstances.
  • Ben Doren, Principal – Du Bois Regional Middle School – eight grade graduation is really important but salvaging an important for the high school is pretty awesome. I am inspired by what the high school has done.  I am also inspired by the efforts of the elementary school.  They have already done several parades through the towns which have brought cheer to our families.  We are trying to take that inspiration.  We usually do graduation the night before the last day of school.  We will be doing that at 6:30pm on Thursday night.  To ramp up to that we are going to have a lot of fun.  On Wednesday morning the 7th grade parents would do an 8th grade breakfast where the 8th grade teachers do a fun, informal awards ceremony with kids and the kids are able to give back their appreciation to their teachers; because we can’t get together, we are actually going to start it during advisory on Wednesday morning with an appreciation ceremony.  In the afternoon, we will do an awards ceremony on Google Hangout which will be a lot of fun.  On Thursday, to get ready for graduation that evening, we are going to do a parade using a similar route that the high school put together.  It will be a nice community event, not just 8th graders.  It will be for all of our students, 5th – 8th grade, waving, honking, having a lot of fun.  Then we will run a very traditional Monument Valley graduation ceremony on the evening of the 11th at 6:30 but virtually on Zoom.  It will be fun.  We have our student council president doing a speech.  We have our 8th grade students from english classes, doing their “This I Believe”.  We will give our traditional awards for academics, excellence, achievement, participation.  We will also be doing our Norman Rockwell and WEB Du Bois awards celebrating our stellar academic achievements.  It should be a lot of fun and interesting and from what I understand from Uli, we will be able to have more than 500 people on the Zoom call.  I’ll see what happens.  It may crash and be a complete failure but I’m going to try really hard.  We will record it like we do on these sessions so if folks drop off, they can watch it.  On Friday, we are going to do an appropriate social distance activity at the school where the graduates and their families can drive up in the afternoon and pick up their envelope with their certificate of completion and actual awards, which are printed out.  I am very appreciative to our guidance secretary Debra Spence for printing our typical awards and also our fun awards.  We are also going to have Kwik Print two copies of the graduation program so it will be an artifact that families will have from the graduation as a keepsake from a graduation ceremony.  They will be able to drive up, our faculty will line the circle in a socially distanced way.  We will hand them the envelope which is a nice sense of community and connection.  Then we will go off to the summer.  I am excited even though it is less than what we really wanted.
  • Lee, Principal – Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – at the elementary school the tradition that we have to mark the end of the year and recognize our 4th graders, we don’t call it graduation; we call it moving up. Typically we mark it with an all-school assembly in the afternoon the day before school is out and there is a drum circle and an event called a clap out.  Of course, we can’t do those things this year, so there are a number of celebrations taking place on the classroom basis where individual classroom teachers in the 4th grade are doing some special recognitions in class meetings that they are leading virtually.  Then next week, I believe on Tuesday, Molly Cosel, one of our 4th grade teachers, has been working on a commemorative video featuring all of our 4th grade students who are moving up.  All of our staff and faculty have been contributing still photos, jpegs to be a part of that so that will go live and be accessible to our 4th grade students next week and families to enjoy.  In addition to that our PTA actually created t-shirts for our 4th grade students who are moving up to the middle school.  Many of them have them already.  When they picked up their materials this week, it would have been included in their materials.  It is a nice simple tshirt with the school’s logo and the name of all the students who are moving up on the back.  It is a nice memento of their time.  In addition, this year, we are doing a little bit more with a commemorative certificate that we are giving to each one of our 4th grade students, a little fancier, a little something that is a bit more special during this year when we can’t recognize them by name and place.  Included in the envelope with the certificate will be in we divide up all of our 4th grade students and asked staff members from PK to grade 4 to write down some special notes and greetings of best wishes to our 4th grade students who are moving up and those notes and wishes and greetings will go into the envelope that students are receiving with the certificate.  As a whole school activity, we are doing something similar to what Ben mentioned, it is still in the planning stages, we were going to attempt one more wave parade on the last day of school.  We kind of ran into a snag with those plans as the police were not available to help us.  What we are going to do instead, pending Steve’s and Peter’s approval, is have our families from all of our grades come through the school parking lot between 11 and 1 and we are going to do another version of the clap out, socially distanced version where we can see our students and they can see us one more time for the close of the school year.  I think it’s going to be nice.
• Remote Learning Survey Data – I sent around today, and Rob Putnam really helped out with this and I really appreciate it, a summary and high-level overview of the parent portion of the remote learning survey. Some of you may not have had a chance to look at it, so I will talk at some high level about it and then at our next meeting we will share the student side of things too.  I am glad we did it and I think it was valuable to get feedback from parents.  Some of the stuff we had a pretty good sense of already and some of it is a little surprising.  The good news is most people have good and reliable access to the internet and devices.  There are a small number of outlying towns, mostly choice students, who have terrible access to the internet.  Most of the students in Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge have good access.  A couple of things to think about; the amount of time and the depth of experiences that kids are having with remote learning.  It will get really interesting when you see the student responses but it looks to us that folks are not as engaged as they might be and the work they are doing isn’t as meaningful as it might be.  In spite of that, I think teachers did a pretty remarkable or Herculean lift ….. S. Stephen – Peter, I am sorry to interrupt; so people were not impressed by the content or….can you explain what you are saying?  Dillon – it is a little bit of both.  Parents were saying that their kids aren’t busy enough or engaged enough or for long enough; so part of it is the quantity of time and the second thing is the quality of experiences their kids are engaged in.  It is a little bit of a double whammy.  The third one that you throw in is parents concerns about kids’ emotional state in the context of a pandemic.  It is really three things: not enough time, not deep enough and kids are rattled by this whole experience.  The isolation, the disconnect.  Being a teenager is about being social; being an elementary school student is in many ways about hugging your friends and people are not getting to do that.  That is hard.  On the upside, folks we are very positive about our clarity of our communication but again most people kids are learning less and some significantly less than regular times.  There are distinctions by grade level.  Rob did a nice job of including questions or things to talk about at each point.  I am happy to go into those at some point if people were interested in that.  What are your thoughts on that?  R. Dohoney – I am comfortable waiting until we get more data.  I don’t think we have had enough time to look at it.  P. Dillon – you have two weeks until our next meeting.  In a few days, I will share the student data and then I will do a little cross with the two of them.  One of the things that is interesting is parents want their kids to do more work and kids want to do less work and that changes at different grade levels.  J. St. Peter – I just looked at the data and to me it seemed that they were concerned about learning but when you go down to the bottom, in question 14, how would you describe the amount of school work assigned, the elementary school and middle school, there was a significant majority that said it was too much or just right.  My thought is with the quarantine, I don’t think people expected their kids to spend most of the day doing school work, so the disconnect which is unavoidable, the time they did it was acceptable, just want as done doing that time could have used more work or done better.  I feel we did the best we could, better than a vast majority of the districts.  I have been sitting into a lot of statewide school committee meetings.  A. Potter – a part of it too is the time of the year.  J. St. Peter – the amount of time was adequate but just a better interface.  Learning guidance was one of the big areas and if we have to do it again in the fall or another time, we will be better on that.  P. Dillon – Rob didn’t do an analysis of the three open-ended questions but obviously I have read through them all and I will share some very specific examples from that.  One thing that people were crying out for was when teachers engaged in face-to-face interactions, people really loved and appreciated that.  That doesn’t mean that people have to see and teach five periods of class, nor would we want kids to stare at a screen for five 45-minute periods or five hours but building in some time where people can check in individually or in small groups would be beneficial going forward.  Again, so I don’t get beat up, I think what the teachers did in the context of this is really quite remarkable and I think we did better than many of our surrounding districts but the goal is not to beat us up but to have learned from this and ramp it up in a way that works for kids and teachers that is manageable and engaging.  J. St. Peter – I just want to emphasize your point, I think our teachers and administrators were put in an impossible situation and they did an unbelievable job but moving forward, what can we learn from this process.  Comparing it to other districts, I think we did beyond what we were expected to.  P. Dillon – I agree and I am really happy with the work our teachers and principals did.  I can’t say enough nice things about it.  I think our shift to a learning-management system will make it easier for teachers to organize materials and for kids and parents to work through those materials.  B. Fields – within the next two weeks, we have heard from parents and students but we haven’t heard from teachers.  I talked to one teacher who expressed some frustration but also some admiration for her peers and what someone referred to at the last meeting as building the airplane as we are flying it.  I was wondering if there is a possibility of any within this period of time and I agree we should table it and look at it two weeks from now.  Can we get input from teachers?  P. Dillon – yes, we can.  We got a lot informally and anidotically.  Part of my thinking to not do the whole 20 questions survey with them is they had enough other stuff going on and didn’t want to overwhelm them.  Maybe now as we are coming to the end of the year, as a year-end reflection, I can.  The questions are largely the same for students and parents and I just change a few words in each so we are able to compare them.  I think I can send it to teachers and they will be patient enough to complete it.  I think if I asked them to do this survey three weeks ago, they would have run me out of town.  B. Fields – I think you do it with a disclaimer that the school committee is very interested in their reactions and very concerned about this experiment as Jason said, it can serve as a model but we need to build on that.  I think teachers need to know that we are very supportive of what they do.  P. Dillon – I think that is a common theme so thank you for reiterating that.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation – P. Dillon – we had six people participate in this but in a funny way, Richmond had two more people and I can talk about that. In Berkshire Hills it is Sean, Anne and Andy and the chair of the Richmond school committee, the chair of the Hancock school committee and the chair of the New Ashford school committee.  Then because Richmond is a three-member committee and for them to engage in dialogue would be complicated and with open meeting laws and things, they each complete evaluation and their responses are aggregated into one.  It ends up the final evaluation is based on six responses but there are really two more for Richmond.  Hutchinson – the system when as usual but we never met in person, only over Zoom.  As Peter said, everybody filled out their part and when we actually had a Zoom meeting to talk about it, all of the Richmond people were there, myself and Peter.  It felt like a one-sided conversation.  We had everyone’s responses and those are all given in the report.  It is always strange also because New Ashford has a vote in this but they have no school.  Hancock is very happy with everything Peter has done for them.  The smallest part of this school district group had the most input into this evaluation which is interesting because Berkshire Hills had the least amount in input in the way it came together.  I still think it represents what Berkshire Hills had to say as well as those from New Ashford, Hancock and Richmond.  D. Weston – what school year cycle is this evaluation.  Is this ending July 1st this year or are we still trying to catch up from last year?  P. Dillon – no, the miracle of all miracles is we did it early.  D. Weston – that’s why I’m kind of confused.  Anne did a nice job with that and Doreen provided some nice support.  I think it worked out well.  R. Dohoney – no comments on a specific thing but we won’t do that process again.  P. Dillon – I think it will be different because Hancock and New Ashford are stepping away and presumably our future meetings, maybe the ones in the fall will be virtually but the future ones will be face to face.  A year ago, I did some surveys of staff and other folks and one of the things we discussed was next year getting some additional feedback from principals and maybe alternating a cycle where we also get feedback from parents.  R. Dohoney – I am not referencing the substantive process but I don’t think any kind of shared services should ever be incorporated into evaluation.  It is our job.  P. Dillon – I think part of the initial thinking why we did it that way so we didn’t do it twice.  It is pretty time consuming.  Now that we have done it a bunch of times, we understand it and we could do it discreetly for Berkshire Hills and discreetly going forward for Richmond and that would be manageable, depending on where we land with Richmond.
• Updates:
  • FY20 Graduation and Celebration
  • COVID-19 – P. Dillon – I have been on calls with the commissioner and folks with elementary and secondary ed, we expect some additional guidance next week or the week after. My best guess around what is going to happen is we start school in August in some hybrid way where some kids are some of the time and some kids are at home doing work remotely and probably that is the same for staff.  We are starting to do planning around that to see what it will look like.  The commissioner was pretty clean that going forward, the directives are going to be quite directed.  This spring was let a thousand flowers bloom and everybody do what they want to do and it looks like going forward there are going to be one or two ways to do something.  We will see what that looks like and what the recommendations are.  Dohoney – if the state is not going to exercise all of those controls and tell us what to do, are they going to do it on a state-wide basis or are they going to do it regionally by the conditions in each region?  P. Dillon – a thoughtful person would do the latter which would have it be regionally because our experience is very different from Middlesex County or Suffield County or the Cape.  I don’t know.  The only thing I know and I want to say this in a positive way, is ultimately when they give advice it has been pretty thoughtful.  The headache is they released their graduation advice a few days ago, in draft form.  We came up with a plan that I think is really thoughtful and I am psyched about it but if we wait for their advice, I don’t know what we’d do.  I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and hopefully they come up with something.  Even if they try to be really direct, Massachusetts is still full of rugged individuals with local autonomy so I can’t imagine that they have an enforcement mechanism.  We will come up with something that meets the higher standard that we have and hopefully it also meets their standard.  S. Stephen – My experience as a business owner right now is the state is not telling anyone anything so let’s not hold the breath until the state tells us what to do.  We need to get ahead of the ball.  P. Dillon – Obviously, I have been meeting with the principals and the administrative team about this all along.  I also reached out to the staff and the number keeps growing and I need to manage it a little but about 46 people as of 5pm today are interested in being part of a school reopening committee.  Obviously, I can’t manage 46 people on a committee; it will be some subset of that but I think it is positive that so many people care so much that they want to be part of it.  We are talking to nurses; Steve has done a lot around physical things.  We are looking at negative pressure in the nurse’s offices for when somebody gets sick it gets the contaminated air sucked out.  We are looking at exits for kids.  We are looking at thermal imaging systems to check temperatures very quickly.  Masks.  We are talking to Sharon and Kathy about cafeterias.  Steve has ordered some god awful number of masks and wipes.  S. Stephen – I just want to make sure we are not waiting.  The longer we wait, makes us sitting there going oops, what do we do now?  P. Dillon – we are not waiting.  We are very proactive.  We are a little behind in terms of where I would like to be in scheduling but we are catching up.  People need to cut us a little slack that we are doing this in the context of a pandemic and it is a little more than just creating schedules of 500 for the high school, it is creating that schedule in a way that affords us flexibility if there is a second wave or we can’t all go back at the same time.  S. Stephen – I think people need to understand not aof guidance coming out of anywhere at this point.  You tend to make it up as you go along thinking this makes sense and this is logical; it may be logical now but it might not be in three months.  We have to go down that path if we want to do something constructive.  P. Dillon – we have a smart group of people on board.  The school committee is really thoughtful.  We are going to let common sense be our guide and not get attached to anything dopey and we will come out of this much better than almost any other district in the county and likely most districts in the commonwealth.  S. Soule – I ordered 15,000 masks, I am in communication with Fairview Hospital in regard to the negative pressure rooms that they created there just in case we need to create that in our buildings.  I expect the masks to come in the next two weeks and I also ordered the ones that you see on the news on people with hazmat suits that are spraying things.  We have backpack sprayers and handheld sprayers on the way.  I read a few articles about the thermal imaging machines.  The reliability there is pretty questionable so I may continue my research on that to see if there is a better method.  It may just be those individual scanners that you point toward somebody’s forehead.  I have been communicating with the nurses.  Their list is very long but we will have to figure that out as we go through the next few months.  P. Dillon – the other thing that the commissioner did share which is a bit of a shift is while they encouraged this past marking period to do everything credit/no credit, he is sharing the expectation going forward that we are done with that and things will be graded again in the future.  That is an interesting wrinkle.
• Donations – P. Dillon – we received a $500 donation from the union. I wanted to read you the note they wrote because I thought it was thoughtful.  In these extraordinary times, the Berkshire Hills Education Association remains steadfastly committed to the Berkshire Hills school community and students with whom we have the privilege to work.  We are aware of the growing need to provide assistance to our families for whom food and securities are too real.  As a response to the significant need and in desire to make a difference, please accept the $500 donation from the teachers and the paraprofessionals and thank you for taking care of our community.  MOTION TO ACCEPT $500 DONATION FROM THE BERKSHIRE HILLS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION              POTTER              SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         UNANIMOUSLY ACCEPTED BY ROLL CALL VOTE
• Dillon – those of you that are on the parent list got a letter I sent out a little earlier today. I think the two people that aren’t on that list are Steve and Bill; just look at the letter when you have a chance.  It is a letter around the times we are living in this county, race and social justice and some things we can do about it.  Within it there are links to a lifetime’s worth of resources and wherever you are and whenever you approach and work through that, there is something that should be meaningful to somebody.  Take a look at it.  It is sort of rare that I get what can be seen as political but every once in a while the times warrant it and you will see that the letter is carefully worded.  I hope it transcends politics and is a bridge to bring our community together.  S. Bannon – can you post the letter on our website?  P. Dillon – I will post it, yes.  I don’t know if I can do it tonight but I will figure it out for tomorrow.
• Stephen – I have a question about the school trip stuff that has been going on. In the middle school there was the DC trip and Peru trip.  People gave down payments.  Are those on the way back out to people?  If anything they need that coming back to them now.  P. Dillon – there are a couple of things going on.  Initially at the high school level, parents reached out to a tour group connected to Yellow Stone about getting reimbursed and the initial from the group was no.  Then we reached out some more and they were going to give a partial refund.  Then we got our lawyer involved and they offered to give us a credit that the district would own that would be valid for a couple of years, then the district could reimburse parents.  Since then a bill has made its way through the state senate and house and I need to call Smitty and Ben to check its status.  When you look up on the bill, it looks like it was agreed to but it is one of those weird ones where it doesn’t look like a lot of action.  I spoke to our attorney today about it and directed her to ask for a full and complete refund which she will do but if the bill is actually a law, she has a little more umph behind it than if we are just asking.  I hope to bring that to closure tomorrow.  I think they got reimbursed for the travel and the part they weren’t reimbursed for was the actual tour group in Yellow Stone.  Ben, can you speak to what happened to the middle school trip.  I don’t think we are out much money because the tickets were never purchased, right?  B. Doren – every educational trip that we did is getting a full refund; Nature’s Classroom, Washington DC, as well as several field study trips that were planned for the end of March and early April.  Those will be processed through the business office and will be returned in full.  We will be able, through the operating budget, to get some credits so it will cost less next year and that will allow us to give full refunds to families this year which is great.  I cannot speak to the spanish trip; it is not a general education trip, it is an extracurricular trip.
• St. Peter – a parent brought this up and I thought it was a good point, they told me how through the COVID process, the kid wasn’t really learning and having a tough time with schooling and didn’t get a lot done but did a lot of other things, summer break kind of things. Their kid now has kind of settled down and a better student for learning.  What might be beneficial is to leave all the stuff that is in their grade level on the computer up there through the summer so if it is possible parents can go back with the child and go over some of the lessons throughout the summer, that would be a good idea.  P. Dillon – I like that idea and I will talk about that with the principals.  There is no reason to take it down.
• Sub Committee Reports:
  • Policy – N/A
  • Building & Grounds – N/A
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation & Advisory – See Above
  • Technology – A. Potter – we have a meeting on the 19th. We decided to meet once a month through the summer to keep an eye on the issue around LMS and Peter if you want to talk about the LMS, Canvas v. Schoolology which is where we are at in terms of are we still separated from … P. Dillon – I will give a quick update.  The meeting is on the 23rd.  Here is where we are with Canvas and Schoolology.  They are both learning management systems like a one stop place where teachers can build information and students and parents can go to see what is going on.  What is better about it than what we have been doing with Google is it is all interconnected and it is thoughtful and makes sense.  As part of an upgrade we did, we have free access to Schoolology.  The county-wide task force is running a separate initiative and about half the districts in the county are signing on to Canvas.  They are very comparable systems but our decision because we already have the side license for several years for Schoolology and it integrates really well with PowerSchool which we use for grades and other things, it makes more sense for us to use that.  I have spoke a lot to Jake Everwine and the folks involved in the Canvas project and though we are going to use different platforms, there will be opportunities for us to share materials through what he describes as commons; so teachers can share information back and forth so we will take advantage of that but we are not ready to spend more money on something we already have a license to.  There is no animosity; the county-wide task force supports our decision and they see it as an alternative path.  I think if Greylock weren’t invested in Canvas already and if some of the players hadn’t worked with it at MCLA, everybody might have gone to Schoolology.  We are going to be very deliberate in rolling it out, supporting staff and students and parents in how to use it, doing training, etc.  We are optimistic that we can get a bunch of that done before school starts and we don’t want people to have nervous breakdowns if it is not all perfectly running in September.  We will ease into it in a way that is good for everybody.
  • Finance – N/A
  • District Consolidation & Sharing – P. Dillon – at the meeting, a subcommittee offered work to three different groups.  They invited Jake Everwine to be the project manager, Chris Hazzard, the former head of Berkshire United Way, to be the facilitator and Steve Hammond and Mars….so that work is moving forward and spend down that $50,000 grant and then work to procure some additional funds.  The separate work that is going on with Richmond, the consultant has been meeting with them.  We are looking to reschedule a meeting with that consultant and just as a point of information, I helped Hancock and New Ashford do a Superintendent and Spec Ed Director search and they made an offer and are in negotiations with a candidate to be their part-time superintendent and special ed director so that is nice.  Stephen – Is there a way to get minutes of these meetings sent to us?  P. Dillon – Lucy Prashkar is the head of that group and she has a recording secretary there.  I haven’t received them because that meeting just happened.  S. Bannon – one of the problems is they feel an urgency with the $50,000 so they had the meeting in the middle of the day and I was not able to attend and if they continue to do that, they will alienate a lot of people because people who work will never be able to attend those meetings so they need to come up with a schedule.  S. Stephen – I never heard about any meeting.  If I can at least get minutes from it it would be good.  P. Dillon – we will catch you up and you will be happy or sad to hear, they were very clear they won’t schedule any more meetings during the day so everybody will be able to attend.
• Personnel Report
  • Retirement(s)
  • Leave of Absence(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

Meeting Adjourned at 7:00pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

May 14, 2020 – 6:00pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, S. Stephen, M. Thomas, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson, R. Dohoney, J. St. Peter, D. Singer

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:

Absent:                                     A. Potter

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  1 hour, 4 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Minutes:

• April 16, 2020

MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED APRIL 16, 2020      B. FIELDS            SECONDED:  D. WESTON              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL

Superintendent’s Report:

