[0:00] All right. Good evening, everyone. And welcome to the Stoneham.
[0:04] School committee meeting for September 24th, 2026. Please join us in the
[0:08] pledge of allegiance.
[0:13] Flag of the United States of America due to the Republic.
[0:18] Which stands one nation.
[0:20] Another God, indivisible with Liberty.
[0:23] And justice for all.
[0:26] All right. Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight.
[0:30] We will start with agenda.
[0:33] Item a approval of items by consensus.
[0:36] We have minutes and a financial report.
[0:39] Consideration of warrants. Would anyone like to vote these together
[0:43] or pull them out? Do I have a motion?
[0:48] I'll make a motion to approve them together. Okay. I
[0:51] guess census and I'll second. Want the warrant information number?
[0:55] The warrant number is 27 13.
[0:58] Three. It is a vendor warrant in the amount of.
[1:01] $1,270,000.
[1:04] Let me do that again. 1 million, $270,454 and 42 cents. You
[1:09] know, I read that number about eight times before I
[1:11] got on camera.
[1:12] But that is correct. All right, so we have a
[1:15] motion and a second all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[1:18] Aye. And I am an aye as well. So that.
[1:20] Passes. All right. Public comment. Is there anyone here?
[1:25] In person for public comment.
[1:27] Seeing none. Is there anyone online for public comment?
[1:34] Nope. I gotta join us panelists before I can give
[1:36] you that information. Hold on one second.
[1:44] We do have two attendees online, but neither of them
[1:47] are raising their hand for public comment.
[1:49] Okay, no public comment. We will move on to D
[1:53] student representatives. We have Maggie and Jayden. Welcome Jayden. Hello.
[1:57] .
[2:01] Good evening tomorrow, Friday, the 25th. There will be the
[2:04] second annual homecoming dance.
[2:06] Students should have bought their tickets already, but do not
[2:09] worry if you didn't, because you can also buy your
[2:11] tickets for