• Good News Items – P. Dillon – we have been doing a lot of grant writing and we have had some nice success. I will let Sharon give an update on that.  Harrison – today we just got word that we received a $15,000 grant for our food program from the Berkshire United Way, Berkshire Taconic Joint Neighborhoods Fund.  We also very excitedly and surprisingly got a donation of $2,240 from First Congregational Church of Stockbridge.  I have a check in my hand from Project Bread for $4,000 for the program as well.  We are doing really well in the fundraising on that.  We have a little over $5,000 in the Berkshire Taconic Fund that we set up for donations so we are going to be able to cover our program this year and going into the summer.  P. Dillon – one thing that Sharon wrote in the grant application that I don’t think people get; because Kathy is ordering food wholesale, we are able for every $100 we spend, give people $200 worth of food if they bought it themselves in the grocery store.  It is quite remarkable.  The other thing I would like to mention is that every other week, Joe Aberdale and the Aberdale Family are supporting bags of food specifically to the Housatonic residents in addition to what we are doing through our food services program.  We appreciate their support as well.  S. Harrison – through People’s Pantry which is part of the Western Mass Food Bank, Anne gets us wonderful produce weekly as well.  A. Hutchinson – the produce comes through Berkshire Bounty and we set it all up.  We are not paying for it.  Bridget Stone and her group are helping to fund that.  They got a  grant to do that.  P. Dillon – Steve, do you need to vote to accept those funds?  S. Bannon – I thought we needed to vote for all grants.  Sharon would be the expert on that.  MOTION TO ACCEPT GRANTS FROM BERKSHIRE UNITED WAY/BERKSHIRE TACONIC IN THE AMOUNT OF $15,000, FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF STOCKBRIDGE IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,240; PROJECT BREAD IN THE AMOUNT OF $4,000                      B. FIELDS                 SECONDED:  S. STEPHEN          ACCEPTED UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL VOTE  P. Dillon – I will send thank you letters to all those organizations on behalf of the district and the school committee.  S. Bannon – maybe a press release too for those three and Aberdale’s.  It really deserves to have some publicity.
• Request to Approve: Dillon – the next two, and I think you can do them together, every year I request that you approve two appointments; one for the district treasurer, Dick Jette and one for the school committee recorder, Christine Kelly.  It is really a formality.  They both do a wonderful job and I want to get your support to approve them continuing in their roles.  MOTION TO APPROVE APPOINTMENT OF DICK JETTE AS DISTRICT TREASURER AND CHRISTINE KELLY AS SCHOOL COMMITTEE RECORDER          A. HUTCHINSON              SECONDED:  S. STEPHEN          ACCEPTED UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL VOTE
  • FY21 Appointment – District Treasurer
  • FY21 School Committee Recorder
• Updates:
  • FY20 Graduation – P. Dillon – I just wanted to give a public update to the school committee and the public about what we are doing with graduation. It is very much a work in progress and it keeps evolving.  I will have Ben and Kristi speak to their initial planning although it may shift some.  This is sort of a drag.  We would like to have graduation as a big deal.  We like to have proms and all these other celebrations and in the context of this virus, we can’t have those as we typically would so we are trying to come up with really interesting ways to celebrate kids and families and all their hard work that are different.  I think we have put together a nice plan at the high school and the plan at the middle school is emerging.  Tim is also working on something at the elementary school as well.  A really nice thing is all sorts of family members have stepped up, so you will see the Adopt a Senior on Facebook and their wonderful blurbs about graduating students and where they are going to college and what they are doing post-high school.  Folks are adopting them and there are balloons and any possible craft under the sun that can imagine happening informally.  There is the stuff we are doing as a school as well.  It will be different but kids will certainly be recognized and celebrated and they will remember it.  I think what makes sense is to give Kristi a minute to talk about some of the stuff going on at the high school and then we will talk with Ben and Tim a bit too.
    • Kristi Farina, Principal, Monument Mountain Regional High School – We are well underway in planning for graduation. We kept the date of formal graduation the same, Sunday, June 7th.  We are doing a virtual ceremony and Paul Kakley has taken the reins.  Paul is amazing.  He has already started putting videos together.  He has been putting a lot of thought about how we are going to do filming in the auditorium.  It certainly is a challenge and not the way any of us really want to be doing it but we believe it is the right way to go about this at the moment.  Beginning next week, we are going to have seniors coming to the school.  We are doing scheduling around this right now in groups of four.  We did decide to allow them to each have up to four family members and we are going to have them in socially distanced areas of the auditorium and they have to wear masks to be present.  The seniors are having some choice in what other seniors they want in their groups of fours.  We did decide it was pretty important that they have at least one friend and a few family members present while they are filmed receiving their diploma.  They won’t actually get their diploma during the filming process but that will give Paul the footage to put all that together.  We have a team that is preparing the auditorium with decorations and flowers.  Steve Soule stepped up with his guys and they are repainting the stage floor because we are trying to make it look as nice as we can.  I have every confidence that will come together and be as great as we can possible make it.  That will be shown on June 7th at 10am.  It will be broadcast on CTSB both livestream and through television.  It will also be through the MMTV website so there will be a few different ways people can access it.  It will be shown after the event at 10am.  CTSB will run it again.  Following the ceremony itself, we are asking seniors and families to arrive at the high school in cars.  We are working on this component right now but we are saying at 12noon will be the start time.  We will do a drive through distribution.  We have ordered bags to put gifts for seniors, their diplomas, their files, any awards they received; we are compiling all that into a bag that we will distribute.  We are coordinating with the police departments and fire departments in Stockbridge, West Stockbridge and Great Barrington so we can do a parade from the high school through the towns ending in downtown Great Barrington then people will disperse.  The details are still being worked out.  We have had tremendous outpouring as you can imagine from people wanting to do things for seniors so we are trying to coordinate all of that.  We have ordered lawn signs with each senior’s photo in addition to a message and we are going to be putting those on the front lawn and hill and doing another painting for the class of 2020 on the front hill leading up to all of this.  We are open to suggestions and ideas.  We are trying to make this as special as we can under the circumstances.  Dillon – we have a nice tradition of school committee members handing diplomas to their graduating seniors, their children and in this class, I think there are two school committee members (Dan and Diane) who have kids graduating so talk to your children about the day they come in.  As Kristi and I hand them their diplomas on that day, we won’t hand it to them, we will give it to you to hand to them so we can continue that tradition.  If school committee members are available on the 7th for the drive through distribution, we can make a little line of school committee members in front of the high school and as we are handing stuff out, you can all participate in that.  We will all be appropriately gowned and garbed in PPE’s as opposed to academic regalia.
    • Ben Doren, Principal, Du Bois Regional Middle School – I fully recognize how important high school graduation is and just how much energy and focus needs to go into it. I want to applaud what Kristi and Pete and the team at the high school are doing.  I also agree with how wonderful Paul is.  At the middle school, we are also dumbfounded by what we have to change and do.  We usually have a wonderful ceremony on the night before the last day of school.  That is a very nice, formal ceremony that is very appreciated by families but in addition we also have other things that go on.  There is a big thing with the 8th grade teachers handing out internal awards and celebrating the kids and 7th grade parents giving a breakfast for the 8th graders.  We are going to miss all that in person and it is so sad.  I just met with representatives of the 7th and 8th grade teams along with our folks from admin to talk about what we wanted to do with graduation.  We had been batting around some ideas but I didn’t want to move too quickly ahead until I found out what the high school was doing and what the parameters were.  Again, I am very thankful for Kristi reaching out to the health department and police departments on how to do it safely but also do a celebration.  Now we have a better idea and I was comfortable meeting with my folks and entertaining ideas.  We are going to meet again next Wednesday and finalize some ideas and start doing some outreach.  We want to have an event that celebrates kids with teachers and celebrate our kids so parents can participate in some resemblance of face to face; I don’t think we need to do something as intense as the high school is doing.  Friday the 12th is our last day of school so on Wednesday the 10th we will do some kind of fun meetings like this with the students and teachers and do a bunch of internal awards to celebrate the kids.  The evening of Thursday the 11th when we would normally do graduation, we are thinking one of two things: one idea I like but it may be difficult is to do something online where we have myself and Peter give short talks and give out awards, some students give their speeches and have parents and family members login and get to observe it as we announce all the kids and all the wonderful things.  It may be too cumbersome and too glitchy and it could be less than a satisfying experience for families.  We are also bouncing around the idea of doing a video like the high school that we can put it all together and cast it out at the same time so folks could watch it.  We are trying to figure out on the last day of school to have families drive through the circle and pick up an envelope with their certificate of completion and awards, etc.  Faculty could come and be socially distanced, waving and families going through and honking and have a good time.  That is our big picture thinking.  There is a lot more we are going to do on Wednesday to finalize it.
    • Tim Lee, Principal, Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – Typically the recognition we have at the end of the school year is a moving-up, not a graduation. We typically celebrate it with a school-wide assembly, a drum circle and a reception for parents and walk-out where parents can see all the 4th grade students walking in a line as they do a symbolic walkout of the school.  Of course, we are not able to do any of that this year.  Our recognition celebration for 4th graders is mainly going to center around the creation of a video slideshow with each student contributing a video slide of their favorite memories of Muddy Brook.  Fourth grade teachers will be adding a short message.  In addition, we are asking staff to take images that we can place into the slide show with well wishes, good luck.  In addition to that students will be receiving a certificate which is a pretty standard practice.  The difference this year is that with their certificate we are also creating a letter-writing campaign where all staff within the school will be choosing a student with whom they have a special relationship from sometime of their time at Muddy Brook and writing them a special greeting for good wishes for their time ahead.  Our PTA is also committed to getting a special gift for all of our 4th graders who are moving up.  It will be a tshirt with the school’s emblem, individualized for each student.  There is also a little bit of discussion at this point, it hasn’t materialized yet, similar to what Ben was describing, an opportunity for 4th grade parents to come through the school and perhaps pick up those envelopes with staff at a social distance, able to wave and greet them as they come by.  We really lament that we cannot do our traditional recognition of our 4th graders as an entire school.  We really miss our kids but we are hoping we can give them a send off that recognizes each and every one of them.
  • COVID-19 – P. Dillon – we are anticipating some sort of announcement. Everyday Governor Baker does a briefing but lots of people think something special might happen on Monday.  We are paying attention to that and we will listen carefully to that particular briefing.  We are having discussions about shifting our learning management system.  We have been using Google.  If you have been following the papers, there is a conversation countywide about a shift to a more robust learning management system.  We built what we are using now, very quickly and we would like to have one that lets us have more flexibility with kids and lets us differentiate things and lets them have access to different levels of content.  A big call tomorrow or conference call about that as well as lots of internal conversations and we will probably make a decision quickly.  We will set that up, do some thoughtful work with teachers and staff, enlist them in helping make that decision too and then move forward.  Another thing we are getting poised to do is a formal round of feedback from families around how remote learning is working and what is effective and what is not effective.  That will help us look back on how this has gone so far but perhaps more importantly help us form how we might have to plan and eventually do for the fall.  Stephen – Peter, what is the new platform and what is the timeframe on that?  P. Dillon – in terms of rolling it out?  S. Stephen – yes.  P. Dillon – we are going to stick with Google for the rest of the school year and roll that out in the start of the year if we need to for continued virtual learning or perhaps as part of a hybrid thing we are doing.  The last thing we are doing a lot is both planning for the summer and fall.  We have these great 21st Century grants around our summer program in addition to our year-long program, and we are building on that.  We have done some really nice work with particularly Tom Kelly and Amy Shaw about putting together some activity boxes in addition to the virtual stuff so kids won’t be spending so much time on screens during our summer program.  We will have resources to do work outside of what they are doing online and use the online opportunities to check in on some of that work.  That will be exciting as a pilot and as a way to grow.  We are really waiting for additional guidance from the governor and commissioner on that.  It is very hard because there are so many unknowns and it is challenging to plan in a context where there are so many unknown variables.  J. St. Peter – so, are the summer programs officially cancelled?  Is that still up in the air?  P. Dillon – no, they are not cancelled by any means.  J. St. Peter – no, the physical aspect of it as far as going into the buildings?  P. Dillon – I think so.  If the governor says on Monday that everything is ok, we will have a real conversation about it but in the context of what we know, it probably doesn’t make sense to bring large groups of kids together.  We are still also talking about running a summer special ed program for kids with disabilities.  The numbers there might be such that we might actually be able to do those on campus or to look at staggering the time of them.  J. St. Peter – my thought is obviously we want to give the families as much lead time as possible if it looks like it is more probable than not that there is not going to be a physical presence at the schools so they can find alternate child care.  P. Dillon – I very much agree with you and in talking with some of the camp people who run camps, who are also in a wait and see patterns where they haven’t gotten a direction about if they are going to be able to open camps; I imagine there will be clear direction in the next couple of weeks about all of this.  S. Stephen – I was hoping this new platform would be done sooner.  I am very worried about what is being assigned to the students right now.  I have spoken to Ben about this.  It is woefully inadequate.  My daughter is through her weekly assignments in two hours.  There has to be something and somebody has to step up the game with face-to-face learning with kids, anything.  Somebody has to step up.  I am just really, really worried that we are going to have kids that will fall through the cracks.  My daughter already realizes she is not learning enough and is reading books out of control.  There has to be some more challenging content coming out.  P. Dillon – I hear you.  I don’t know if that is the universal experience.  S. Stephen – I don’t know either.  I just know my personal experience.  R. Dohoney – I have heard that similar sentiment from a number of people.  S. Stephen – It really concerns me.  P. Dillon – I hear you.  That is part of why we are moving forward with this survey to get feedback.  It is super fascinating; for every parent or student I hear from, for everyone that isn’t feeling challenged enough, on the other end of it, I hear from someone that is feeling overwhelmed and taxed.  There is always a large group of people who are the quiet middle group.  We will continue to check in with our teachers around this and provide more rigorous opportunities for people for what it.  S. Stephens – it certainly needs to be much more rigorous.  This week, Bridget was done with the work in two hours.  I looked it all over.  It was all done.  I asked her to show me what she has been doing this week.  Every assignment was done except telephone Spanish.  There has to be something more challenging going on.  P. Dillon – I will check in with the principals on it some more and individual teachers and I think a lot of the public is watching so give us some feedback.  We will get the survey out quickly or reach out to me, individual teachers as well.  It is hard to know what is enough and what isn’t and if you feel your kids are not being challenged enough, let us know.  If you feel your kids are overwhelmed, let us know.  We are seeing a whole range of it.  R. Dohoney – I’m going to sound like Bill for a minute, I don’t want us to be too married by what these bureaucrats in Boston are telling us what we should be doing.  It is clear to me that Massachusetts has made some bad decisions compared to our neighboring states who are in the same exact situation from COVID.  The Boston Globe has done a series of articles comparing what Massachusetts did from Rhode Island.  My fear is that our kids who are in 8th grade, freshman, sophomore and junior year, who are going to be competing with kids at a national level in the next coming years are not being treated the same.  I know we have to look to Boston as our regulators but in terms of curriculum and things like that, we have a lot of local control and should be looking at a national level for our kids.  P. Dillon – I definitely agree with you.  What is fascinating is, I get emails from other people who say compared to their friends and family members in other schools, what we are doing is significantly more sophisticated, more rigorous so there are really lots of perspectives on this but it is good to have the conversation and continue to think about it.  In the context of everybody, I imagine going forward your kids will be challenged more.  B. Fields – I just refer back to Peter and what you gave us three or four weeks ago that I sent out to all my daughters who are having some of the same problems with their children that this is the first time this has ever happened; there are a lot of kinks that have to be worked out but I would tell people that there is learning going on, it is just a different type of learning.  It isn’t learning that can be tested and can be given a grade.  It is actually learning empathy, learning togetherness; it is a different type of learning that fits right into the social/emotional package that we have been talking about and that the state is starting to push much more in their curriculum requirements.  I think this worry about being too rigorous or less rigorous at this point where we are since we have never been through this, I think people should keep that in consideration.  There are other types of learning going on whether we want to say it is that type of learning that can’t be measured immediately.  P. Dillon – It is fascinating.  The other day I bumped into somebody, not one of our students, She goes to another school, but she is a junior, a pretty good athlete, missed her spring lacrosse season and was schedule to do a bunch of college visits, couldn’t do those, was scheduled to take the SATs which would have been connected to her recruiting as an athlete, couldn’t do those; it is a fascinating world we live in.  She is just representative of any number of students at different grade levels and it is going to be really interesting.  B. Fields – I’m reading all the stuff from the states, the MSC or whatever is posted to other school committees and what is going on in the state and there seems to be a lot of emphasis on what we are missing and how behind are the kids.  I think that is missing the point.  My own feeling is we should concentrate more on what are they getting from this and not how far behind they are.  In my experience, kids can catch up pretty quick.  They can’t catch up pretty quickly in some of the things they are experiencing right now in regards to other aspects of learning.  D. Weston – my concern as a professional educator and as a policy maker with this board, is reaching the kids that don’t have internet connectivity or don’t have the family support at home.  I understand some of the concerns that the other school committee members have but we do have some students that are just now participating.  I don’t have an idea or a solution, and I know it is on everybody’s radar but I want to make sure as we move forward and as we anticipate the next school year, that we could have minimally a period of disruption if not a large period of disruption of typical education, that we really try to figure out how are we going to reach the students who are not participating actively.  In my survey of teachers I work with and I was having a conversation with a teacher about students at Berkshire Hills today, there are families that are supportive in regular circumstances and are supportive in pandemic circumstances and families that aren’t supportive in pandemic and those are the students that I am most concerned about.  P. Dillon – we have done a lot of thinking about this and our general sense is about 95% of kids are pretty engaged right now which we are happy and excited about but that leaves about 5% of kids who aren’t.  We talked, the administrative team, about piloting two classes outside of our typical work and we had this really great conversation about did those have to happen outside of the regular school hours or could they happen during the school hours and the decision we reached was they could happen during the school hours because having kids engaged in meaningful work could really supplant with they might be participating in now because it is too traditional.  We are going to move forward with a gardening program as a way to try to hook kids who have been unengaged and do a raised bed thing.  There are some real practical impacts that are connected to victory gardens.  There is another other.  The other one was a culinary program building on high school kids that had done work in a culinary class during the winter because probably all of us are cooking and eating too much now and that is the high-interest and high-engaging thing we could also use to connect with kids.  We are going to keep trying to build things out with that.  We have our work cut out for us and we will gather some more data and report back to you on it.  We will think of extending ways where kids are really devouring material and we could point them in other directions to do other stuff.  D. Weston – I am most concerned with, not this current school year but the next school year, about making sure we have a plan to really meet the kids needs.  One of the reasons, first, the state made us start out with not really hard academics, so we kind of trained students and families not to worry about it.  S. Stephen – I spoke with Ben a bit; Ben you might be able to expand on this better than I can.  I thought the original first week or month was to make sure that we were engaging as many kids as possible.  That was the whole point of not having such a rigorous curriculum coming out and that we are looking to make sure everybody got involved and everybody had some way to access the material and they had their devices and they had internet and all that sort of thing.  Right?  P. Dillon – yes, that was part of it.  R. Dohoney – to be clear, the original directive from the state was not to teach new material and then they changed their track sometime in mid-April.  Is that correct?  P. Dillon – yes, early April and we made the shift largely by April 6th.  S. Bannon – for someone who doesn’t have a student in the schools, it seems to me this is an overview.  I think every school district has been caught by surprise and no one expected this nor should we have expected it.  We are learning as we go along.  I compare it to building an airplane as you are flying it.  Now we have the summer which is traditionally a time teachers still do a lot of work but maybe some downtime and we have to get this completely correct for the fall because somebody asked me today and I said we will probably have two tracks for the fall.  One being students come back to school and that is what we have and we go back to traditional learning but shame on us and I know we will be if we are not ready for students to pick up right where we are right now in a much more robust program…S. Stephen – we have to be ready to do that immediately.  P. Dillon – I think we will be and I think the other thing this really shone a spotlight things.  People who are struggling in a regular context are really struggling in this context and the role of teachers are quite significant and I bet you there are a thousand parents out there who are begging for us all to go back to school on a regular basis because it is challenging as could be to manage this.  It also speaks to the need to have a really well articulated curriculum and opportunities.  It is a spotlight on everything.  How do we differentiate well during the year and how do we do it in this context?  I think we are doing good work and I think we have significantly more work to do.  D. Weston – If I could be as brazen to ask you to look at one more thing and that is the possibility that we are going to reopen but will have students that families choose not to have them attend school out of general fear if the student has an underlying health risk or a family member has an underlying health risk.  So, I think as we move forward, even if we are going to be open, we will have to have in the back of our minds at least thinking about how we are going to reach these students who might not be there even if most students are.  That is going to be an additional complication.  P. Dillon – agreed.  Then there will be a second and third and fourth wave of this and people will come in and out.  We are in for a bumpy ride I think.  D. Weston – just one last comment on this for me at least, I did have an opportunity to speak to a number of parents this week where I work but they have students in Berkshire Hills and they are just very pleased with the communication they are receiving from all three schools.  There is no question from them with the message they are receiving from the administrators and the district, they are very pleased with the communications.  P. Dillon – thank you, that is good to hear.  R. Dohoney – one more thing; I know the preparation on the technology end is done differently, if this is going to be stops and starts this year into next year, at some point, we are going to have to engage the union and build in some flexibility.  Summer vacation, February break, April break, we can’t be locked in on those things.  If this thing is cleared up by early August, we should be back doing things early.  If we have to take breaks in October and November, we should cancel the winter breaks and go later.  For a hundred years, we have had snow days in New England, we built that into contracts and school schedules; I think we have to have the flexibility for health issues.  P. Dillon – a nice thing is, I have been meeting weekly or sometimes every other day with the two co-presidents of the union and as we articulate that I am sure they are happy to talk to us about it.
• P. Dillon – we had two meetings scheduled for next week, one with Shaker Mountain and one as a sub committee.  We are going to cancel both of those.  We will hear in a minute from the subcommittees and almost all of them have met or are about to meet so we don’t need that meeting next week.  I will have Doreen send a formal reminder but May 21st you can do something besides a Zoom call.
• Sub-Committee Reports:
  • Policy – Not Met
  • Building & Grounds – J. St. Peter – We met last Wednesday and had a productive meeting with Steve. All the members were there, Diane, Molly and Bill and myself.  The goal was to touch on two things.  One, update on how facilities have been up until now through the pandemic and then the plan going forward from now through the summer.  Steve informed us that the custodians did work until March 20th after the lockdown occurred.  After that they had building only check in one custodian at a time making sure there was one custodian in the building and nothing happened and everything was functioning and getting work done as they could.  At the middle school, there was three staff there because of the food distribution and efforts going through that school to assist in that.  During that time, they were helping to get instruments out, computers and anything that was important to the kids that was left at school.  They were doing the daily water test and wastewater reading as well which was an issue.  The sewer system went from having its normal usage to zero which is even less than the summertime overnight so they had to get creative to get it to pass the permit test as far as putting dog food in to keep the organic nature of it working.  It is fine and there are no problems there.  The generator has been updated.  The water cooler maintenance has been done.  Just touching from last time, the boiler room, there was an asbestos abatement; it is not totally free but it is abated as far as what was required by the law.  The house that is going out of the high school driveway to the north on the right, has also been evaded from the asbestos as well.  Last week the custodians were allowed to be in the building.  They have been doing their normal painting, repairs, stairwells, hallways.  Steve said they are about two months ahead of schedule which is one of the few benefits of this shutdown.  July 1st they will start the summer cleaning but between now and then they are going to get going on cracks on the tennis courts, wastewater treatment filters, all the normal stuff they have to catch up on.  He also mentioned, in preparation for next year, the nurses rooms are going to need some upgrading but not sure how much.  We are going to wait for the state and their mandates but at the least probably some HVAC updates, air filtration, etc.  He is also in the process of getting some electrostatic cleaning materials going on and obviously hand sanitizer, wipes, masks, etc. and looking into some temperature scanners, pricing them out in anticipation of when the kids go back to school.  The last thing that is going to be done this summer is at the high school, a changing area in the H04 for some students that are going to be coming in that have some high needs.  The plant sale – we have lots of plants that generate a significant amount of money.  They are in the works of trying to set that up in a way that abides by the new socially distance guidelines.  What they don’t sell will be donated to the different nursing homes, etc.
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation & Advisory – A. Hutchinson – we met yesterday. We were very well represented by Richmond, Hancock and New Ashford.  The report should be coming out next week and will get to all of you.  Peter passed.
  • Technology – upcoming meeting on May 19th at 5:30pm
  • Finance – R. Dohoney – we met last week. We reviewed where we are at this year and then we did have some loose planning discussions about FY21.  The consensus of the committee with everything so crazy….usually at this time we would be digging in and blocking off meetings to address the budget, we are not going to do that.  We are going to wait until July to really start our aggressive planning because everything is so up in the air with the governor’s budget.  Everything for this year looks extremely good.  Sharon gave us some projections on E&D and when those are finalized everyone will be very happy with.  We did have some conversations about FY20 impact from COVID.  Right now all the town meetings have been pushed out and I think Stockbridge has pushed it out past the fiscal year.  We will certainly have a budget once Great Barrington and West Stockbridge presumably pass it.  For this year, it is all great and we are going to wait and see what happens for next fiscal year.
  • District Consolidation & Sharing – S. Bannon – there is a lot going on. We have had two formal meetings with Richmond and their school committee and their advisory group and also with the facilitator we hired.  That is getting started.  I urge anyone who is interested in the school committee to go to those meetings.  They are rather interesting.  We had two meetings also with Southern Berkshire; those are also interesting meetings.  We have a long way to go but at least we started.  Weston – the last meeting for the Southern Berkshire group, that was recent right?  S. Bannon – yes.  D. Weston – did Stockbridge have representation at it?  S. Stephen – I never had any notice that it was taking place.  When did it take place?  S. Bannon – are you the Stockbridge representative for that group?  S. Stephen – as far as I know, yeah.  P. Dillon – he is one of three.  There are two people from the town.  That might have been an error on my part, Sean.  I’m sorry for not sharing that with you.  I will send the next one to you and I sent a letter to their selectboard requesting that they appoint somebody and I will follow up on that.  S. Bannon – Chucky Cardillo was at that meeting; wasn’t he?  P. Dillon – he might have been.  D. Weston – just so you know, I got on the selectboard’s case about it that they need to get the representation there.  I just want to know if it happened.  S. Bannon – I think it was at the meeting and something was mentioned.  R. Dohoney – even though that committee has nothing to do with the school committee and is totally separate and apart from us, it would be good if Peter could have Doreen circulate the dates.  I would like to attend or listen to some of them.  P. Dillon – I definitely will.  The update on it: Lucy Prashkar is chairing that committee now and Peter Taylor from Berkshire Taconic is the vice chair.  I think we only have one date at a time right now but I will have Doreen share that.  The group appointed a subcommittee that I’m on to help select a facilitator/consultant for that group and the subcommittee is in the process of reviewing applications and doing interviews for that.  I will get out a schedule of those meetings.
• Personnel Report
  • Extra-curricular Appointment(s) – P. Dillon – there are four positions there and people might wonder why we are hiring people to do additional work. This is connected to planning for the summer work.  There are four positions.  They are grant funded and are more advisory in nature .  I just wanted you to be aware of it.

Business Operation:

• FY20 Q3 Transfer Report & Overview – S. Harrison – there are somethings that seem like large amounts, it is pretty typical as we move money either for new hires that came in lower, people moving around, somethings coming in a little lower than budget; then in the second transfer is reallocating that money either from contingency or because it moves or we have the new ESL hire at the high school so we had to reallocate those funds. #3 was additional stipends at the middle school; admin professional development, we reallocated the way we talk about funding because of the way DESE wants it reported and then the last one was the typical general operations needs after the budget is set and then people have a best guestimate in January of how they want to spend and as school goes on they realize they need more or less in certain accounts. MOTION TO APPROVE THE TRANSFERS       DOHONEY         SECONDED:  B. FIELDS            ACCEPTED UNANIMOUSLY VIA ROLL CALL
• Vote – Proposed RAN – S. Harrison – each year we vote for potential revenue and anticipation notes. Given the situation next year and not knowing where we are, it is important to get that on the books now in case we need to do RAN borrowing in July.  If we could approve that it would be great.  We haven’t done any the past two years and before that it was very minimal and I am not as confident we will be in that position this year just because of the issues the towns are having as well and timing of payments so if we could have a vote on that, we could have that lined up in case we need to borrow.  I make a motion to authorize the District Treasurer, under the provisions of General Laws, Chapter 71, Section 16 (g), as amended by Chapter 134 of the Acts of 1972, to borrow money from time to time in anticipation of revenue and to issue a note or notes effective July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021     Dohoney       Seconded:  B. Fields                  Accepted Unanimous via Roll Call

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. HUTCHINSON  SECONDED:  D. SINGER  ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL

Meeting Adjourned at 7:04pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

April 16, 2020 – 6:00pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, D. Singer, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson, R. Dohoney,
J. St. Peter

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             Eileen Mooney, T. Lee, B. Doren, K. Farina, Terry Cowgill, J. Jasiewicz, K. Burdsall

Absent:                                     M. Thomas, S. Stephen

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  1 hour, 00 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Minutes:

• April 2, 2020
• April 9, 2020

MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED APRIL 2, 2020 AND APRIL 9, 2020            A. POTTER            SECONDED:  A. HUTCHINSON              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL

Superintendent’s Report:

• FY19 Audit Review – John Jasiewicz – I am the manager that ran the audit. I have done it the past four years.  We started doing the Berkshire Hills audit in FY16.  Most of you have heard my spiel about what an audit does and doesn’t do.  Just to remind you, a common misconception of an audit is that we look at every single transaction and are able to review everything the district did.  That is just not possible.  We test based on a sample and we focus on the more material balances or the higher balances for the district.  In FY19 you had a $27 million general fund operating budget.  We base our testing off of certain percentages that by auditing standards are standard throughout the United States.  If you want to open up the financial statements to page 11 this is basically a one column, total summary of your general fund, all the special revenue funds, the grants, revolving, capital projects including the fixed assets and your debt and pension so basically a one column summary and kind of a snapshot of what the district did in FY19.  I know the main talking point that most people are interested in is right in the middle is the total OPEB liability which is $68 million.  Obviously this is the largest number on the balance sheet.  It is an estimation of a liability that over a period of time the district would have to pay out.  $68 million is one of the larger ones that I deal with.  We can talk about the OPEB if you have any questions about it.  At this time the district does not have any reserve set up to start funding for it which I know is something when possible, and we talked about it a bit last year, it would be in the district’s best interest to make an effort to start funding that.  You will see if you go down to the second to the last number, is your unrestricted net position which is -$63 million which is largely due to the OPEB liability.  It is the net pension of the $3 million and kind of offset by a receivable of $5 million for the MSBA.  On a scale, all of these numbers are fairly consistent with other school districts in Western Massachusetts.  The OPEB liability is pretty much every districts’ largest liability and it is what really drives the total net position.  The district had an undesignated for the general fund, a balance of just over $700,000.  This was just over 2.5% of your general fund operating budget.  In FY18 your excess and deficiency was over the 5% which required a return of funds to your member towns.  This was a fair amount lower.  Last year it was about $1.5 million which was a little high which caused the refund needing to be done.  The driving force behind it was first the amount of revenues you received over the budget was $132,000 which in FY18 it was about $258,000 so it was a little lower than the previous year and expenses were closed just under $60,000 which is really tight.  Expenses need to be made.  This is in the range I usually see and not too out of the ordinary.  Between a little lower revenues and tighter expenses and it looks like in FY20 there was an increased use of E&D, $840,000, so using that as a reserve drives down the undesignated fund balance.  My one thought is as you are continuing forward you have to be careful when keeping that much E&D.  The previous year was just under $500,000 so it is an increase of over $300,000 and you don’t want to get into a habit of using that much because it will end up running your undesignated was down and you won’t have as much E&D to use in future years.  It is a balancing act and I am sure you are well on top of that.  This is all fairly similar to the prior year.  There is still a fair amount of reserves.  Do you want me to go into more detail?  I know you look at these closely in your meetings.  Bannon – I think we are good.  J. Jasiewicz – Ok, I will move on to the management letter.  There wasn’t a whole lot to the management letter.  We had what ended up being four comments.  The first one was about school lunch, cash out procedures and these were really more suggestions for improvements.  It wasn’t that anyone was doing something wrong.  School lunch tends to be an area where there is actual cash coming in and out and it is just naturally one of those areas where funds tend to get misappropriated, whether it is a cashier or manager, etc.  We just had a couple of recommendations for added controls to help prevent anything happening.  The second one was about procurement and this one was probably the more concerning one.  We tested four transactions that should’ve had some sort of procurement compliances and none of the four did.  You can read through them but any large purchase needs to be going through the formal bid process.  I talked to Sharon about this and the vendor was a sole source.  There was no other company that could provide the services and we ask that in the future to do a write up saying you at least looked and this company is the only one that provides the service then that is perfectly fine.  The third one was for payroll and it was about getting the employment contracts signed by employees.  I have talked to Sharon probably every year about this one and I know her and the payroll staff make an effort.  They have documentation on what they are doing to try to get a hold of certain employees.  We random select 40 employees and it came back that 5 had not returned their signed contract.  Try to keep on it and do the best they can to get them back.  P. Dillon – is there a practice that other districts use to ensure compliance there?  John Jasiewicz – you legally can’t withhold their pay but I think some other districts try end of year meetings with staff or maybe try to push it down to a principal or somebody who is in the school with that person.  It is a challenge.  The last one was a few smaller things.  One was that we came out in October 2019 to do our field work and it looked like payroll warrants were only signed through June.  Obviously, this is a bigger issue these days but just try to make an effort to get those signed a little more timely.  S. Bannon – I have a question about the warrant.  Does the school committee designate one person to sign the warrants?  I know the town can.  Can the school district do that?  John Jasiewicz – yes you can definitely do that.  S. Bannon – we might want to do that as long as this pandemic lasts, that way one person can go to the school offices and we don’t have to expect the majority of the school committee to do the same.  John Jasiewicz – the second part was just updating the district’s manual.  The dollar thresholds were outdated.  Some places just reference the current legislation as opposed to specifically stating a dollar amount.  It will just say “in accordance with…” and that alleviates having to update that every time they decide to change the dollar value on procurements.  R. Dohoney – so the formal bid process if $50,000 correct?  John Jasiewicz – correct.  So the transactions you found were ones that required formal bid quotes?  John Jasiewicz – I think one of them was over the $500,000 but most were just the quotes.  Sharon is doing a nice job.  S. Harrison – I have been working with John on the issues he brought up.  Some of the things like the food services we have already taken care of.  We put in place and got them the stamps.  We will continue with the contracts.  Every year we just keep pushing people and started getting the union reps in to try to get them to help with that.  We just keep working.  B. Fields – how do we compare with other districts of our size in regards to the procedures we do and all of the things that you covered here? S. Harrison – John, just remind them that this is the first time in three years that we have had findings.   John Jasiewicz – that is true.   Most audits we have at least recommendations for improvements or we certainly have some districts that have much longer management letters than this.  S. Bannon – thank you John.  We appreciate it.
• Request to Approve (BHEA Unit C Contract) – P. Dillon – Folks on the negotiating team did a really nice job. We sent around a memo detailing changes.  The highest level things were the secretaries were in the cooperative group.  They came into this group.  This was the first time we had to negotiate in the context of them.  There was a bit of combining language we had to do and I think our negotiating team and Laura and her group of people did a really nice job.  I think it is fairly straightforward.  I am happy to respond to any questions or anyone on the negotiating team could.  If it suits you, I would love a vote to approve it.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE BHEA UNIT C CONTRACT            DOHONEY              SECONDED:  B. FIELDS             ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL
• COVID-19 Update – P. Dillon – I would like each of the principals, starting with Tim, to give a brief update on what is happening. We have not talked instruction a lot and I think this is a good time to just share some quick updates on what teachers, kids and families are doing.
  • Tim Lee, Principal, Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – we are in week two of our remote learning platform. We are calling it School @ Home.  It is based on the Google Classroom structure that we already had in place.  We had a lot of the tools and a number of our teachers already had quite a bit of familiarity with the platform itself.  We rolled it out officially on April 6th, last week was a bit of a test week making sure that families were connecting and students were able to find assignments and tasks and connect with their teachers virtually.  This week there have been all of the activities that we had last week plus with a number of our teachers more online virtual meetings in small groups and 1:1 and a few whole class meetings too.  The instruction that is happening currently is intended to take between 2.5 and 3 hours a day for students to complete.  We try to present learning opportunities in all of our subject areas, reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies.  It is spread out across the week.  Some grade level teams are doing it in an integrated project-based kind of way; others are providing discrete activities about specific subjects.  Our specialist teachers in art, music, library, technology and physical education created their own Google Classroom page as well so that when students log onto their particular profile through the portal they will be able to see the Google Classrooms that they have been invited to.  It is going pretty well so far.  I am pretty proud of it and grateful to our faculty and staff for all the work they have put into it.  Many have been incredibly innovative and creative to come up with activities that engage students and get them participating.  Our participation is based on about 85% right now for students participating regularly in the online learning platform.  I suspect it is a little bit higher but there are some families that we haven’t been able to connect with.  We still have a handful of students that have some technology gaps.  Most have devices now.  We have been able to distrutribut 70-75 devices to our families and kids but there are still some connectivity issues that exist and we hope to be able to help out with them.  I am really pleased with how remote learning is going at Muddy Brook thus far and I want to give another shout out to all of our faculty who have been working very hard to make it happen.  A special shout out as well to our technology teacher, Roger Burr.  He has taken a really superb leadership and professional development role throughout all of this.  The experience of our teachers  with the platform that we are using is varied so he has done a great job bringing teachers up to speed and assembling all of the Google Classrooms into one package that families have been able to access.  Thank you Roger.
  • Doren – Du Bois Regional Middle School – I was impressed with what the elementary school has been doing and proud of what we have done as a district. We have been collaborating very well as an administrative team, trying to help each other and I am most appreciative of what we had going beforehand which was a strong team; principals, assistant principals, Kate giving strong support around students with disabilities, ESL and the like.  It has been a really strong team and part of the success at the middle school has to do with the way the team has been working together.  As Tim gave a big shoutout to his technology teacher, I would say for us our library and media specialist, Nancy Kane, has been a godsend and our IT team, Uli, Rob and Peter, have really allowed this success to happen.  I would love to share just how proud I am of our community.  When this happened the first week, I think we were all kind of in shock as to what to do but what was neat was as an administrative team we really launched into a response.  First, Sharon Harrison and Kathy Sullivan, organized food security and from my perspective, because we had the right approach which was about security, safety and health, I feel like a lot of successes that we have seen allowed families to flow so our immediate effort was finding all our families, making sure they could get food and if they couldn’t come and pick up food, delivering food to them.  By Tuesday after the closing we were already handing out food and Friday we were giving out bags and bags of food for the weekend.  That has continued.  One of the ways we were so successful I think in doing that was because of the way we had our team structure set up at the middle school and the way our clinical team has been set up to make connections with every kid and every family.  By the time enrichment started a week later, we already had everything set up in Google Classroom or our website, sending things out to kids and it really bought us several weeks of being able to design the remote learning platform and the learning experience through kids.  When we launched almost two weeks ago on April 6th, we already had a lot of kids chomping at the bit because they knew that there was going to be some interesting learning activities happening, and they wanted a lot more.  At that point we found almost all of our families and by Tuesday of last week, the second day that we had launched our official remote learning platform, we had found 99% of our families.  I think there were two families we hadn’t made a connection with.  That is really important because you have to make sure people are safe, secure, they have what they need before they can do anything.  Through last week we were not just able to connect with all of our families, but finding out who needed what.  Lots of families needed Chromebooks because they didn’t have connectivity and a lot of upper income families recognized that when they thought the MacBook at home was enough for the whole family, they realized getting a Chromebook for each kid was important.  We handed out over 130 devices to our students which is huge.  It was organized really well by Nancy Kane, Uli and Peter Robertson and Robert with the IT team.  It was really effortless in terms of getting the Chromebooks out.  Dom Sacco, our school adjustment counselor, is amazing.  He has gone far and wide across the county and even across state lines to a family that was staying with relatives to get devices out to families.  That has made a huge difference because now when teachers develop things in our Google Classroom or remote platform, kids can get connected.  Pretty immediately we made those connections.  We had teachers that were reaching out and doing video chats, three to four weeks ago and the formal way really allowed us to push that.  Our clinical team has done an amazing job as well as our clinician in reaching hard to find places and families; getting out to some of our most vulnerable families to make sure there is food and to make the human connection.  That helps because the way we have our team structure, Miles Wheat, my assistant principal and I have been meeting with the teams once a week throughout this entire time since the second week of the closure.  Creating that structure has really allowed up to talk about kids and families.  We found out which families are connected but didn’t have devices; which families were connected and had a device but the kid wasn’t active and the parent was like yeah yeah he’s doing his work, he tells me he’s doing his work but Johnny wasn’t doing his work.  We called up and said Johnny’s not doing his work and low and behold Johnny was doing his work the next day  The teachers feel really embolden by that because they feel their job is to engage kids and to do their work as teachers and they have the support of our clinical team and the administration to find and motivate the kids or really help kids who are in need of help vulnerable families.  We have been able to launch learning activities, we have lots of kids online at the same time doing interesting activities.  Teams are already pivoting about from what on earth are we doing to how are we doing team challenges, how are we getting kids together, etc.  We had a team meeting today and tomorrow they are going to invite all the kids to a video meeting and do a team challenge like they have done in the past so it feels normal.  We can still do things as a school community.  Those teams have all meeting meeting, the exploratory team, academic team, being essential that they teach every kid all the time, they really essentialize it down to about basically actions in all four grades which allows them to spend time as advisors with the kids as well as the teachers and not feel they have to teach 340 kids at a time.  They each have about 60-80 kids on their caseload, much like a typical general education teacher.  That has created a lot of good engagement with the exploratory team.  Our specialized programming, I am super proud of.  Our therapeutic learning center for our students with emotional behavior disabilities; that is one of the hardest things to do and we really activities not just the teaching team in that but our paraprofessionals who are already doing one-on-one sessions or small group sessions with kids.  Those kids really need that love that is why we call it TLC and they are doing their work, in some cases better than some of our middle and high income students because of the amount of connection we have made with those students.  The same way the ABC program, I am really impresses with the kids with the most severe disabilities, autism, multiple disabilities, in wheelchairs and non-communicative were involved with the families, kids who are scared and don’t have a context, we have teachers and interventionists as well as paraprofessionals working with the daily and creating really appropriate and also getting the kids connected to their general education activities.  We also have been meeting as a clinical team but also with our district clinical team so we are starting to share our best practices for reaching out to our families.  For me the coup de gras is really as much as this is crazy and frustrating to teachers. My teachers are sharing a lot of positive outcomes and they are feeling very upbeat about what we have done.  I feel that that is a kudos to Miles and myself as well as the support I have felt from my colleagues on the administrative team that we have been able to create something that feels constructive and positive in a pretty scary and unsettling time.  I think it speaks a lot to the team structure.
  • Farina – Monument Mountain Regional High School – You heard both when Tim and Ben described their structure that team was a central theme in terms of how the best to support students in this environment, and the high school is about a week behind in terms of rolling out in comparison to the elementary and middle school. That is because our daily structure is not built around teams; it is built around periods and students transitioning from one class to another and a very robust elective system structure within the school day.  That does not lend itself well to the online learning environment and providing the kind of one-on-one support that students really need to access their education in a way we felt was going to be meaningful and productive in this environment.  At the high school we took the approach of restructuring and it was a big lift.  We created two 9th grade teams, two 10th grade teams, two 11th grade teams; each of those teams has an english teacher, a social studies teacher, a science teacher, a math teacher and then a specialist so either an art teacher, CVTE teacher or PE teacher then a wellness person from the wellness department so that is either one of our guidance counsellors or clinician, school nurse.  Our liaisons are spread across the four grades.  This structure was intended to both shift delivery of the curriculum for students and provide each student with a mentor.  Every teacher has been assigned to a caseload of 11-16 students who they are mentoring through this process.  We rolled out the remote learning this week and the team structure at each grade level has been working on developing interdisciplinary projects for students.  Once we get really into this, the hold is those which span over the three-week period but for the first week, the teams developed weeklong projects.  It has been a challenge to communicate; it has been a challenge for students and families and for teachers to wrap all our heads around what this means.  In addition to the team structure, we are still running electives and all of this is being run through Google Classroom platform.  We have a team structure platform for our core academics and then students are still accessing their elective classes.  Their elective teachers are still posting work connected to those programs.  I think I have sat in on so many team meetings over the past two weeks, the teachers are really excited about it; they are working well together.  The percentage of students we have been able to connect with in this model has been pretty impressive.  I would say that we are 95% of engagement with students at the high school which is as high as it is for attendance for kids coming to school at the high school.  I think the teachers are doing a really great job.  I have been getting feedback on ways in which we need to improve and we are working hard at that.  We are looking at looking at discussion boards to have students from across the mentor groups meet with one another in content area discussions and we really want to provide a range of academic material for our students.  We are working hard at that.  The seniors are in a very very unique and very very challenging experience.  We have assigned a team of eight people who are working with that class holistically.  We are looking obviously at our students who have AP classes and what this means for them.  We have our students who are looking at what all this means in terms of shifting to college.  We have our students who really need some very one on one support in terms of earning their credits for graduation.  All of that is happening through this mentor relationship because we are trying to get all of these kids through so we can have them graduate.  Then there are all the questions they have about what this means for their final experience this year.  We are working hard to come up with some very special experiences that we can provide them even if we don’t end up back in the building.  We just don’t know where we stand with that.  As of right now, we know it is May 4th.  I am very proud of my entire faculty.  They have worked tremendously hard to lift this off the ground.  They are invested.  They want to do right by our students and they are working really hard to do that.  I couldn’t be prouder of every single one of them.  B. Fields – I was watching a PBS program on remote learning the other night and there was a principal from one of the high schools talking about how kids who were absent seemed to be more into this and they were more participatory than if they were required to go to the school itself.  I was wondering, Kristi, have you found that kids that were habitually absent have participated more in this load of learning than in the standard mode of having to go to the building.  K. Farina – I don’t feel I have enough data to answer that.  This is our first week of roll out so in a couple of weeks, I might be able to respond to this question differently.  What I do know is there are several of my teachers that are working with their students in these mentor relationships because they only have the 11-15 on their caseloads, they have been pleasantly surprised at their ability to get in touch with and have these one on one conversations with kids to work on engaging them on what we are providing them.  That is the first piece of information.  B. Doren – I can definitely chime in on that.  I do find that is true.  Not so much on the absentees.  I don’t think we had as much of an issue with that like the high school, but in terms of traditionally day to day in the school, who are not engaged, teachers have been very surprised with the engagement and productivity of a lot of those students and I think it has a lot to do with the modality that we are giving attention to students.  They are able to adapt to instruction and their learning need much more easily and we are finding that kids are more eager and more interested in doing the work who were not as engaged before.  It is one of the positive surprises from this.  A. Hutchinson – I think it is all very impressive as a parent.  P. Dillon – I would like to commend the teachers and the principals and everyone who is working hard on this.  It is a challenging time and this doesn’t work for everybody.  There are some folks who are overwhelmed and struggling with that and some folks are so hungry they want to write their dissertation tomorrow and on the other end of the continuum their needs aren’t fully being met.  We will keep making shifts and working through it.  I really appreciate everything folks are doing.  We expect to hear something from the governor’s office in the next week or so around what might happen with May 4th.  As soon as we hear that, I will share that.
• Student Opportunity Act & Proposed Vote – P. Dillon – The Student Opportunity Act was an act that was supposed to drive more money towards schools and as a school that is seen as relatively well off, we got all of about $30,000. I put together a little plan.  The plan would be to invest that money in co-teaching which we have had some initial success with.  It is fairly straight-forward.  The plan is an obligation or a reporting requirement.  I wrote a little bit and ticked off some boxes.  It appears that with the impending financial challenges some of the student opportunity act money may dry up but regardless I have an obligation to share it with you to see if there is any feedback and then submit it to the state.  I assume everybody had a chance to look at it.  Do you have any questions or concerns about the proposed plan?  Steve, I think as a requirement of this, I need a vote to endorse the plan.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE STUDENT OPPORTUNITY ACT PLAN           DOHONEY               SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL VOTE
• Other Updates – P. Dillon – as you know, Ben and his team did a lot of work around the Kaleidoscope Grant and as an outgrowth of that they were contacted and 34 Chromebooks are going to be donated to the middle school. That is a big deal.  Those could be valued at $500/$600 a piece so total value of $15,000 – $20,000.  We have a practice of accepting donations.  MOTION TO ACCEPT THE DONATION OF 34 CHROMEBOOKS            POTTER          SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER                      ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL VOTE.  P. Dillon – the Jewish Federation has donated $1,000 to help our food program.  I would like to thank them for that.  MOTION TO ACCEPT $1,000 DONATION FROM THE JEWISH FEDERATION  – A. POTTER            SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL VOTE.  P. Dillon – I have one last thing and I don’t think you need to vote on it.  I have super good news.  Sharon did some nice work with Amy Taylor from Berkshire Taconic and we were able to create a portal to accept additional donations for our food program through Berkshire Taconic Foundation.  If community members want to continue to support some of what we are doing for getting food to students and families they now have an opportunity to do that and Berkshire Taconic will serve as a pass through.  We will be sharing the information with folk tomorrow and there will be a link.  It is specifically this time for food and a possibility down the road if we end up doing more with remote learning that we might also accept donations for technology but at the moment we are just focused on food.

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication
  • Fields – I would like to ask a question about the bus contract since the buses are not running, what is the status. I see being on the finance sub-committee, is there going to a reopening of the contract?  From what I have been reading in other parts of the state, this has become an issue of whether or not there could be significant savings that could be applied to our budget.  P. Dillon – it is a good question and the whole state is discussing it.  We are in conversation through attorneys and the bus company and I will update you when I know more.
  • Mooney – what is happening with the Statement of Intent? P. Dillon – it is a Statement of Interest and it is due no later than May 6th.  I am working through one round of small edits and if the stars are aligned tomorrow, I will submit it tomorrow and if not, I will submit it on Tuesday.

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL

Meeting Adjourned at 7:00pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

April 9, 2020 – 5:30pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, D. Singer, A. Potter, Anne Hutchinson

Administration:                       P. Dillon

Staff/Public:                             Eileen Mooney

Absent:                                     Sharon Harrison, R. Dohoney, M. Thomas, S. Stephen, J. St. Peter

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  hour, 7 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 5:30pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Superintendent’s Report:

• Proposed Vote to Approve Working thru the April Break – P. Dillon – What I am asking for your support in doing is having the teachers and students respectfully teach and learn through the April break, April 21-24th, four days. The Commissioner gave districts permission to do this.  If we work those four days instead of ending on Thursday June 25th, we would end on Friday, June 19th.  The primary reason for doing this is we are starting to hit a little bit of a stride in remote learning and we don’t want to get it going and stop and get it going again.  Obviously, no one is going anywhere so it isn’t like someone is going to miss it because they are going to Florida.  We are here for the durable so we think it is a good idea.  Most of our surrounding district has done it but not all.  Richmond just voted on it; Lenox and Lee are both doing it and Southern Berkshire is going to vote.  North Adams voted to do it and Mt. Greylock as well.  The 45 kids at Hancock will be doing it as well.  I don’t know about Central Berkshire.  It is not usual that we do it; it is a common thing.  It will maintain some routine in a world that is upside down.  Bannon – it makes sense to do it, in my opinion.  We checked in with the teachers on this and there is almost unanimous support.  There are one or two folks who don’t want to but everybody else did.  It is nice that we do this in partnership with them.   MOTION TO APPROVE CONTINUED REMOTE LEARNING THROUGH APRIL BREAK, APRIL 21-25             D WESTON                   SECONDED B. FIELDS                 ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS WITH ROLL CALL  B. Fields – I am very impressed with the teachers and the whole district in this.  I like the way it was done.  There are a lot of things that are new to all and I think our district is ahead from what I have been reading from the state.  I have a daughter in Oregon and they are closed for the rest of the year.  They are still trying to figure out this remote learning and a lot of kids don’t have Chromebooks and it is a real mess.  I see in our districts and throughout the state and I think we are as good as can get.  I think the teachers and the staff and through administration and Peter kudos to them.  I would like the word to get out to them that we are appreciative to them in what we are doing.  A. Potter – absolutely.  I think places in Oregon, they are doing just fine.  P. Dillon – thank you Bill.  It is a pretty heavy lift.  I echo your comments and appreciate what all have done.  S. Bannon – if we try to plan this and do it, it probably would have taken us a year.

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL

Meeting Adjourned at 5:37pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Teleconference Meeting

June 4, 2020 – 6:00pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, D. Weston, B. Fields, S. Stephen, M. Thomas, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson,

R.Dohoney, J. St. Peter, D. Singer,

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             B. Doren, T. Lee, K. Farina

Absent:

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  1 hour, 0 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.
Minutes:

• May 11, 2020 BHRSD/Richmond
• May 14, 2020

MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD/RICHMOND SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED MAY 11, 2020                        A. POTTER               SECONDED:  B. FIELDS      ACCEPTED UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL; A. POTTER ABSTAIN            MOTION TO APPROVE BHRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES DATED MAY 14, 2020         B. FIELDS            SECONDED:  A. POTTER              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS VIA ROLL CALL

Superintendent’s Report:

• Dillon – I am going to let Kristi handle this one. It is a little information about the high school grant.  I don’t think we met since we did our press release and it is quite remarkable.  We are one of three schools that were awarded it in Massachusetts.  It is over $330,000.  It is all for one year.  It is based on really rigorous planning work that they did this year and previously.  I thought Kristi could give us a high level overview tonight and in two weeks, we will go into the nitty details.   K. Farina – You probably saw the press releases but we did receive the implementation grant from Mass Ideas.  This is following the planning grant we did last year that we had the $127,000 for coming from Nellie Mae and the Bard Foundation.  The idea and the purpose of the grant is to continue our rethinking of the educational experience at Monument with some focal points around making sure we are providing equitable outcomes for all of our students to be prepared for whatever future they are going to pursue.  We are trying to build in community voice, parent voice and student voice in the process.  It is a process so that is all continuing work coming out of the planning grant.  One of the pieces we are talking about is how we make sure that we don’t just include the voices we typically hear from, but the voices of folks that are often marginalized or not included in conversations about how school works for them.  We are looking to continue to examine our practices around student engagement and how we make sure that all students really have a voice in their own educational experience.  To do that, there are four main areas that we are devoting our time to.  The first is, what would an academy or team based model look like at Monument and what would the benefits of that be.  In the grant we wrote about pursuing an academy model.  That is not clearly defined at this point so that is work we have to do over the course of the next year.  The next is some structural change specifically around what a more innovative high school schedule could look like and how that could benefit us and also what sustainable governance structure could be so we really do include community, parent, student voice in the process of decision making in an ongoing way as we move forward.  We are looking at all of the work we have been doing over the past several years connected to the wellness that you heard us talk about; social/emotional learning and our initiative we started during advisory.  We are really thinking about how we can leverage all that work, build on that work to make sure we are supporting all students to be successful in their high school experience.  The final one is around examining how a shift to thinking about instruction and assessment aligned to proficiencies and how that might actually help move our work forward in a different way as we look to make some change.  We are very excited about this in spite of the fact it is all happening in the middle of a pandemic.  S. Bannon – I think we will want updates all through the year.

• Good News Items:
  • Farina, Principal – Monument Mountain Regional High School – you probably have already heard that we filmed all of our seniors and Paul Kakley really stepped up and is remarkable so I have to give him kudos for everything he did to pull together our virtual graduation ceremony. He filmed the speakers, our valedictorian, our salutatorian; he pulled the whole ceremony together, coordinated with CTSB and the Pittsfield Community Broadcasting so that it will air on Sunday at 10am.  It will also be available through live stream through CTSB and also through our MMTV website.  That information has gone out to the public in various ways and we are continuing to get that out.  It will be this Sunday at 10am.  Following the airing of the virtual ceremony, we are asking all of the graduates and families to join us at the high school for the distribution of diplomas.  Folks will come up to the front of the building and then we will wind cars down into the parking lot where everyone will be lined up for the parade.  The parade will depart Monument, we anticipate around 1:30, head north into Stockbridge, then on to West Stockbridge, into Housatonic and then into Great Barrington ending at the intersection of Main and Bridge Street.  That parade route has also been published.  It is also on the Monument Facebook page.  Folks can come out and support our graduates as the parade procession goes through our town.  Wear maroon and white.  Bring noise makers and really help us celebrate our graduating seniors.  The class of 2020 has been fabulous and it was wonderful to see all the seniors and their families when they came to get filmed walking across the stage.  I have to give a shout-out to Doreen Hughes who actually ironed every single cap and gown so the seniors didn’t have wrinkled caps and gowns.  I think everyone stepped up and did a great job in challenging circumstances.
  • Ben Doren, Principal – Du Bois Regional Middle School – eight grade graduation is really important but salvaging an important for the high school is pretty awesome. I am inspired by what the high school has done.  I am also inspired by the efforts of the elementary school.  They have already done several parades through the towns which have brought cheer to our families.  We are trying to take that inspiration.  We usually do graduation the night before the last day of school.  We will be doing that at 6:30pm on Thursday night.  To ramp up to that we are going to have a lot of fun.  On Wednesday morning the 7th grade parents would do an 8th grade breakfast where the 8th grade teachers do a fun, informal awards ceremony with kids and the kids are able to give back their appreciation to their teachers; because we can’t get together, we are actually going to start it during advisory on Wednesday morning with an appreciation ceremony.  In the afternoon, we will do an awards ceremony on Google Hangout which will be a lot of fun.  On Thursday, to get ready for graduation that evening, we are going to do a parade using a similar route that the high school put together.  It will be a nice community event, not just 8th graders.  It will be for all of our students, 5th – 8th grade, waving, honking, having a lot of fun.  Then we will run a very traditional Monument Valley graduation ceremony on the evening of the 11th at 6:30 but virtually on Zoom.  It will be fun.  We have our student council president doing a speech.  We have our 8th grade students from english classes, doing their “This I Believe”.  We will give our traditional awards for academics, excellence, achievement, participation.  We will also be doing our Norman Rockwell and WEB Du Bois awards celebrating our stellar academic achievements.  It should be a lot of fun and interesting and from what I understand from Uli, we will be able to have more than 500 people on the Zoom call.  I’ll see what happens.  It may crash and be a complete failure but I’m going to try really hard.  We will record it like we do on these sessions so if folks drop off, they can watch it.  On Friday, we are going to do an appropriate social distance activity at the school where the graduates and their families can drive up in the afternoon and pick up their envelope with their certificate of completion and actual awards, which are printed out.  I am very appreciative to our guidance secretary Debra Spence for printing our typical awards and also our fun awards.  We are also going to have Kwik Print two copies of the graduation program so it will be an artifact that families will have from the graduation as a keepsake from a graduation ceremony.  They will be able to drive up, our faculty will line the circle in a socially distanced way.  We will hand them the envelope which is a nice sense of community and connection.  Then we will go off to the summer.  I am excited even though it is less than what we really wanted.
  • Lee, Principal – Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – at the elementary school the tradition that we have to mark the end of the year and recognize our 4th graders, we don’t call it graduation; we call it moving up. Typically we mark it with an all-school assembly in the afternoon the day before school is out and there is a drum circle and an event called a clap out.  Of course, we can’t do those things this year, so there are a number of celebrations taking place on the classroom basis where individual classroom teachers in the 4th grade are doing some special recognitions in class meetings that they are leading virtually.  Then next week, I believe on Tuesday, Molly Cosel, one of our 4th grade teachers, has been working on a commemorative video featuring all of our 4th grade students who are moving up.  All of our staff and faculty have been contributing still photos, jpegs to be a part of that so that will go live and be accessible to our 4th grade students next week and families to enjoy.  In addition to that our PTA actually created t-shirts for our 4th grade students who are moving up to the middle school.  Many of them have them already.  When they picked up their materials this week, it would have been included in their materials.  It is a nice simple tshirt with the school’s logo and the name of all the students who are moving up on the back.  It is a nice memento of their time.  In addition, this year, we are doing a little bit more with a commemorative certificate that we are giving to each one of our 4th grade students, a little fancier, a little something that is a bit more special during this year when we can’t recognize them by name and place.  Included in the envelope with the certificate will be in we divide up all of our 4th grade students and asked staff members from PK to grade 4 to write down some special notes and greetings of best wishes to our 4th grade students who are moving up and those notes and wishes and greetings will go into the envelope that students are receiving with the certificate.  As a whole school activity, we are doing something similar to what Ben mentioned, it is still in the planning stages, we were going to attempt one more wave parade on the last day of school.  We kind of ran into a snag with those plans as the police were not available to help us.  What we are going to do instead, pending Steve’s and Peter’s approval, is have our families from all of our grades come through the school parking lot between 11 and 1 and we are going to do another version of the clap out, socially distanced version where we can see our students and they can see us one more time for the close of the school year.  I think it’s going to be nice.
• Remote Learning Survey Data – I sent around today, and Rob Putnam really helped out with this and I really appreciate it, a summary and high-level overview of the parent portion of the remote learning survey. Some of you may not have had a chance to look at it, so I will talk at some high level about it and then at our next meeting we will share the student side of things too.  I am glad we did it and I think it was valuable to get feedback from parents.  Some of the stuff we had a pretty good sense of already and some of it is a little surprising.  The good news is most people have good and reliable access to the internet and devices.  There are a small number of outlying towns, mostly choice students, who have terrible access to the internet.  Most of the students in Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge have good access.  A couple of things to think about; the amount of time and the depth of experiences that kids are having with remote learning.  It will get really interesting when you see the student responses but it looks to us that folks are not as engaged as they might be and the work they are doing isn’t as meaningful as it might be.  In spite of that, I think teachers did a pretty remarkable or Herculean lift ….. S. Stephen – Peter, I am sorry to interrupt; so people were not impressed by the content or….can you explain what you are saying?  Dillon – it is a little bit of both.  Parents were saying that their kids aren’t busy enough or engaged enough or for long enough; so part of it is the quantity of time and the second thing is the quality of experiences their kids are engaged in.  It is a little bit of a double whammy.  The third one that you throw in is parents concerns about kids’ emotional state in the context of a pandemic.  It is really three things: not enough time, not deep enough and kids are rattled by this whole experience.  The isolation, the disconnect.  Being a teenager is about being social; being an elementary school student is in many ways about hugging your friends and people are not getting to do that.  That is hard.  On the upside, folks we are very positive about our clarity of our communication but again most people kids are learning less and some significantly less than regular times.  There are distinctions by grade level.  Rob did a nice job of including questions or things to talk about at each point.  I am happy to go into those at some point if people were interested in that.  What are your thoughts on that?  R. Dohoney – I am comfortable waiting until we get more data.  I don’t think we have had enough time to look at it.  P. Dillon – you have two weeks until our next meeting.  In a few days, I will share the student data and then I will do a little cross with the two of them.  One of the things that is interesting is parents want their kids to do more work and kids want to do less work and that changes at different grade levels.  J. St. Peter – I just looked at the data and to me it seemed that they were concerned about learning but when you go down to the bottom, in question 14, how would you describe the amount of school work assigned, the elementary school and middle school, there was a significant majority that said it was too much or just right.  My thought is with the quarantine, I don’t think people expected their kids to spend most of the day doing school work, so the disconnect which is unavoidable, the time they did it was acceptable, just want as done doing that time could have used more work or done better.  I feel we did the best we could, better than a vast majority of the districts.  I have been sitting into a lot of statewide school committee meetings.  A. Potter – a part of it too is the time of the year.  J. St. Peter – the amount of time was adequate but just a better interface.  Learning guidance was one of the big areas and if we have to do it again in the fall or another time, we will be better on that.  P. Dillon – Rob didn’t do an analysis of the three open-ended questions but obviously I have read through them all and I will share some very specific examples from that.  One thing that people were crying out for was when teachers engaged in face-to-face interactions, people really loved and appreciated that.  That doesn’t mean that people have to see and teach five periods of class, nor would we want kids to stare at a screen for five 45-minute periods or five hours but building in some time where people can check in individually or in small groups would be beneficial going forward.  Again, so I don’t get beat up, I think what the teachers did in the context of this is really quite remarkable and I think we did better than many of our surrounding districts but the goal is not to beat us up but to have learned from this and ramp it up in a way that works for kids and teachers that is manageable and engaging.  J. St. Peter – I just want to emphasize your point, I think our teachers and administrators were put in an impossible situation and they did an unbelievable job but moving forward, what can we learn from this process.  Comparing it to other districts, I think we did beyond what we were expected to.  P. Dillon – I agree and I am really happy with the work our teachers and principals did.  I can’t say enough nice things about it.  I think our shift to a learning-management system will make it easier for teachers to organize materials and for kids and parents to work through those materials.  B. Fields – within the next two weeks, we have heard from parents and students but we haven’t heard from teachers.  I talked to one teacher who expressed some frustration but also some admiration for her peers and what someone referred to at the last meeting as building the airplane as we are flying it.  I was wondering if there is a possibility of any within this period of time and I agree we should table it and look at it two weeks from now.  Can we get input from teachers?  P. Dillon – yes, we can.  We got a lot informally and anidotically.  Part of my thinking to not do the whole 20 questions survey with them is they had enough other stuff going on and didn’t want to overwhelm them.  Maybe now as we are coming to the end of the year, as a year-end reflection, I can.  The questions are largely the same for students and parents and I just change a few words in each so we are able to compare them.  I think I can send it to teachers and they will be patient enough to complete it.  I think if I asked them to do this survey three weeks ago, they would have run me out of town.  B. Fields – I think you do it with a disclaimer that the school committee is very interested in their reactions and very concerned about this experiment as Jason said, it can serve as a model but we need to build on that.  I think teachers need to know that we are very supportive of what they do.  P. Dillon – I think that is a common theme so thank you for reiterating that.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation – P. Dillon – we had six people participate in this but in a funny way, Richmond had two more people and I can talk about that. In Berkshire Hills it is Sean, Anne and Andy and the chair of the Richmond school committee, the chair of the Hancock school committee and the chair of the New Ashford school committee.  Then because Richmond is a three-member committee and for them to engage in dialogue would be complicated and with open meeting laws and things, they each complete evaluation and their responses are aggregated into one.  It ends up the final evaluation is based on six responses but there are really two more for Richmond.  Hutchinson – the system when as usual but we never met in person, only over Zoom.  As Peter said, everybody filled out their part and when we actually had a Zoom meeting to talk about it, all of the Richmond people were there, myself and Peter.  It felt like a one-sided conversation.  We had everyone’s responses and those are all given in the report.  It is always strange also because New Ashford has a vote in this but they have no school.  Hancock is very happy with everything Peter has done for them.  The smallest part of this school district group had the most input into this evaluation which is interesting because Berkshire Hills had the least amount in input in the way it came together.  I still think it represents what Berkshire Hills had to say as well as those from New Ashford, Hancock and Richmond.  D. Weston – what school year cycle is this evaluation.  Is this ending July 1st this year or are we still trying to catch up from last year?  P. Dillon – no, the miracle of all miracles is we did it early.  D. Weston – that’s why I’m kind of confused.  Anne did a nice job with that and Doreen provided some nice support.  I think it worked out well.  R. Dohoney – no comments on a specific thing but we won’t do that process again.  P. Dillon – I think it will be different because Hancock and New Ashford are stepping away and presumably our future meetings, maybe the ones in the fall will be virtually but the future ones will be face to face.  A year ago, I did some surveys of staff and other folks and one of the things we discussed was next year getting some additional feedback from principals and maybe alternating a cycle where we also get feedback from parents.  R. Dohoney – I am not referencing the substantive process but I don’t think any kind of shared services should ever be incorporated into evaluation.  It is our job.  P. Dillon – I think part of the initial thinking why we did it that way so we didn’t do it twice.  It is pretty time consuming.  Now that we have done it a bunch of times, we understand it and we could do it discreetly for Berkshire Hills and discreetly going forward for Richmond and that would be manageable, depending on where we land with Richmond.
• Updates:
  • FY20 Graduation and Celebration
  • COVID-19 – P. Dillon – I have been on calls with the commissioner and folks with elementary and secondary ed, we expect some additional guidance next week or the week after. My best guess around what is going to happen is we start school in August in some hybrid way where some kids are some of the time and some kids are at home doing work remotely and probably that is the same for staff.  We are starting to do planning around that to see what it will look like.  The commissioner was pretty clean that going forward, the directives are going to be quite directed.  This spring was let a thousand flowers bloom and everybody do what they want to do and it looks like going forward there are going to be one or two ways to do something.  We will see what that looks like and what the recommendations are.  Dohoney – if the state is not going to exercise all of those controls and tell us what to do, are they going to do it on a state-wide basis or are they going to do it regionally by the conditions in each region?  P. Dillon – a thoughtful person would do the latter which would have it be regionally because our experience is very different from Middlesex County or Suffield County or the Cape.  I don’t know.  The only thing I know and I want to say this in a positive way, is ultimately when they give advice it has been pretty thoughtful.  The headache is they released their graduation advice a few days ago, in draft form.  We came up with a plan that I think is really thoughtful and I am psyched about it but if we wait for their advice, I don’t know what we’d do.  I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and hopefully they come up with something.  Even if they try to be really direct, Massachusetts is still full of rugged individuals with local autonomy so I can’t imagine that they have an enforcement mechanism.  We will come up with something that meets the higher standard that we have and hopefully it also meets their standard.  S. Stephen – My experience as a business owner right now is the state is not telling anyone anything so let’s not hold the breath until the state tells us what to do.  We need to get ahead of the ball.  P. Dillon – Obviously, I have been meeting with the principals and the administrative team about this all along.  I also reached out to the staff and the number keeps growing and I need to manage it a little but about 46 people as of 5pm today are interested in being part of a school reopening committee.  Obviously, I can’t manage 46 people on a committee; it will be some subset of that but I think it is positive that so many people care so much that they want to be part of it.  We are talking to nurses; Steve has done a lot around physical things.  We are looking at negative pressure in the nurse’s offices for when somebody gets sick it gets the contaminated air sucked out.  We are looking at exits for kids.  We are looking at thermal imaging systems to check temperatures very quickly.  Masks.  We are talking to Sharon and Kathy about cafeterias.  Steve has ordered some god awful number of masks and wipes.  S. Stephen – I just want to make sure we are not waiting.  The longer we wait, makes us sitting there going oops, what do we do now?  P. Dillon – we are not waiting.  We are very proactive.  We are a little behind in terms of where I would like to be in scheduling but we are catching up.  People need to cut us a little slack that we are doing this in the context of a pandemic and it is a little more than just creating schedules of 500 for the high school, it is creating that schedule in a way that affords us flexibility if there is a second wave or we can’t all go back at the same time.  S. Stephen – I think people need to understand not aof guidance coming out of anywhere at this point.  You tend to make it up as you go along thinking this makes sense and this is logical; it may be logical now but it might not be in three months.  We have to go down that path if we want to do something constructive.  P. Dillon – we have a smart group of people on board.  The school committee is really thoughtful.  We are going to let common sense be our guide and not get attached to anything dopey and we will come out of this much better than almost any other district in the county and likely most districts in the commonwealth.  S. Soule – I ordered 15,000 masks, I am in communication with Fairview Hospital in regard to the negative pressure rooms that they created there just in case we need to create that in our buildings.  I expect the masks to come in the next two weeks and I also ordered the ones that you see on the news on people with hazmat suits that are spraying things.  We have backpack sprayers and handheld sprayers on the way.  I read a few articles about the thermal imaging machines.  The reliability there is pretty questionable so I may continue my research on that to see if there is a better method.  It may just be those individual scanners that you point toward somebody’s forehead.  I have been communicating with the nurses.  Their list is very long but we will have to figure that out as we go through the next few months.  P. Dillon – the other thing that the commissioner did share which is a bit of a shift is while they encouraged this past marking period to do everything credit/no credit, he is sharing the expectation going forward that we are done with that and things will be graded again in the future.  That is an interesting wrinkle.
• Donations – P. Dillon – we received a $500 donation from the union. I wanted to read you the note they wrote because I thought it was thoughtful.  In these extraordinary times, the Berkshire Hills Education Association remains steadfastly committed to the Berkshire Hills school community and students with whom we have the privilege to work.  We are aware of the growing need to provide assistance to our families for whom food and securities are too real.  As a response to the significant need and in desire to make a difference, please accept the $500 donation from the teachers and the paraprofessionals and thank you for taking care of our community.  MOTION TO ACCEPT $500 DONATION FROM THE BERKSHIRE HILLS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION              POTTER              SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         UNANIMOUSLY ACCEPTED BY ROLL CALL VOTE
• Dillon – those of you that are on the parent list got a letter I sent out a little earlier today. I think the two people that aren’t on that list are Steve and Bill; just look at the letter when you have a chance.  It is a letter around the times we are living in this county, race and social justice and some things we can do about it.  Within it there are links to a lifetime’s worth of resources and wherever you are and whenever you approach and work through that, there is something that should be meaningful to somebody.  Take a look at it.  It is sort of rare that I get what can be seen as political but every once in a while the times warrant it and you will see that the letter is carefully worded.  I hope it transcends politics and is a bridge to bring our community together.  S. Bannon – can you post the letter on our website?  P. Dillon – I will post it, yes.  I don’t know if I can do it tonight but I will figure it out for tomorrow.
• Stephen – I have a question about the school trip stuff that has been going on. In the middle school there was the DC trip and Peru trip.  People gave down payments.  Are those on the way back out to people?  If anything they need that coming back to them now.  P. Dillon – there are a couple of things going on.  Initially at the high school level, parents reached out to a tour group connected to Yellow Stone about getting reimbursed and the initial from the group was no.  Then we reached out some more and they were going to give a partial refund.  Then we got our lawyer involved and they offered to give us a credit that the district would own that would be valid for a couple of years, then the district could reimburse parents.  Since then a bill has made its way through the state senate and house and I need to call Smitty and Ben to check its status.  When you look up on the bill, it looks like it was agreed to but it is one of those weird ones where it doesn’t look like a lot of action.  I spoke to our attorney today about it and directed her to ask for a full and complete refund which she will do but if the bill is actually a law, she has a little more umph behind it than if we are just asking.  I hope to bring that to closure tomorrow.  I think they got reimbursed for the travel and the part they weren’t reimbursed for was the actual tour group in Yellow Stone.  Ben, can you speak to what happened to the middle school trip.  I don’t think we are out much money because the tickets were never purchased, right?  B. Doren – every educational trip that we did is getting a full refund; Nature’s Classroom, Washington DC, as well as several field study trips that were planned for the end of March and early April.  Those will be processed through the business office and will be returned in full.  We will be able, through the operating budget, to get some credits so it will cost less next year and that will allow us to give full refunds to families this year which is great.  I cannot speak to the spanish trip; it is not a general education trip, it is an extracurricular trip.
• St. Peter – a parent brought this up and I thought it was a good point, they told me how through the COVID process, the kid wasn’t really learning and having a tough time with schooling and didn’t get a lot done but did a lot of other things, summer break kind of things. Their kid now has kind of settled down and a better student for learning.  What might be beneficial is to leave all the stuff that is in their grade level on the computer up there through the summer so if it is possible parents can go back with the child and go over some of the lessons throughout the summer, that would be a good idea.  P. Dillon – I like that idea and I will talk about that with the principals.  There is no reason to take it down.
• Sub Committee Reports:
  • Policy – N/A
  • Building & Grounds – N/A
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation & Advisory – See Above
  • Technology – A. Potter – we have a meeting on the 19th. We decided to meet once a month through the summer to keep an eye on the issue around LMS and Peter if you want to talk about the LMS, Canvas v. Schoolology which is where we are at in terms of are we still separated from … P. Dillon – I will give a quick update.  The meeting is on the 23rd.  Here is where we are with Canvas and Schoolology.  They are both learning management systems like a one stop place where teachers can build information and students and parents can go to see what is going on.  What is better about it than what we have been doing with Google is it is all interconnected and it is thoughtful and makes sense.  As part of an upgrade we did, we have free access to Schoolology.  The county-wide task force is running a separate initiative and about half the districts in the county are signing on to Canvas.  They are very comparable systems but our decision because we already have the side license for several years for Schoolology and it integrates really well with PowerSchool which we use for grades and other things, it makes more sense for us to use that.  I have spoke a lot to Jake Everwine and the folks involved in the Canvas project and though we are going to use different platforms, there will be opportunities for us to share materials through what he describes as commons; so teachers can share information back and forth so we will take advantage of that but we are not ready to spend more money on something we already have a license to.  There is no animosity; the county-wide task force supports our decision and they see it as an alternative path.  I think if Greylock weren’t invested in Canvas already and if some of the players hadn’t worked with it at MCLA, everybody might have gone to Schoolology.  We are going to be very deliberate in rolling it out, supporting staff and students and parents in how to use it, doing training, etc.  We are optimistic that we can get a bunch of that done before school starts and we don’t want people to have nervous breakdowns if it is not all perfectly running in September.  We will ease into it in a way that is good for everybody.
  • Finance – N/A
  • District Consolidation & Sharing – P. Dillon – at the meeting, a subcommittee offered work to three different groups.  They invited Jake Everwine to be the project manager, Chris Hazzard, the former head of Berkshire United Way, to be the facilitator and Steve Hammond and Mars….so that work is moving forward and spend down that $50,000 grant and then work to procure some additional funds.  The separate work that is going on with Richmond, the consultant has been meeting with them.  We are looking to reschedule a meeting with that consultant and just as a point of information, I helped Hancock and New Ashford do a Superintendent and Spec Ed Director search and they made an offer and are in negotiations with a candidate to be their part-time superintendent and special ed director so that is nice.  Stephen – Is there a way to get minutes of these meetings sent to us?  P. Dillon – Lucy Prashkar is the head of that group and she has a recording secretary there.  I haven’t received them because that meeting just happened.  S. Bannon – one of the problems is they feel an urgency with the $50,000 so they had the meeting in the middle of the day and I was not able to attend and if they continue to do that, they will alienate a lot of people because people who work will never be able to attend those meetings so they need to come up with a schedule.  S. Stephen – I never heard about any meeting.  If I can at least get minutes from it it would be good.  P. Dillon – we will catch you up and you will be happy or sad to hear, they were very clear they won’t schedule any more meetings during the day so everybody will be able to attend.
• Personnel Report
  • Retirement(s)
  • Leave of Absence(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

• New Business:
  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

Meeting Adjourned at 7:00pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                      Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Tele-Meeting

March 26, 2020 – 6pm

Present:

School Committee:                 A. Hutchinson, J. St. Peter, A. Potter, B. Fields, M. Thomas, D. Weston,
D. Singer, S. Bannon, S. Stephen, M. Thomas, R. Dohoney, B. Fields

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             K. Burdsall

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

February 27, 2020; March 18, 2020 Tele-Conference

MOTION TO APPROVE MINUTES OF FEBRUARY 27, 2020 AND MARCH 18, 2020          A. POTTER               SECONDED:  S. STEPHEN              ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  hour, 30 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Superintendent’s Report:

• COVID-19 Update – P. Dillon – You are seeing a constant flurry of emails from me to the school community and also to the school committee about what is going on with COVID-19. The big thing is the governor extended the closure of schools through May 4th and I imagine we will gets a few more weeks into it and see how the Commonwealth is doing and whether we stick with that and are ready and safe to come back  to school or whether that gets extended.  To date our guidance from the state has been around providing enrichment to students and that is shifting a little bit and we are pivoting a bit to focus more on education.  We are working closely with the administrative team and with the teachers to see what distance learning and rolling that out will look like.  Individual teachers in the schools have been reaching out to kids and families about technology needs whether they don’t have a device or an appropriate device or if they have connectivity issues.  We are working to address both.  The first would be to temporarily loan devices to families that need them and the second would be to work with a wide range of internet service providers to help families get access in the short term.  I think it is really thoughtful.  We were a little bit ahead of what the state was directing us to do and then they released some guidelines today around noon that line up very closely with the work we are trying to do.  I think we will end up doing a lot of work through our Google platform which is one thing we know and like to use and that will include some online work with kids in classes and individually and then some follow up additionally and some directed work.  More importantly, in these challenging times, one of the ways is to get them involved in baking, chores, going outside and doing other things.  We will continue to seek out other guidance around that.  We are developing a very extensive FAQ that will be up on our website  and will continue to share information around details there, both around what staff are doing and what expectations for kids and parents are.  There are about a million and one questions and we are trying to get to all of them.   I am happy to respond and on the highest level, most students have completed most of the work through the third marking period.  That work to date will be graded and for the duration of the school year, we are building out a thing where work will be credit or no credit.  Obviously, there will be flexibility.  Bill, to your delight, MCAS has been waived for the year.  They look like they will set things up differently and SATs are temporarily postponed.  I think that is the wide range of what is going on.  The other thing, everybody has really chipped in around our food program, particularly Kathy Sullivan and her team and Sharon have built up really nice partnerships.  All the principals and administrators are also handing out food with the food service people.  We had been doing breakfast and lunch every day for kids and we are shifting to a model where we are giving families multiple bags or boxes of food on Fridays.  We are doing that for a couple of reasons.  It reduces interaction and contact and it lets us rotate staff a little better so the likelihood of us getting ill in doing this is going down dramatically.  As the economic conditions get tighter around it, this will probably become more important.  We have done multiple calls and emails to families about this in English and Spanish.  We are working with community partners to get the word out and we will be doing boxes or bags going forward.  In some cases we will start sharing technology with the boxes and bags.  We have to do a little more work on that.  Dohoney – I think you guys are doing great on the education front and I am not surprised that you are ahead of the rest of the state.  I am interested in how the rest of professional staff intends to engage with people like in terms of adjustment counsellors, guidance counsellors and how they are going to provide the roles and services we usually provide rather than just reading, writing and arithmetic.  P. Dillon – we are in the middle of that and any of our kids might be on the receiving end of a phone call from a guidance counselor or adjustment counselor or other people.  The plan is to take advantage of people’s skills.  There are three or four areas we need to focus on.  There is the food and security and I think that is largely well in hand.  The other is the social/emotional stuff and the psychological stuff.  For many kids being home is ok.  For some kids it is particularly challenging; for some families it is challenging so we think there are some opportunities to provide support there.  Some of this we are getting guidance from the fed and the state around what it looks like and will it be daily check ins with several families and kids through teleconference or the Google application we are using or something else.  There are a few very specific discrete holes where we still need to come up with a plan for what it looks like.  How does a physical therapist provide support without being able to put their hands on somebody.  That may be around sharing activities or exercises so that families can participate.  There are a handful or areas that we are working on.  I know Kate is working on these things and we will try to move forward on those.  K. Burdsall – I met with the clinical team today on Google Hangout, K-12, including Vicki Shufton, our school psychologist.  I really special shoutout to Dom Sacco.  Dom is at the middle school and has managed to call every single middle school family to touch base with them.  I think he has had contact with about 95% of them.  There are a couple that he just hasn’t been about to get to.  They haven’t called back but I think that is pretty amazing.  Between the elementary school and the high school, the school adjustment counselors have reached out to at least 50-60 families that had some regular stuff going on with them already, which is pretty great.  One of the things we are working on is a hotline that Vicki will actually man.  It will be a support hotline for families and students and even staff who aren’t necessarily connected to our school adjustment counselors or guidance counselors at this moment but they need some sort of support.  We are going to have a questionnaire and Vicki is basically going to triage and then get people connected to people if they need that and also reach out to the Brien Center, CHP, Macony and outside therapists if need be.  We are working on that right now.  I think in terms of services, folks are really on the ball and trying to figure out how to take videos of physical things they need to do with kids and occupational therapy skills.  We are really trying to get out ahead of the curve and be creative in how we can provide those services starting in the next couple of weeks.  There are lots of moving parts but I feel like we are coming together as a team nicely and people are really reaching out to families and trying to be creative with planning for what is coming.  P. Dillon – we are going to work closely with the unions and the various associations on this.  There are some state-level guidance around district learning but there are some local differences.  Someone wrote about it, something about changing the wheels on the airplane as it is taking off.  This was a tough one but we will continue to meet with the unions and associations and negotiate some of this going forward.  It is very challenging work.  We are all struggling with the sense of uncertainty in our own individual personal lives as well.  I couldn’t be happier about the broad teams we will be working with from the food service people to the principals and everybody in between.  I think we are well positioned to have a high level of success
• MSBA-SOI Feedback – I sent around a draft copy of the SOI and some people had a chance to read it and some might not have. If you want to reach out to me and share specific feedback, some members already did,  I will try to incorporate that relatively quickly.  We can make changes to the document, send it around again and schedule a meeting maybe on Wednesday or Thursday next week for 20 minutes and presumably you will vote to approve it as edited.  Then we can go ahead and submit that to the MSBA if you want us to do that.  Dohoney – I like that plan.  I am one of the people who gave Peter comments like 20 minutes ago, so having one more round to review it and have a quick vote is a good way to handle it.  B. Fields – I agree with that.  R. Dohoney – I know you don’t like to be a stickler but could you give us a hard deadline to get our comments to you?  Like Friday or Monday?  P. Dillon – what is people get comments to me on Monday by noon and then that gives Steve and I a day or two to incorporate them.  We will schedule a meeting for a week from today at 6pm.  We will get you a clean revised copy of it a day before or maybe two days before depending how many comments you give us and then we could have a meeting and do a relatively quick discussion and do a vote.  If you want us to make more changes even at that late date we would do it but maybe the vote will be to submit it as amended.  P. Dillon – for transparency with the public, our first two meetings were teleconferences.  My recommendation for the next one if people are open to it and if folks have the technical capability is that we do the next one as a video conference.  This is going to be broadcast on CTSB and will just be a picture of the schools and us talking.  I think it is more acceptable to the public if we actually do a video conference and if people are open to that, and probably you are doing it already, and I will share directions way in advance and people can practice with us in advance of that meeting.  Is that ok?  CTSB has a Zoom account and they are recommending we do that and they will lend us the account to do that.  If people are comfortable with Zoom, I am happy doing that.  You probably need a laptop or a computer that is not more than eight years old.
• Vote on Borrowing – I have a motion around the vote on borrowing. More than a month ago, we had a vote and on the district end, we needed to act on that within seven days and we missed that seventh day deadline so it would be perfectly appropriate in moving that forward.  I have a motion that I shared with Rich that I would like to share and have you vote on to give us seven more days to reach out to the towns.  MOTION THAT THE DISTRICT APPROPRIATE THE AMOUNT OF $80,000 FOR CHILLER REPAIRS AND $50,000 FOR WASTE WATER TREATMENT FILTER REPLACEMENT INCLUDING THE PAYMENT OF ALL COSTS INCIDENTAL OR RELATED THERETO SAID SUM TO BE EXPENDED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.  TO MEET THIS APPROPRIATION, THE DISTRICT TREASURER WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE CHAIR OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE IS AUTHORIZED TO BORROW SAID AMOUNT UNDER MGL CHAPTER 71, SECTION 16B OF THE GENERAL LAWS AND THE DISTRICT AGREEMENT AS AMENDED OR PURSUANT TO ANY OTHER UNABLING AUTHORITIES.  ANY PREMIUM RECEIVED UPON THE SALE OF ANY BONDS OR NOTES WHICH MAY BE APPLIED TO THE PAYMENT OR COST APPROVED BY THIS VOTE IN ACCORDANCE WITH CHAPTER 44, SECTION 20 OF THE GENERAL LAWS THEREBY REDUCING THE AMOUNT AUTHORIZED TO PAY SUCH COSTS BY LIKE AMOUNT             DOHONEY              SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                 ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL VOTE
• Cancellation of all Field Trips – P. Dillon – I have two more and I want to run them by you. I can be a formal vote or it could be the will of the committee.  The first is in the context of the return to school being moved through May 4th, I would like to recommend and potentially get your support for cancelling all field trips and field study for the rest of the year.  There are some small ones, there is a proposed trip to Washington DC and then more broadly, there is a trip to Peru.  If you want to separate out the Peru one and wait a little bit to see what is going on, I am okay with that but I would like to cancel the trip to DC.  I don’t think that makes sense in the foreseeable future.  MOTION TO CANCEL ALL UPCOMING FIELD TRIPS           DOHONEY         SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                  ACCEPTED:   PASSED 9 TO 1.          A. Hutchinson – I would rather wait on Peru until May.  J. St. Peter – when is the Peru trip?  A. Hutchinson – June 12th.  B. Fields – I am not sure.  They are talking in the other part of the state about school not even starting until September and the way this thing is going, if we have kids that are travelling, we don’t know what their status is or anything.  I think we should just say there are no more trips.  A. Potter –  I agree.  I think we should just clear the boards.  D. Weston – Having done this trip twice, 12,000 feet is the last place you want to chance anybody getting sick with this.  My son is signed up, my other son was going to be a chaperone and whether we vote yes or no, they will not be going.  P. Dillon – If things dramatically change, we might come back to you but I don’t think that they will.
• Employee Compensation – P. Dillon – in the context of schools being closed through May 4th at the previous meeting you voted to put staff on paid administrative leave and compensate them through April 6th. My request and recommendation is you extend that through May 4th. D. Weston – if we are asking teachers and other staff to actually teach, why would they be on administrative leave and not just paid on the regular books?  Dillon – we can do that.  At one point, I was given advice that paid administrative leave gives people flexibility to work outside of the weekend. I think we will be meeting with the unions and associations to come up with something ideally in the next couple of weeks.    MOTION TO COMPENSATE DISTRICT EMPLOYEES THROUGH MAY 4TH      D. WESTON          SECONDED:  B. FIELDS            ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL VOTE  A. Hutchinson – what about the separate payments people receive for running school shows and coaching, etc.?  S. Bannon – we will talk about that next Anne.
• Payment of Stipends – P. Dillon – I think this is really something that we should formally negotiate and the administrative team is doing some work on that. We are trying to take a look at all the different types of stipends and what work is stopped because of the circumstance we are in, what work will continue and in some cases what work hasn’t started.  We will spend a little more time reviewing that.  Sharon, the principals and I started looking at it.  We will formally address that with the unions and associations in the context of negotiation.  Does that work for people?  Dohoney – I think that is a good plan.  P. Dillon – the administrative team does a little homework, we will reach out to the negotiating team and then we will reach out to the various groups that get stipends and try to figure out something that is good for everybody.
• Food Distribution – S. Harrison – right now we have over 125 families that are going to be picking up or having food delivered for tomorrow and we expect, when I left, in one hour we got 12 additional families so our outreach is really working for our families. Hutchinson – I want to say that Sharon and that crew have done an incredible job pulling together all the food for all those kids at multiple sites.  It is amazing.  D. Weston – I just wanted to comment that the communication from the school district, from a district level and from the teachers and principal level has been extraordinary.  A lot of people put a lot of time and a lot of thought into the communication.  It is very effective.  S. Bannon – what is really amazing is there is no script to go by.  It has worked out really well.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee
• Technology Sub Committee
• Finance Sub Committee
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub Committee

Personnel Report:

• Long-Term Substitute Appointment(s)
• Resignation(s)
• Leave of Absence(s)
• Retirement(s) Extra-curricular Appointment(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER      SECONDED:  B. FIELDS             ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS BY ROLL CALL

Meeting Adjourned at 6:35pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                      Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Public Hearing-FY21 Budget / Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Student Center

February 27, 2020 – 7pm

Present:

School Committee:                       A. Hutchinson, J. St. Peter, A. Potter, B. Fields, M. Thomas, D.Weston, R. Dohoney,                                                       D. Singer,  S.Bannon

Administration:                             P. Dillon

Staff/Public:                                  K. Farina, B. Doren, K. Burdsall, T. Lee, S. Soule, P. Gibbons, G. Chamberlin

Absent:                                         S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 70pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Public Hearing – FY21 School Budget

In accordance with MGL ch.71, sec. 38n, the Berkshire Hills Regional School District School Committee will open the Public Hearing on its proposed FY21 Budget. At this time, all interested parties shall be given an opportunity to be heard for or against the whole or any part of the budget. Reference: Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association website: masspublicnotices.org

MOTION TO OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE FY21 SCHOOL BUDGET           A. POTTER          SECONDED:     R. DOHONEY       ROLL CALL VOTE FOR ALL MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE ACCEPTED

MINUTES:
February 13, 2020

MOTION TO ACCEPT SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF FEBRUARY 13, 2020                   A. POTTER            SECONDED:  B. FIELDS        ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Potential Vote – FY21 Budget – P. Dillon – We have done a budget presentation multiple times to this group and I think everybody in the group except maybe one person has heard me do it so I will spare you the whole lengthy presentation. I will highlight a couple of things.  As we put together this budget, we worked very hard with the finance sub-committee starting last March.  We really wanted to do three big things: maintain levels of funding that provide high quality education for all our students; to expand opportunities for student success and ensure equitable access for all students.  I think we put together a budget that does that.  A couple of quick things.  There are a couple of ongoing conversations about regionalization in Southern Berkshire and in discussions with Richmond  around some future collaborations.  Lots of instructional work in the buildings around stronger connections across the three buildings, aligned instructional approaches and work on shared professional development.  We have invested a lot of time and energy in both math and writing and the new science standards.  At each of the three buildings, we started with an all in budget and that was too much then we worked our way back from that budget.  Ultimately, at the elementary school our new budget ends up in a reduction of one paraprofessional position and reallocating and reducing some of the existing resources.  At the middle school, we get Title I funds and we are going to redirect those back to the middle school.  At the high school, we are eliminating two paraprofessional positions and half an english position.  The paraprofessional positions are by fruition and the english position is just a straight reduction.  We then got through all the things that impact our budget and I won’t go into fine detail around that.  Where we end up, from a revenue perspective we had an interesting thing happen.  Our tuition revenue is down in part because of a class of Farmington River kids not enrolling this year in 6th grade and just because there are fewer tuition students available to us.  Our money from the state is largely the same.  As it stands now, we are getting $30 more per kid.  There is a lot of talk in the news about a student opportunity act; that is a great act that is going to help kids in certain communities, Pittsfield is going to benefit by $13 million this year, but we are not, we are getting $30 a kid and maybe it will go up to $50.  In this budget, we are using more from E&D than we have in the past in the amount of $352,000; that is about half of our reserve.  As we get to each of the towns, there are three things that impact the budget.  The budget allocation, the minimum local contribution and the net assessment.  The shifts in this years’ budget is Great Barrington’s percentage of district kids continuing to go up slightly, a little more than half a percent.  Last year it was 73 and changed and this year it is 74 and change.  Stockbridge is relatively flat and West Stockbridge went down.  The minimum local contribution is the state’s assessment of each communities’ ability to contribute.  This year, again Stockbridge was just largely flat; Great Barrington goes up a little bit and West Stockbridge goes up about $60,000.  You take the enrollment and the minimum local contribution and we get the net assessment of each community.  The total percentage increase is 4.7%.  In Great Barrington it ends up being 5% and Stockbridge is 2.25% and West Stockbridge 5.29%.  The other thing that is important to mention is our grant funding.  We get entitlement grants that we just get for being an organization and then we get a bunch of competitive grants.  When we are all in on that, it is among $2 million out of a $28 million budget.  We are much more successful than any school district in Massachusetts and Berkshire County at writing competitive grants.  $400,000 for our three after school programs in competitive grants; similar amounts at the high school for the Mass Ideas work and those are multi year grants.  Ben did a really nice job putting together this Kaleidoscope grant and we are accepted among a very small number of schools in the Commonwealth and we just heard that we get to be a part of a pilot on alternative assessment.  We heard that a couple of days ago and we are going to hear a dollar amount in the next couple of weeks.  Lots of grants around vocational education, Project Lead the Way, Engineering, Computer Science, middle school Gateway stuff and Rural Health money to support our work with the pediatricians and mental health providers.  I hope this is helpful for the people who haven’t heard it before.  I think now is an opportunity for people to come up and share questions or raise concerns if needed.  Gibbons, Hollenbeck Avenue, Great Barrington – I had a lot of questions but some of them have been answered privately by members of the committee or the superintendent.  Just a couple of questions in regard to my favorite topic, athletics.  According to something that you passed out earlier, you are looking into a cut of $11,000 in coaching stipends.  Is that still part of the plan? P. Dillon – Kristi is that something you are comfortable speaking to?  K. Farina – that is correct.  We are reducing the coaching budget by that amount and that is based on the participation of football.  We are reducing football coaches by one and the girls and boys soccer both have assistant coaches and we are going to shift the cost of those to the booster clubs like we have done in other sports.  P. Gibbons – my point was, there are no athletics being cut?  P. Dillon – not to our knowledge.  S. Bannon – not through the budget considerations.  What happens because of enrollment, we are not involved with that.  P. Gibbons – do you have any idea how much revenue the student athletic fees generate?  P. Dillon – I could look it up but I don’t know that number.  P. Gibbons – I can give you a ballpark of around $44,000.  On page 207 of the budget book, you list that there is going to be budgeted $22,000 for professional fees is that athletic, officials and the like.  Then on page 272, you indicate that you are going to be budgeting $20,000 for athletic transportation which last year you increased it by $10,000 and this past fiscal year you had to transfer roughly $30,000 to cover the shortfall in the fiscal year 19 transportation account.  With the cut of $10,000 from the present budget back to $20,000 and the $30,000 that you had to subsidize last year, your transportation account, I believe will be underfunded.  I would urge you to take a look at it closely.  Your transportation costs are not going to change very much, even though someone might be concerned about the potential MIAA change.  You are already playing most of the school and you would probably end up playing under the change.  I really think that you should look at instead of putting the burden on the parents of the students to transport the teams to all these athletic events, I think you should take a closer look at that.  If you just do the math, you are underfunded.  In addition, that cut for professional fees, you are already subsidizing that out of the athletic fund.  My point is, I really think you need to take a look at your athletic expenses and your athletic revenues because you can’t keep shifting the cost onto the parents.  Even though they pay a fee, that is not the only cost they have.  Just talk to a parent that has to go out and buy a pair of soccer shoes every year or basketball shoes.  They go for between $200-$300 if you want to get up into that range.  My point is that I think you need to take a closer look at your athletic revenues and your athletic expenses.  S. Bannon – thank you Paul.  Point well made.  Sharon Gregory, 32 Hollenbeck – My question has to do with Great Barrington.  The benefit costs, specifically with the other post-employment benefits liability that have at the school, is called the unfunded liability and Great Barrington is now liable for about 73% of it.  Could you tell me how much it is now.  Last time I looked it was about $16 million or something like that.  I guess if we had something like a stabilization fund for the ups and downs, would that reduce the ups and downs from year to year?  With all the potential consolidation talks, it seems like it would be an issue that various school districts have.  Is there anything that can be done or are you thinking about doing something to mitigate that liability.  P. Dillon – to give people a little bit of …. It is a good question and a particularly complex one.  The OPEP thing is a shift  that happened about six or seven years ago.  All of a sudden this was a liability that communities were not counting and now they have an obligation to count it.  For many years it was seen as purely a paper liability with no significance but at the end of the day, the real issue is if an entity went belly up, they would have this giant liability.  One of the nice things about being a school district, on the retirement side, the largest bulk of our employees and our best compensated ones are teachers or educators and their whole system is self funded on the retirement side not on the benefits side.  The other employees, the paras, cafeteria, etc. are tied up in the Berkshire County Retirement system and that is more funded by the district than by individuals.  I don’t know exactly what the dollar amount is now.  We have been putting a little bit of money away or towards it in a symbolic way.  Some people would argue that that isn’t enough because it isn’t ever going to happen.  Other people would argue that it would be better if you actually chipped away at it a certain percent a year over several years.  What I would like to do is that Sharon does a little more research, pull up all the things and reach back out to you individually but then share it at the next meeting.  S. Gregory – I suggested that publicly if there were consolidation were to move forward, each of the school districts had to handle their own liabilities and come to the table with as little as possible so it is not something that takes an enormous amount of discussion.  P. Dillon – Capital Assets, lawsuits, there are a whole gaggle of things.  S. Gregroy – legally things like capital expenditures are better defined because we borrow based on our three towns backing the debt but in this case, it would seem like the three towns would have to be liable.  It seems like Great Barrington would be liable for 73% right now.  R. Dohoney – I don’t think that is how that works.  73% happens to be our assessment this year but if we could make current with our retirement benefits year to year, in a doomsday scenario that is not how that would happen.  It probably wouldn’t even go to the towns.  S. Gregory – even though it is not a doomsday scenario, the possibility of consolidation and things like that would bring it to a number to be negotiated and dealt with.  P. Dillon – I think that makes sense.  Thank you.

MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING            A. POTTER               SECONDED:  B. FIELDS           ROLL CALL FROM ALL MEMBERS PRESENT             UNANIMOUS

• Good News Item(s)
• Continued Discussion – FY21 Budget – MOTION TO HAVE THE SUM OF $70,000 FROM SHORT-TERM BORROWING FOR THE PURPOSE OF MONUMENT MOUNTAIN CONTINUING WORK ON THE OUTSIDE CLASSROOMS OF TWO H-WINGS AND TWO B-WING CLASSROOMS – B. FIELDS SECONDED:  ST. PETER      FIVE FOR THE MOTION:  FOUR OPPOSED              MOTION PASSES FIVE:FOUR         B. Fields – we have nothing in the short-term borrowing.  We received this figure from Steve Soule.  So my motion is to continue the work that is being done at the high school making the educational environment better.  R. Dohoney – to anyone that was at the finance committee last night, knows that I support the sentiment of it.  I don’t know that I am going to vote for it tonight because we did a couple of classroom rehabs on the fly at the school committee level last year and it worked out very well but I am not comfortable but I am not comfortable with it going forward.  The finance committee met monthly for 12 months  and nothing was ever presented to us by the administration of the buildings and ground committee proposing anything like this.  I think it is a great idea but it might be set up wrong.  I think we should be doing more and I will say if I decide to vote against it tonight and if a need is clearly articulated by the administration for improvements to the high school, and I think those needs should be articulated because I see that they are there and I know them from my kids’ experience there then I would be willing to make the request and request a special town meeting to do the borrowing at any time when the question is right.  I expect to have some either proposals from the administration throughout the year to the finance committee or some explanations as to why they are not coming forward throughout the year to the finance committee and the buildings and grounds committee.  But just because of the way it is teed up right now, I don’t think that I am going to vote for it.  S. Bannon – I am in agreement with Rich.  We met for nine or ten months and nothing was brought forward to us and doing to piecemeal like this, I am not sure it is the right way of doing it.  A. Potter – I concur with the chair of the finance subcommittee.  We have been meeting all year long and this is just outside the process and my inclination is to oppose it.  J. St. Peter – I would beg to differ.  When Steve and I were there to present the buildings and grounds proposal to the finance committee in either August or September, this was in our proposal.  These four classrooms, an outdoor classroom and improvements to the few rooms in the science wing.  We did present it to you and that information was there and you have had it for months.  It was the feeling of, and I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but it was unanimous that we as a group in the buildings and grounds committee feel that the students at the high school now are in a building that is more than 50 years old, it is worse than it was ten years ago, it is a lot worse than it was 30 years ago and it is even worse than it was 50 years ago.  These students are going to be here for a minimum of three to four more years and up to fifteen years, the way MSBA is going.  We have been putting off improvements to the building in hopes we are going to get another school.  At this point we owe the students in that school the best that we can do for them.  I know you all feel this way but it is our feeling that we should do the most we can with the limited funds we have to make the experience of the kids in the building now as pleasant as possible.  We feel this would do the greatest good with the limited resources we have.  B. Fields – I would just like to point out that for two years now, we did have an account under extraordinary maintenance and that has been zeroed out.  Just to repeat what Jason said, we did look at these plans when Steve came to us in August.  He went through them.  We talked about them and there was some discussion about what was going to be done.  This is not just painting; this is what I call making the rooms more modern.  It is work that we have done already on the inside rooms in each of the wings and now we are looking at the outside.  I also will want to reiterate what Jason said, we have to continue to do something with that building despite the fact that we are going other routes with the MSBA and maybe going it alone but in the meantime, that building is going to service kids.  We owe it to those kids not just the CVTE program, which is going to have improvements but to all the kids besides the CVTE kids who are going to be affected by going through these classrooms.  I think it is the least we can do.  It is not a huge amount.  The procedure has been there.  I understand why some of you are hesitant to do it this way but it looks like this is the only way that we can do that and continue on some sort of maintenance schedule and not just upkeep because that building is in great shape.  It has been kept up but this is to move it forward a little more and avail kids who are in that building now and will be there because it doesn’t look like the MSBA route is going to be very favorable.  Sharon talked about consolidation while that is way down the road so what do we do with that building.  I think we owe it to the kids as a committee to say to the kids we understand where we are here and we are working slowly but surely on making things better.  R. Dohoney – I agree with everything you said but this is a procedural issue.  Historically in our capital budget we had this extraordinary repair thing which is not currently in the capital budget and you are not proposing an amendment to that?  B. Fields – no.  R. Dohoney – you are proposing that in FY21 we do a borrowing to fund these capital items that would then hit presumably our FY22 budget to start repaying.  B. Fields – yes.  R. Dohoney – You are not amending this budget at all?  B. Fields – no.  R. Dohoney – I agree. I have said that many times that given the pressure that this budget was under and the cuts we had to make now that the best way to fund the capital expenditures was through borrowing.  That doesn’t need to be done tonight.  We have a problem getting to annual town meetings.  I don’t know if we have exhausted that or not.  We could come back at our next school committee meeting and if had time before it to talk about doing a borrowing, it is a separate vote and a separate line item on the procedure.  We have a couple of them that we are going to do tonight.  A. Potter- What I want to say is that I want to be on record that I was in our subcommittees, I was in favor of a much more aggressive budget.  I was knocked down by my colleagues from Great Barrington and I pushed back and I made a compromise on this budget.  I am happy to be here to vote on this budget.  As Rich says, there are other opportunities but to mock what we felt was a compromise and I was right up front that I was in favor of a much more aggressive budget than then one we are sitting here and the one I am going to vote for, I am going to hold my nose and vote for and to get just after the hearing to have this amendment pop up, I would of had this discussion a long time ago.  S. Bannon – any other discussion?   P. Dillon – what I prepared tonight were three motions.  A motion on the operating budget and a motion on the capital budget and then a third motion on borrowing for  chiller repairs and wastewater treatment. If it is the will of the committee, we could amend the third motion for borrowing for the wastewater treatment and the chiller repairs to include the third thing.  I am a little nervous about the timing of this.  I think the number of days to town meeting; it is probably in your interest to vote on it tonight or at one of the meetings scheduled next week if you want it to be ready for the town meeting.  R. Dohoney – so what really should have happened is a motion to amend this order which we haven’t gotten to yet.  S. Bannon – we can still do that because we know…you are absolutely right and this is why it is not brought up after the public hearing at the last minute because quite honestly what we should do is meet March 3rd which is our tentative date and do this but let’s try to do it anyway.  Do I have any other discussion about the budget?  R. Dohoney – so right now the budget that is on the table just to be clear and vote on tonight’s not impacted by those motions potentially the barring order may be in effect.  MOTION TO APPROVE A FISCAL YEAR FY21 GROSS OPERATING BUDGET OF $29,348,061 WHICH RESULTS IN A NET OPERATING BUDGET OF $27,348,061 AFTER USE OF SCHOOL CHOICE AND TUITION FUNDS FOR A TOTAL ASSESSMENT TO THE MEMBER TOWNS OF $23,091,573        R. DOHONEY                 SECONDED:  A. POTTER                ACCEPTED:  8 APPROVED          OPPOSED:  1             MOTION PASSES              MOTION TO APPROVE FISCAL YEAR 2021 BUDGET IN THE AMOUNT OF 2,798,875 WITH A TOTAL NET ASSESSMENT TO THE MEMBER TOWNS OF $677,941           R. DOHONEY                          SECONDED:  A. POTTER                        ACCEPTED:  8    OPPOSED:  1            MOTION PASSES         R. Dohoney – as chairman of the finance committee, I am not making any more capital motions.  If the buildings and grounds committee has a motion they want to make on capital, they can do that.  I am voting against that motion as it stands.  S. Bannon – I am pretty uncomfortable with this because we met for nine months.  Jason you are absolutely right.  It was brought to us in the initial presentation.  It never made it into the budget and no one in all of our subcommittee meetings proposed that it be added, nor at our two school committee meetings where we discussed the budget and at the 11th hour it gets put in, it seems like we might as well not have subcommittee meetings.  We just make things up at the last minute.  R. Dohoney – that isn’t fair.  S. Bannon – I think it is because I think this is a very tricky way of doing it.  I am not saying it is wrong.  I understand the sentiment and I agree that something needs to be done to the school but I would hope we would have a more long range plan.  P. Dillon – would it be helpful if I read the motion as prepared?  Not to vote on it but for context then you can decide what you want to do with it?  S. Bannon – no, I think the best thing to do is have one of the members read the motion then make an amendment.  That is fine.  Who would like to make the motion?  D. Weston – me.  S. Bannon – we can do this.  It’s not impossible.  MOTION THAT THE DISTRICT APPROPRIATES THE AMOUNT OF $80,000 FOR THE CHILLER REPAIRS AND $60,000 FOR THE WASTE WATER TREATMENT FILTER REPLACEMENT INCLUDING THE PAYMENT OF ALL COSTS INCIDENTAL OR RELATED THERETO SAID SUMS TO BE EXPENDED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.  TO MEET THIS APPROPRIATION, THE DISTRICT TREASURER WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE CHAIR OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE IS AUTHORIZED TO BORROW SAID AMOUNT UNDER MGL CHAP. 71, SECTION 16D OF THE GENERAL LAWS IN THE DISTRICT AGREEMENT AS AMENDED OR PURSUANT TO ANY OTHER ENABLING AUTHORITY.  ANY PREMIUM RECEIVED UPON THE SALE OF ANY BOND OR NOTE MAY BE APPLIED TO THE PAYMENT OR COST OF THIS VOTE IN ACCORDANCE WITH CHAP. 44, SECTION 20 OF THE GENERAL LAWS THEREBY REDUCING THE AMOUNT AUTHORIZED TO PAY SUCH COSTS BY A LIKE AMOUNT             D. WESTON            SECONDED:   A. HUTCHINSON               ACCEPTED:                      S. Bannon – this is borrowing.  Borrowing required ⅔ vote and I am also going to say we have a tentative meeting scheduled Tuesday.  If in fact this after we review with counsel and Sharon who could not be here tonight, tomorrow morning and if this is not correct, we may still have to meet Tuesday to do this correctly.  D. Weston – let me just clarify the steps.  If Bill moves to amend this motion, then can it be amended by a majority vote but the actual warrant item has to be voted by ⅔ is that correct?  Can it be amended?  R. Dohoney – it can be amended by a simple majority.  P. Dillon – there are nine people here today so it would be 6.  S. Bannon – Bill, can I have your motion?  MOTION TO ADD $70,000 FOR HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM UPGRADES TO THE SHORT-TERM BORROWING MOTION THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PRESENTED     B. FIELDS         SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER            P. Dillon – as a point of clarification, I think what you want to say is “add $70,000 for high school classroom upgrades”.  A. Hutchinson – I think part of the reason that we haven’t been talking about doing stuff at the high school is we were waiting for the MSBA to give us their ruling so I think the high school was kind of let go.  We figured if MSBA steps in why spend the time and energy going toward that.  When that is not going to happen this year, I think that ‘s this motion came from.  We need to do something in the high school for the kids who are there and will be there.  This is an evolving thing.  Back in September, we had a different way of looking at this.  It is different today and it’s different after we had a meeting this week to try to talk about going forward and how we are going to manage it going forward.  R. Dohoney – I think there has been a full robust and full disclosure among the school committee on this issue for a long time.  There has been zero discussion or inquiry about the procedure from anyone frankly besides me and I didn’t get the answer I wanted from the administration and that is why I didn’t try to perfect one of these maneuvers.  The bell rang in my mind a long time ago.  It’s not a discussion, or idea, or need that has been neglected to happen.  Bill and Jason have been advocating this but how we actually do it, finance it, how it is done, has been totally ignored.  To Andy’s point, we already voted on the operating budget and let’s not ignore history.  There were two teachers proposed to be cut by the administration in this budget and we didn’t do it.  One of the expenses was this maintenance.  This just isn’t open neglect.  This was a budgetary trade-off and that is where aI wanted to go to do the long-term borrowing and in my mind we didn’t do the things to put us in a position to do those things.  I think by trying to jam it in now, I think we are doing ourselves a disservice.  I think this committee and the administration has to get a lot savier about borrowing.  I don’t want to get off on a bad foot like this because we are going to be borrowing like heck for the next 20 years.  D. Weston – Peter, I know Sharon isn’t here.  Do we know the term of these bonds?  How many years?  P. Dillon – I think the last time we did it, we did it around computers and my recollection was five years.  On the plus side, the interest rates just keep going down.  They are going to go down again next week in response to the 1200 point drop in the market today.  From a cost number perspective, it is not prohibitive.  Looking at the long term, it may not make a lot of sense.  B. Fields – I just want to ask a question.  If we are concerned about the process which I am hearing, then how does this work get done?  If that is what we are concerned with, process.  It seems to me that we are concerned more about process sometimes than we are about the students that we are serving.  This serves the students.  I understand the process but this was before us; there is no doubt when Steve comes, that is why we do these; we have had other requests.  We have looked at them.  I would just like to know if we don’t do it this way, then how does it get done this year?  D. Weston – it doesn’t.  B. Fields – so we go for a third year with nothing being done except the normal maintenance that Steve’s crew does so well.  R. Dohoney – when is our next actual meeting?  S. Bannon – it is March 26th.  B. Fields – and I won’t be here for the 3rd because I have a state election responsibility.  D. Weston – Well, that is problematic.  What I am going to do in a moment is to table it until Tuesday because without Sharon here, at no fault of her’s, she is ill, but without her here to provide us with the technical information, I think it is irresponsible to add that on now.  I have no desire to be here Tuesday night but I think that is the responsible thing for us to do to vote on this properly.  R. Dohoney – I am fine with that; I think that is good.  I think we have to go to a place that we never go with our relationship with the administration.  I think if somebody supports this, they have to make a motion to the school committee to order Superintendent Peter Dillon and Financial Director to have prepared on Tuesday all of the documentation needed to perfect our legal right to borrow money in FY21.  We heard from the administration over a month ago and I said there wasn’t enough time to do this right and if jamming it through is more than just talk at this table, it is actual work.  If those that feel that strongly about it, do what you do, be a boss and tell the employee to do it.  I am not mad at you Peter.  People want to talk, they don’t actually want to do what needs to be done.  If this is what we are going to do because I tell you all you are doing is dialing up a month’s worth of busy work for Sharon for a letter back from counsel saying we can’t do it anyway.  S. Bannon – just for clarification, why can’t we do it?  Why do you think we can’t do it?  I respect your opinion.  R. Dohoney – I don’t know.  I take that back; I am not here to give legal advice to anybody.  That was the response of the finance committee in January that it was too late to do this type of thing.  D. Weston – I think Sharon said that, if I recall correctly, that she was not inclined to borrow more for the chillers and the filters because it might impact our ability to borrow in the future negatively.  P. Dillon – that is correct and she additionally had concerns about increasing our borrowing this year in light of potentially asking for schematic design which might be in the $800,000 range.  R. Dohoney – I am not sure if I would approve $800,000 for schematic designs too.  P. Dillon – the only thing I would like to share is…. R. Dohoney – shoot the moon; if you want to put all the chips in the middle of the table, put them all in the middle of the table.  P. Dillon – I think several years ago, we got good in not second guessing the role of the administration in proposing something and this feels a little bit to me like you rely on us for our professional judgement, we share it with you and then you decide you don’t like our professional judgement and you do something else.  S. Bannon – so I have a motion and a second to amend the borrowing article.  A. Potter – I move to table.  MOTION TO TABLE THE ENTIRE MOTION      A. POTTER          SECONDED:  D. WESTON            APPROVED:  8    OPPOSED:  1            MOTION PASSES           B. Fields – I like the tabling.  I can live with that.  So how do we do that procedurally?  R. Dohoney – point of order, I believe we are tabling the whole matter.  D. Weston – yes.  P. Dillon – are you tabling the amendment or the motion?  R. Dohoney – I think it would be disingenuous to go forward on the vote of the whole matter if………S. Bannon – so the initial motion is to table the amendment and I have a second?   . MOTION TO TABLE THE BORROWING QUESTIONS              A. POTTER              SECONDED:  D. WESTON            APPROVED:  7      OPPOSED:  2                    MOTION PASSES   S. Bannon – as a point of order, if we table this now then we will be back here Tuesday night.  Just so everyone is clear.  We have to get this done.  P. Dillon – would you want to poll to see who can be here Tuesday night just so you know if you have a quorum.  A. Potter – as a point of order, I want the finance director here for this discussion.  Who cannot make it Tuesday night?  It has been on our schedule and I understand that people all have obligations.   MOTION TO RECONSIDER OUR APPROVAL OF THE OPERATING BUDGET TO INCREASE IT BY $70,000 FOR EXTRAORDINARY MAINTENANCE LINE ITEM FOR THE CLASSROOMS AT THE HIGH SCHOOL – R. DOHONEY          SECONDED:  B. FIELDS              APPROVED:  7      OPPOSED:  1  ABSTAIN:  1    S. Bannon – just a point of order on that, you used the word capital.  R. Dohoney – it is a lot quicker and easier to do this in the operating budget.  It will make the money readily available in July.  It will hit the taxpayers in the assessment year.  I don’t think we are in a position to determine how much it affects the assessment.  We are going back to ground zero in the operating budget but I can find the $70,000 in more cuts.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE FY21 GROSS OPERATING BUDGET OF $29,418,061 WHICH RESULTS IN A NET OPERATING BUDGET TO BE DETERMINED AFTER THE USE OF SCHOOL CHOICE AND TUITION FUNDS FOR A TOTAL NET ASSESSMENT TO THE MEMBER TOWNS OF $23,165,573 – R. DOHONEY              SECONDED:  A. POTTER     MOTION TO WITHDRAW THE ABOVE MOTION – R. DOHONEY        SECONDED:  D. WESTON       ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS          D. Weston – by my completely uninformed calculations that would take Great Barrington from 5% to 5.3%.  S. Bannon – the interesting part is I think this is the correct way of doing it.  I am really torn now if I am going to support the operating budget just because I think it is a right way to request these funds, but I don’t think it is the right time or the right process.  I am really torn.  D. Weston – I support Rich.  Given the choice of adding to the borrowing or putting it in the operating, this is a more desirable choice and given the fact that the majority of the members here tonight support putting this money in one way or another, then I would suggest it would be done this way.  A. Potter – my position is absolutely, I am happy to up the budget, the operating budget.  I would have liked to have seen it perhaps involved in the process a little earlier on because we have been talking about this for nine months.  I am in favor of actually bumping the operating budget up further, the capital budget up further to support improving the high school because I don’t have a lot of trust in the state and the state process.  I think we should be folding it into the budget year by year in an intelligent way, not just maintenance but improvements in the high school, whatever way we can and to do it locally because I just don’t trust the state.  D. Weston – I would also add when we put it into the operating budget this year, it doesn’t put us in a negative beginning budgeting process for next year whereas if we have to start paying for that additional borrowing, we are going to be behind the eight ball already and that is what we are trying to avoid.  S. Bannon – one of the things Rich aluted to and I would prefer but not on this date, was if we were going to add this in we would look for areas to reduce by $70,000 because I thought we were at the high level mark anyway.  R. Dohoney – why don’t we just pull this out of E&D.  Why don’t we leave the budget number the same.  Andy that is what you and I said two months ago.  P. Dillon – just to give you context of the E&D, we did use half of the E&D to supplement this budget so if you pull another $70,000 out, fiscally it is not the most prudent thing.  When have I ever argued anything about being fiscally prudent?  R. Dohoney – yeah, we are dwindling our savings but most of the taxpayers we are about to put this on, don’t have any savings.  P. Dillon – yes, but the $350,000 we are pulling out of E&D this year is reducing assessment this year so if you decide to invest more of it this year, then there is less to invest next year.  R. Dohoney – we can not amend the approval that is in place right now and leave it there and immediately do what the state does and immediately start amending our own budget. We can have a finance committee meeting next week and start deciding where line items are going to pull from to transfer to the maintenance line to do what you guys want.  P. Dillon – what makes me crazy about this is we spent a night a week for nine months talking about this and at literally the 11th hour we are talking about it now.  We gave you recommended reductions in all sorts of areas; we backed off and reinstated positions, we put at least two if not three schools on their heads, we had a tough time with staff around this and now the day of the budget vote, we rethinking it all.  It seems irresponsible.  A. Potter – Peter, I want to be on the record, I never asked you to do any of that.  I was happy with the first budget I saw.  S. Bannon – yes, you were.  You and I had a very good discussion about that.   B. Fields – so are we back to coming to another meeting?  S. Bannon – someone else can make a motion.  P. Dillon – you could pull the money from E&D, don’t really recommend that; you could pull the money from school choice, I don’t really recommend that.  You could wait and do school choice at any time.  R. Dohoney – just to summarize where we are at.  The borrowing option which Bill already proposed is tabled; we have amended the current operating budget which pretty much has to be done tonight, or we have a whole year to evaluate interbudget transfers to fund this.  That includes both paying for things we already budgeted and moving it over or reappropriating some of our income from funds which include E&D, and school choice and maybe tuition.  S. Bannon – I think you are wrong about E&D.  Once the town meeting votes, we cannot raise above the spending that the town votes on.  R. Dohoney – so we need a town meeting for E&D but not for school choice and tuition.  S. Bannon – right.  Those are revolving funds and E&D is not.  R. Dohoney – The third option I am suggesting here is the same way we did the CVTE coordinator in July last year.  S. Bannon – there are a couple of ways we could do this just to piggyback on what Rich is saying.  We could vote tonight on the capital, as it and take a leap of faith that the finance subcommittee and the administration will work on this or someone could make a motion ordering the administration to work on this, either way.  P. Dillon – you can just ask me.   R. Dohoney – I say these things at finance committee meetings and administration offers a different commentary and nobody says anything and nothing happens.  A mid-year borrowing that we have to go ask the town for is not outside the realm of possibility.  Great Barrington can’t seem to get through a month and a half without a special town meeting anyway.  A. Potter – can I make an argument Rich.  That in the context of a strategic plan for this body within our operating budget, within our capital budget, within our borrowing authority to have  a strategic plan toward how we are going to approach the high school because this feels sort of like all of a sudden “wham” we got this, we got this.  How about a strategic plan on how we are going to do it.  S. Bannon – I thought we started that last night?  A. Potter – I wasn’t there last night.  S. Bannon – I thought we did start that when we talked about a parallel path doing the SOI but also to start with looking at what it would cost ust to start borrow, how much we would have to borrow to start the renovations on our own, to call John Whittaker to have him give us his expertise.  R. Dohoney – we talked about a borrowing authorization in November or January.  A. Potter – that is the way it should be.  All of these discussions should be in the context of a solid planning process.  This is what we need to do as opposed to…we need to commit as a body, as a committee, this is what we need to do at the high school and define it.  If we proceed that way and make the decision that maybe the MSBA isn’t the way to go.  R. Dohoney – to be fair to Jason and Bill, what they are proposing isn’t MSBA type stuff.  It is really equipment and clearly from a legal standpoint, we can borrow for it.  B. Fields – so now we use this as an example as to why we need this strategic plan and go ahead with what I have proposed and us that as an example for what Andy is saying and we have a plan and we are on our way with it.  S. Bannon – We can vote on that and I am sure there will be more motions but I am not sure that starting a strategic plan by spending $70,000 without any other plan is exactly strategic.  D. Weston – Steve, can we dispense with the possibility of using additional E&D?  I have a 21 year history of our E&D up here. Right now our E&D stands at $711,000.  That is 2.5% of our operating budget.  That is the second lowest we have had in ten years.  P. Dillon – after this budget, it will be half of that.  D. Weston – so we will be down into the $360,000 range after that.  I think as we eliminate possibilities, that should be the first one to eliminate.  S. Bannon – for a person like myself who likes to take more than Sharon likes out of E&D every year, I actually agree with you.  I think we would set a very bad precedent and it would be irresponsible for us to take any more.  S. Bannon – let’s recap where we are.  We have voted on our budget.  We have voted on part of the capital.  R. Dohoney – no, we have voted operating; we voted on capital; we have not voted on the borrowing.  It stands tables right now but if someone wanted to take it off the table, they could.  P. Dillon – there is one other possibility that I might share.  It creates other problems and it will make Sharon crazy in other ways, there is always a little bit of cushion in our energy lines because you never know if we are going to have a terrible winter or more pleasant winter. This winter has been particularly warm.  In the end of June there will likely be some dollar amount in our energy lines that in any other context would roll to E&D.  You could direct us to take the balance, and it will not be anywhere near $70,000, but you could direct us to take the balance left in the energy lines, unless it gets terribly cold starting tomorrow for the next two months, I think we are probably okay.  We might get $20,000 – $30,000 out of that line that could be encumbered to do work in the early summer.  S. Bannon – by doing that you are just really reducing next year’s E&D.  We might as well just take it out of next year’s E&D now.  R. Dohoney – the history of it is, in my time on the school committee which is about as long as your’s Steve, is every single mid-year transfer of appropriation out as always been approved.  There have been two at the elementary school, before Tim was here and one for the CVTE coordinator and they were always approved.  Every time you and I made our speeches about if it can be done in the budget year, it is not.  S. Bannon – except for CVTE because that was my idea.  R. Dohoney – it is not a viable option.  S. Bannon – I think it does take a leap of faith and everyone on this committee has to believe in good faith, we will discuss that mid-year.  We can’t vote for it now.  That is the problem.  P. Dillon – in terms of tonight, you could take action on the chiller and the wastewater treatment if you want it.  You could delay this all until Tuesday, all of it.  You could take action on this and then address the other on Tuesday or come another ongoing way during the course of the spring.  You could direct us to write a strategic plan around this and do it in a much broader context.  What do you want to do?  R. Dohoney – I want to step back.  What is tabled until Tuesday night?  Is it an amendment to this borrowing and how much you want?  That means that if you do it as one vote, and this doesn’t pass by two-thirds in each of the towns, not only are you not getting your new classrooms, you are not getting your chiller and boiler either.  I think this is a great subcommittee conversation.  Is it strategically better to break out the authorizations to make sure you at least get what you need rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  S. Bannon – to add to that,  I think if you are taking one step ahead, that may not pass this committee.  In other words, people could vote against the borrowing because we are not including….R. Dohoney – if Tuesday night the vote holds as it is currently right now, you are not getting your chiller either.  P. Dillon – that’s not good.  A. Hutchinson – could we go back to square one and vote on the chiller right now without any additional amendments?  D. Weston – it has been tabled; it hasn’t been removed.  I think what you are suggesting is we reconsider the tabled; withdraw the amendment, vote on it…A. Hutchinson – that is what I am suggesting.  P. Dillon – to be clear, it is the chiller and the wastewater treatment filters.  S. Bannon – correct.  Which are already a year overdue.  MOTION TO REMOVE THE TABLED MOTION FROM THE BORROWING ARTICLE              A. HUTCHINSON               SECONDED:  A. POTTER             ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS                 MOTION ON WITHDRAW THE AMENDMENT ON THE BORROWING MOTION            B. FIELDS                SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER                 ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS  R. Dohoney – in order to do what Bill wants to do, a borrowing to pay for that, you would have to do a motion like this but just change it to the amount you want and describe what it is you want.  If you made that vote and it carried by two-thirds, it would be sent to the towns for approval.  I don’t support that.  I am just telling you how to do it.  B. Fields – but it didn’t pass by two-thirds the first time around.  It was 5 to 4 that isn’t two-thirds.  R. Dohoney – is it going to pass by two-thirds secret ballot at the three town meetings?  A. Potter – we are going around and around here.  B. Fields – all of you on this committee know the way I feel about the high school and the need that we have to have to do something with that building.  That is why I did this.  I don’t agree with the process because it was before us and now that I know more about the process, I was thinking about Kristi’s van suggestion and did we really talk about that?  That didn’t appear in this budget.  I just don’t want to be frustrated that I am holding up things.  I would like to see something done and I think the building and grounds people, and I am putting words in your mouth, but I think you share my sentiment, we have to continue doing something with that high school and we can’t wait for another year.  We can’t go a summer without doing something beyond normal maintenance because it is unfair to the kids.  S. Bannon – can you clarify the van thing.  P. Dillon – the reason the van is not in the budget is the district has funds in a special education grant; there was money in the budget to buy a van for students with special needs.  We were able to cover the cost of that out of a grant which is going to free up money that we would have used to buy that van to let us buy a van ourselves in this fiscal year.  There is no van in the budget because we can pay for the van, two vans actually.  The grant is paying for one and we are paying for our own.  R. Dohoney – the problem really is the $160,000 wasn’t even in the original budget that we were cutting off of.  S. Bannon – I don’t think anyone disagrees that high school needs to continue to do some sort of maintenance, it is just the process of how we are going to do it.  One of the simplest things you can do, and I am not sure you need a motion but it might make people feel better, is make a motion to instruct the finance subcommittee to start looking at the FY21 budget for transfers into the extraordinary maintenance budget line.  R. Dohoney – Peter wants to see what we can save out of this year’s FY20 budget first.  S. Bannon – it could be FY20 or 21; that would be fine.  The little bit of angst that I have about that is if we take it out of the FY20 it is just reducing E&D for FY21 because that is where that money would have fallen anyway.  R. Dohoney – why is E&D more precious than our building or our teachers?  P. Dillon – because E&D is what pays for our teachers.  R. Dohoney – it is a rainy day fund and it is pouring.  P. Dillon – if you spend it all and next year we lay off eight people because we don’t have it to fall back on.  S. Bannon – if I understand the purpose of it, it is for extraordinary repairs, maintenance or something that happens that we need that type of money; if that happens, we go to borrowing anyway.  I get that.  R. Dohoney – or we go back to the towns for assessment.  S. Bannon – what Sharon may say to you is if we lower our E&D too much, it will affect our bond rating and our ability to borrow.  D. Weston – that is the most practical reason not to take it because it costs you more money elsewhere.  P. Dillon – if at some point, we do realize a school project either through the MSBA or ourselves and it is tens of millions of dollars, the difference in the bond rating matters.  B. Fields – I think it is a consensus, isn’t it?  I don’t think we need a vote on it.  R. Dohoney – we will schedule a meeting where this is the sole line item.  P. Dillon – just another procedural question, if you voted on two parts of the budget and you voted on this borrowing, do you want to use the meeting on Tuesday or not.  D. Weston – no.  S. Bannon – I really enjoyed tonight, but no.  We are all thought with the budget discussion and all the votes have been taken.  Let’s move ahead.
• Dillon – we implemented this new drop-off at the high school and despite a little bit of grumbling, I think it has gone remarkably well. The amount of time for buses to get out of the high school in the morning is amazing.  They get right onto the road.  The first several days went great.  Two police officers were there with us.  Steve was there, Kristi and Peter were there and then we had a big aha moment  inspired by Rich and some other people that we are going to buy 100 golf umbrellas and leave them at the bottom of the hill for students to use.  Officer Storti came up with the idea and I think it has worked out well so far.  We don’t think kids are late; they actually may be a little earlier than they used to be.  Almost everybody has been very cooperative.
• Good New(s)
  • Tim Lee, Muddy Brook Regional High School – We have a teacher in residence program that has been happening in the past few weeks. Mainly in the weeks before the February break, we had a guest teacher from the Flying Cloud institute, Maria Rundel, came out and did a unit for our 4th graders on renewable energy.  The unit itself is called, Energy and Engineering.  The activities that she did with our 4th graders during those lessons, she had them designing blades for wind turbines then them and measuring the energy that was coming off the different designs of the turbines.  It was great hands-on science activities. We are grateful to Flying Cloud and the Massachusetts Cultural Council who funded the program through a grant.  I also wanted to point out that last Friday, the 14th, besides being Valentine’s Day, it was also an event at our schools called WinterFest.  We had a lot of different activities that day.  We went sledding despite the little amount of snow we had.  We did some wonderful art projects between classes and among classes.  We had a guest performer in the afternoon, a band called Surcari that played Latin music.  It was a great event.  I wanted to thank our PTA for supporting the music performance of the event.  It was enjoyed by everybody.  I also wanted to mention, next week on Monday, March 2nd, that is the observation of a lot of elementary schools in the country of Read Across America Day and also Dr. Suess’ birthday.  We have an activity planned in the morning which is called a drop everything and read program.  We are changing it up a bit this year and are going to have older students reading with younger students.  We have all of our grades and classes paired up.  That is part of Mrs. Melville’s work in organizing Read Across American Day.  We are looking forward to that.  We are also looking forward to tomorrow.  All of our students are going up to the high school for the annual children’s concert.  It is a chance for our students and young performers in grades 3 and 4 to see where they might be going as band performers in years to come.  We are looking forward to that.  We will be taking the whole school up around 9:30 for a 45 minute concert.  Thank you Kristi for hosting us.  I am going to leave some of these cards for you.  You might have seen them around town and in different places.  They are cards that the kids made at WinterFest, Random Art of Kindness cards.  These are handmade by our students.  Pick some up while you are leaving tonight.  It will brighten your day.  Weston – I think last week when he brought us the student newspaper, we shortchanged the chance for him to mention that to us and I had a chance to read it.  It was wonderful.  T. Lee – we have two advisors for that.  Kristin Finnerty and Lilly Silk.  We actually had to add an advisor as we got into this school year because it was such a popular activity.  I agree that the kids did a great job on that and they already started working on the next issue.
  • Ben Doren, Du Bois Regional Middle School – I am excited about our fifth grade which is doing some great interdisciplinary work. They are planning a westward expansion unit.  We study that in 5th grade as a part of American history but it is modeled on the work that we did during science week.  That will be coming out in the next few weeks.  Sixth grade continues to do their focus on community.  The student council put together a pretty awesome penny wars for we raised a lot of money to give to the community.  They really came together and raised the most money.  Seventh and eighth grade continues to have healthy competition.  Right before vacation we held our team go cup challenge.  There is a real cup with an orange and green creature and it gets to live with the team that wins but it is just a mix of academic and fun challenges that we do to build culture.  Faculty continues to do some interesting work around thinking about proficiencies and a portrait of a graduate from Monument Valley.  We did at our last meeting the same exercise that I did here with you and they had a great time.  I got some great feedback from the faculty.  I am pretty excited for some upcoming PD.  In March, we have our instructional learning groups thinking of next steps for our portrait of a graduate and a vision for Monument Valley and also our departments are pushing ahead with a lot of the PD we have been doing.  The fifth grade team is also going off to the Kaleidoscope convening which we will be finding out what DESE thinks of deeper learning.  Also coming up, Miles Wheat is taking a group to King Middle School which is a very progressive school up in the Portland Maine area.  We will be looking at some good models for what we could be doing.  I will be taking several teachers to the school redesign and action conference that are all parts of the great schools partnership coaching that we have been a part of.
  • Kristi Farina, Monument Mountain Regional High School – I think most of you know, I want to share the celebration of our boys’ basketball team’s win, it was the first game in the Western Mass series and tomorrow they are headed to Frontier. We have a fan bus that is going to be taking some students and our cheerleaders out to support the team and hopefully they will come back with another win.  To celebrate our success and other student success in our school, we are going to be having a pep rally on Monday afternoon.  Two of our wrestlers this year, Sam Cormier and Logan Mead, both captured Western Mass titles; we have three students who were 2020 Scholastic Award winners, Laslo Coval, Madeline Mason and Eliza Phelps all won awards for photography.  Allison McDonald just won the Juilliard Pre-College Open Concerto Competition as a clarinetist.  She was judged the top musician of all who entered that competition.  That is quite an achievement.  We also have our boys’ swim team who were the Berkshire County champs and they were undefeated for their second straight year; Zoe Holmes swam at states and was 4th in the 400 free relay.  We will be doing a grand celebration for these students on Monday.  I would like to thank the coaches and the faculty advisors who work with these students and support them.
• Dillon – I am submitting a disclosure and financial interest form and determination. This is Article268A article 19 in your packet with an explanation.  Obviously, you know I am working in Richmond, and I get compensated so the paperwork describes that.  I am happy to respond to any questions but it is just more of a formality.  MOTION AS APPOINTING OFFICIALS PURSUANT TO MGL CHAPTER 268A SECTION 19 WE HAVE REVIEWED DR. DILLON’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE PARTICULAR MATTER FOR THE FINANCIAL INTEREST IDENTIFIED ABOVE BY A MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEE.  WE DETERMINE THAT THE FINANCIAL INTEREST IS NOT SO SUBSTANTIAL AS TO BE DEEMED LIKELY TO AFFECT THE INTEGRITY OF THE SERVICE WHICH THE MUNICIPALITY MIGHT EXPECT FROM THE EMPLOYEE.  THEREFORE DR DILLON’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE SHARED POSITION WITH THE RICHMOND SCHOOL DISTRICT IS ACCEPTABLE TO US  – R. DOHONEY               SECONDED:  D. WESTON                       ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS
• Sub-Committee Reports:
  • Policy Sub Committee
  • Building and Grounds Sub Committee – we met yesterday and discussed our options for the high school for our options or what type of path or paths we want to go through in the future. We basically kicked around the thought of getting into the MSBA que again then in the future thinking of a path that is independent if we don’t get their approval.  Dohoney – we talked about an urgency on both fronts, whether it is to go it alone or the MSBA front.  We have to be just as prepared as getting a yes vote from the MSBA as we do a no vote.  We discussed a short-term borrowing either in advance of the MSBA vote sometime in the fall or be ready to go for one in January.  These are ideas we floated around.  If not, we do a short-term borrowing to start planning the other way.  We are going to have to start funding a schematic design.  Judging from the Wahconah project the amount of time between getting in the MSBA’s system and getting shovels in the ground can be condensed by schools that do things efficiently and deliberately.  I want to be one of the those schools if we are lucky enough to get in the MSBA.  A. Potter – the towns have to be expeditious as well.  R. Dohoney – exactly.  The finance committee and the building & ground committee agreed to meet regularly and not to let this fall off the radar screen.  We are going to try to pull in John Whittaker or his equivalent to give us some expert guidance on it.  S. Bannon – we will be scheduling another joint meeting sooner rather than later.
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee
  • Technology Sub Committee
  • Finance Sub Committee
  • District Consolidation & Sharing Sub Committee – S. Bannon – March 7th at 10am the 24 member group is going to have their first meeting. It is a public meeting and will be in Stockbridge.
• Personnel Report
  • Long Term Substitute Appointment(s)
  • Resignation(s)
  • Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)
• Public Comment – Sharon – I highly endorse doing a strategic plan even on a very high level so you have goals that are set out in some milestones. It doesn’t have to be tremendously detailed but it would provide a context within which you make these $70,000 appropriations and so forth because you will reach a goal that is important as opposed to continuing to be on a transactional line.  Budgets go year to year and the measure and so forth but you have been thinking of these things for a long time.  Things are going on with consolidation.  The school committee has a lot to do with it.  If you had a component in your strategic plan to say search for solutions  that you are dealing with because you want the best education but the best education might not be just being things the same way and squeezing money here and there.
• Additional Business – we had two meetings scheduled for next week. We have cancelled the 5th and the 3rd by concensus is also cancelled.  No meetings next week.

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

Meeting Adjourned at 8:40pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________   Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________     School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

Meeting of the School Committee, Select Boards and Finance Committee Members

of Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge

District Office – Stockbridge

February 25, 2020 – 6pm

Present:

School Committee:                 J. St. Peter, D. Weston, S. Bannon

Administration:                       P. Dillon

Staff/Public:     Jay Bikofsky ST Finance, Neil Holden ST Finance, Eugene Curletti GB Finance, Anne O’Dwyer GB Finance, Mark Pruhenski GB Town Manager, Ed Abrahams GB SelectBoard, Michele Loubert GB Finance, Eileen Mooney TheNEWSletter

Absent:                                    S. Harrison, R. Dohoney, A. Hutchinson, D. Singer, M. Thomas, B. Fields, A. Potter,
S. Stephen

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  30 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 6pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

Presentation of Fiscal 2021 Budget to the Select Boards and Finance Committee Members

of Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge

P. Dillon – Thank you for being here. Looking around, most of you heard this presentation at least once. Some of you maybe twice.  I will go through it.  Everyone has a paper copy and a copy of the assessment sheet.  Sharon is not here today.  She is feeling under the weather, so I made her go home to rest.  I think this is informal and Steve, if it is ok with you, I will go through things, otherwise it is 43 slides.  If you need me to stop just wave and we will talk about things or respond to questions.

Everytime I talk about the school district, I try to talk about our mission.  You can read it here on the screen.  I think we are doing that quite well.  Our budget priorities this year are to maintain levels of funding that will provide high quality education for all our students; expand opportunities for student success and ensure equitable access for all students.  Over the last several years, we have been doing a lot of work around access and making sure that a wide range of kids are taking and being successful in a wider range of classes.  When we all went to high school, it was sort of like an A, B and C class and some people got to take really advanced math and the rest of us didn’t.  We are working hard to change that so everybody has opportunities.  Two other things that are going on constantly are discussions with Southern Berkshire about regionalization and discussion with Richmond about future collaboration.  The Southern Berkshire thing is complicated.  Now there is a new 24 member committee that each town’s moderator appointed and that group is going to do a lot of work.  We got a $50,000 grant that we have to spend by the end of June to support that.  Then the work in Richmond is on a much more accelerated timeframe and the school committee supports doing something with Berkshire Hills, exactly what that will be is unclear and that will get resolved in the next couple of months.

Things that we are going now that are going to have some financial impacts going forward are, stronger connections across buildings, aligned instructional approaches and targeted professional development.  For a long time physically, we have been a campus but the connections between classes and the transitions between grades, the connection around curriculum and a whole host of things haven’t been as strong as they might have been.  We are working hard on that.  We are doing a lot of professional development and bringing people in to do work with all our math teachers, K to 12, to do work around writing and then specific professional development in other areas.

In terms of our budget, we went through the budget with our administrative team and came up with a number we felt was too high, then backed down from that.  At the elementary school, our budget is going to eliminate one paraprofessional position.  In that position, there is a lot of transition so we will do that through a retirement or someone leaving.  At the middle school, we are going to use Title I funds there to cover our personnel needs.  Title I is a federal grant for at-risk or low-income students.  At the high school, we are going to eliminate half of an english teacher position and that is because we are a little overstaffed.  We have seven english teachers and we think we only need 6 ½.  We are going to eliminate two paraprofessional positions and then two years ago the school committee put in a CVTE position and we are going to maintain that position.  As I get into some of the grants, I will talk about that a little more.  The Berkshire County Retirement system, we contribute to that and pay the cost of it.  Worker’s Compensation is the FY20 plus 10% and the other insurance is plus 10%.  Good news and I think all three towns remember the Berkshire Health Group, but there is no increase in our health insurance going forward so that is great.  There is a small increase in our dental costs but that is also with a small increase in benefits.    Transportation is the CPI increase of 2.19%.  Special education is the actual cost of transporting high needs kids plus that.  Sometimes those numbers change a little bit.  Technology, software/hardware, a slight decrease in district-wide software and we moved from one line to another, special education technology.  In terms of texts/supplies/materials, we are spending more on english, math and science and decreasing in other areas.  We had a big discussion today and I think we will be spending time in the next six months to rethink our approach to math.  This is long overdue.  We are using a very progressive curriculum in the elementary grades, which is great if kids come to school really prepared and it is great if teachers are really sophisticated in their understanding of it but if some kids come not so well prepared and teachers are particularly sophisticated in using it, it is not so good.  Stay tuned for what we will do there.  From a capital thing, we are proposing borrowing; the elementary has two chillers, the help control the climate in the building.  One of them is non-functional.  We are working with one and we propose getting another one.  We run our own waste-water treatment facility and we have to replace filters for that.  Each of those filters is in the $25,000 range.  It is a big item.

What we are going to talk about now is the various cost centers.  At all three schools, there are special services for students with disabilities and also english language learners and then we will go on and talk about the district office and some other units.  These are the three schools in special ed services.  Obviously the high school is the biggest of the schools so their budget is proportional to that.  The good thing is most of our money and resources are in the three schools and when I get to the next slide, we could have gotten a level deeper and charged off my time proportionally with each of the three schools.  District-wide is the district office plus other transportation and all contingency.  There is a school committee and administration line, facilities and maintenance and technology and food service.  Everybody ok so far?  Ok this is our pie chart which is always a little hard to read.  Salary and benefits is the bulk of it.  Transportation is the next big one and then the other subgroups.  It looks like we are spending less than a percent on professional development but remember this is the operating budget.  We have a lot of money in grants and a lot of the grant money supports professional development.  I think we do a good job around professional development and I don’t think we are under-resourcing it.  It is just not presented in the operating budget.

The change in the gross budget is 3.29% and in the net operating it is 4.33%.  The difference there is both choice and tuition revenue.  Someone wrote an article attributing the decrease solely to a decline in students from Farmington River and that is part of it but it is not the whole amount.

The capital budget…we still have the bond at the elementary and middle schools.  You see the principle amount there in the interest and total.  We continue to pay that off over four years.  In the back of my mind, we are obviously going back to the school building authority around a project.  A great thing would be when we retire the debt on the elementary and middle school, to have new debt for a potential project.  I think the worse thing we could do is retire the debt and have people get used to not contributing to that then go back and say we were just kidding, now here is a significant new debt.

Revenue comes in two big buckets from the state.  Chapter 70 which is just general ed and Chapter 71 which is the regional transportation.  School choice is at 1.25 and tuition at ¾ of a million then the MSBA money is just what we get reimbursed.  The tuition one is where we are taking a hit and we are also pulling money out of tuition to help support this budget.  Question from audience member:  Where would the tuition kids be coming from?  P. Dillon – I have a really good report I run every year, and off the top of my head, the towns that are in Southern Berkshire are Lee, some from Lenox, some from Pittsfield, Richmond and Farmington River, Otis and Sandisfield, we have a tuition agreement.  Sheffield, New Marlborugh, Monterey, all those towns and then a small number of kids often if their parents work for us as teachers from Dalton or Becket.  There is a close circle and a farther circle.  From a parents’ perspective, if you are a choice student it is a little hard because you don’t get bussing.  You could meet up on one of our existing bus lines if there is room but otherwise you are driving your kid to and from school.  Question from the audience:  Do you transport kids from Berkshire Hills to other places?  P. Dillon – for every three kids we get, we send out one kid.  We do a lot better.  More people are coming to us but we lose some kids from West Stockbridge to Richmond for their K-8 elementary school and that is in part because it is geographically convenient.  Richmond also does a nice job.  My former neighbors when I lived on Long Pond Road, the mom was a teacher in Southern Berkshire, so she put her kids in her own car and drove them to school; some people choose one or another district just because of some philosophical reason.  The nice thing about the regional transportation is for years the state has been funding that and that percentage has crept up quite a bit.  The low amount was about 35% and for many years, it was 60, 65 or 70.  I think this budget projects that it will be in the 80s.  Question from audience:  do you want to see any movement in the choice reimbursement we get?  P. Dillon – I thought about that and I used to stand up at conferences and argue about it all the time.  The issue is there are four or five ways that schools get charged or reimbursed for kids.  They all happen at different times historically.  The choice amount is $5,000 and may it happened 40 years ago or maybe 50 years ago, so that is just a crazy amount.  It just is not enough.  Every time I argue for the amount to change, elected officials don’t want to touch it because while our community gets many more choice kids than we lose, if the people representing our community who have to get elected by people in all those communities, actually made if $10,000 or $15,000 then Great Barrington would win tremendously and Sheffield might lose tremendously.  It is not worth the hassle for elected officials to support that.  Most communities it is the number you lose and the number you gain is about the same.  In a community like ours it would be tough from a political perspective.  There are two other ways.  If kids go to a charter school, the sending districts get charged but it is a much bigger number.  That is more recent.  If a kid goes to a vocational school, the vocational school charges the full value for that and that is in the high teens if not low 20s.  What would make sense is that the cost of a kid, is the cost of a kid and the money travels with the kid.  Like the kid has a backpack and the resources go in their backpack and whatever gets them into an institution gets those resources but that is not the way Massachusetts is doing it.  Question:  So it is statewide:  P. Dillon – yes, it is statewide.  I would love to see that change and I used to argue it a lot in meetings and people would just yell at me to sit down.  They effectively silenced me.

We get a little bit in Medicaid reimbursement and misc income.  The other thing we have is excess and deficiency which is like the town’s free cash.  This budget recommends using $352,000 from that.  That is great because it reduces the assessments to the towns.  It is also problematic because it is about half of our E&D balance and while E&D gets filled back up when we have left over money, running it down too low puts us in a slightly different position.  This pie chart talks about our revenue sources.  Again, the big blue one is the assessments to the towns, chapter 70 is almost 9.5% and 71 is 2.65%, school choice is 4% and so on.  Questions about this part?

I will shift to the assessments and I think most people get this.  The assessments to the towns are determined by three things, population of students in the town, the minimum local contribution and the net assessment.  Every year the population changes slightly.  Several years ago, we looked at a five year enrolling average and it ended up not being that much different.  The trend is Great Barrington continues to get a little bit bigger every year and Stockbridge and West Stockbridge stay the same and often get a little smaller.  This year West Stockbridge went up a bit.  You see the difference between FY20 and 21.  This is part of the increase.  Question:  You are saying the total number of students in Great Barrington are the percentage.  P. Dillon – no, you take all the students in Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge; no the choice kids, no the tuition kids; and you calculate the percentage for each of those towns.  Question:  Do we expect an overall flat enrollment?  Do we expect enrollment overall to go down slightly?  P. Dillon – I think it is pretty flat.  The number of intown kids is just around 1,000.  If you look at 10 year longitude charts, we went down, then largely plateaued, then there are few tuition kids out there to capture but we have been getting more choice kids.  The only bummer about the choice kids is from a financial perspective.  It is not as much money as the other kids, then you get into the whole argument of does it make sense to do choice or not.  It does if you are careful and deliberate and if you take the 26th kid and have to iron out a teacher and their grade then it is a really bad idea.  We try to be careful and deliberate about it.

This is on the minimum local contribution.  That is tied to the sense of the town’s capacity to pay as determined by the assessed values of each community.  Then you end up with this and you will see a couple of things.  The minimum local contribution over the years, there are slight changes.  Really not so significant.  The assessment to the member towns is here and you see the difference between 20 and 21 in each of the towns.  We will look at it in the next slide so it will be easier to see.  The total change to assessment is 4.7%.  For Great Barrington, that goes up a little bit because of the combination of the change in assessment, the minimum local contribution and the percentage of enrollment.  For Stockbridge it goes up quite a bit less and in West Stockbridge it is going up largely because of the change in minimum local contribution and secondarily because of the changes in enrollment.  This is all reflected in this sheet I handed out so you can dig into that a little more if you want.

The only other thing I really wanted to talk about is in addition to our operating budget and this all sit outside of our operating budget, we do a lot go get grants.  Some of the grants are entitlement grants and we just get them because we get them.  Some of them are competitive.  I will go through these relatively quickly.  The first one, a big one, is the Special Education IDEA, it is a big federal grant for students with disabilities.  It is an entitlement grant.  Title I is another federal grant for students with economic struggles.  Now we have two grants that are called 21st Century grants.  These are highly competitive grants.  They are multiyear, three year grants.  One is for the elementary and middle school and one is for the high school and they support after-school and summer programming.  It is a big deal that we got these and we were talking about it today, we sort of turned the district into a grant writing machine.  Most of it is great because we get to provide all of these extra services to kids.  Some of it is hard in that it makes it tougher for custodials because we are using the buildings all day long so we have less time to clean and because we are using our classrooms so much, they are getting dirtier and they need to do more cleaning.  Title II is supporting professional development.  Special Education Early Childhood is an entitlement grant.  Title IV is english language learners.  We got a rural health grant which is supporting our work with CHP and Macony in collaborative care.  Under a new model, if kids have needs, we all get together and support them.  Innovative Pathway grant is a vocational grant.  Service Learning one is a competitive one.  These are all competitive on this slide.  Berkshire United Way supports our after-school program, Project Connection.  We get rural school aid from the state which is based on our population density.  That is also supporting collaborative care.  Project Lead the Way is supporting engineering, computer science at the high school and Pathways to that at the middle school.  In the last page of grants, another $15,000 for after-school learning, Berkshire United Way to support work with Greenagers.  They do really interesting things.  A federal Perkins grant to support vocational education; the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board around internships; STARS is a series of arts grants with cultural institutions and Berkshire Taconic Foundation supports projects for teachers.  This represents almost $1.5 million.  There is another series of grants, the Mass Idea grants, we listed them last year, they are three year grants so we didn’t include them here but when all is said and done, it is about $2 million a year which is about eight percent of our budget which we are happy about.

I am happy to respond to questions or thoughts.  Question:  The only point that I always make is we just want to continue discussions with other districts.  It gets very frustrating at times relative to what some of the other districts perceive for the future but I think you need to stick with it.  S. Bannon – we do the best we can.

Thank you.  I think it is highly likely that the school committee will vote on this budget on Thursday.

Meeting Adjourned at 6:30pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Great Barrington                      Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Student Center

February 13, 2020 – 7pm

Present:

School Committee:                 A. Hutchinson, J. St. Peter, A. Potter, B. Fields, M. Thomas, D.Weston, R. Dohoney, D.                                                    Singer, S. Bannon

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             K. Farina, B. Doren, K. Burdsall, T. Lee, S. Soule

Absent:                                      S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting: hour, 45 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 7pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

MINUTES:
January 9, 2020
January 23, 2020
MOTION TO ACCEPT SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF JANUARY 9, 2020 AND JANUARY 23, 2020                   A. POTTER            SECONDED:  B. FIELDS        ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Dillon – Since we have a lot of visitors, we will jump right into the budget presentation. I will start with part of it and walk us through then turn it over to Sharon Harrison.  You will find the big budget book and the small one and the one online is really good.  It is model work in terms of granular detail.  As we share this, I would like to thank the whole school committee but particularly the finance sub committee who pretty much started working on this the day after last year’s budget got passed by the school committee.
• FY21 Budget Presentation: PowerPoint Presentation by P. Dillan and S. Harrison (See attached)
• Jay Bikofsky from the town of Stockbridge:  I would just like to take this opportunity to compliment Superintendent Dillon as well as Sharon and the administrative staff for all their efforts in managing this school system along with the school committee.  I would urge you to continue on a positive note with your discussions with the neighboring towns.  It is the right thing for all.  Don’t be discouraged.  It takes time.  We thank you for your commitment.
• Ann O’Dwyer, Kirk Street and also on the Great Barrington finance committee – I was just noticing in the booklet that transportation is listed as going up 17.4% but in here it is saying it went up 2.19%. Harrison – what showing in there is the increase by what the CPI was and not the total increase.  There is also a change in the cost of each bus route.  We are going into the fourth year so four years ago, the bus company bid a higher amount in the first year and would have been almost double for us so we negotiated that increase over the five years of the contract rather than all in the first year.  The increase is a small amount on the per route so the majority is the 2.19% and the combination of the special education and the regular education and the private school is what gets us to that amount.
• Leigh Davis, Sumner Street, Great Barrington, Great Barrington Selectboard – I just had a question about the middle and elementary school bonds that will be retired in FY24. Has there been any discussion on strategic plans on that.  Dillon – my hope and fantasy would be that we get back in front of the MSBA or do it ourselves and as we retire elementary and middle schools, we are in a position to do some bonds around the high school.  There would be a seamless transition.  To me the worst thing to do would be to retire those and then wait a year or two, then start a new set of bonds for the high school.  We talk about it all the time. We have a little bit of time to get ahead of it with either the MSBA or in this other plan to do it ourselves.  Hopefully that transition will be smooth.  L. Davis – I am very happy to see that we are retaining the science teacher design teacher in the high school so thank you.
• Dohoney – on the finance committee level, there were far deeper personnel cuts including professional staff at the middle school. Through the creative work with the administration we were able to avoid that this year which I think is a major victory that went on more at the sub-committee level.  P. Dillon – the bummer about it is the challenge isn’t going away and as soon as we get through this budget process, we will start the next budget process.  I think now more than ever we will have to be more deliberate about our resources because we have fixed costs that keep going up and the state’s share goes up incrementally, $30 a kid a year.  Maybe it will end up being $50 a kid or maybe not but it’s not enough to do it.  We continue to think and redesign and look at programs.  We will keep writing grants and bringing in resources that way too.
• Dillon – we will do a similar presentation in Stockbridge on the 25th. On the 27th, there is a finance sub-committee meeting to make any additional potential adjustments and on the 27th there is our formal posted advertised public hearing which is also here.  Potentially, we could have a vote that night if it is the school committee’s desire to do so.
• Dillon – When we have assistant coaches funded by booster clubs, we bring that to the school committee to vote on it and we do our best to have those votes at the beginning of the season. We are right at the tail end of this season; there is one week left.  The booster club sent a note to the high school and the high school sent it to me yesterday and I would like to request your approval to fund an assistant swim coach funded by the booster club.  I will give a big shout-out to the swim team.  My kids are all swimmers on the swim team but both the boys and girls teams had exceptional seasons.  The boy continued their undefeated streak which is huge.  The girls lost a couple of times this year to Pittsfield but they went to Central Western Mass and five girls managed to get 4th place without anybody diving.  You get a lot of points for diving.  That is unheard of.  Really high levels of participation.  That is my plug.  MOTION TO APPROVE THE ASSISTANT COACH FOR THE SWIM TEAM FUNDED BY THE BOOSTER CLUB             A. POTTER               SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY            ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS  P. Dillon – I want to thank people at the high school, Amy Shaw, Rob Putnam, Dan Leibert but particularly Kristi Farina, Sean Flynn and Emery Gagnon as well as several community members including Eva Sheridan, they put together this incredible grant proposal to continue some of the work at the high school.  They submitted at 4:54 today and it is 47 pages of narrative and budgets.  All of our fingers are crossed but it will continue to support the really transformative work at the high school.  I would like to recognize that effort.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee – NA
• Building & Grounds Sub Committee – NA
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee – NA
• Technology Sub Committee – NA
• Finance Sub Committee
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub Committee
• Next Steps Sub Committee – NA

Personnel Report:

• Retirement(s) – P. Dillon – two long-time teachers are retiring. Karen Mackey, a teacher of special education at the high school and Juraye Moran, strings teacher who teaches all three schools are both retiring at the end of the year.  I would like to recognize them.
• Leave(s) of Absence
• Resignation(s) – Libby Grey is a school adjustment counselor/social worker and she was with us for a year and a half on a replacement position.  She secured a job closer to her home in the Connecticut Valley.  I want to thank her.  She is going to come back for graduation because she made some nice connections with kids and wants to celebrate that.
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment
• Written Comment

MOTION TO ADJOURN – R. DOHONEY             SECONDED: B. FIELDS                       ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

The next school committee meeting will be held on February 27, 2020 – Public Hearing/Regular School Committee Meeting, Du Bois Regional Middle School, Student Center, 7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 7:45pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary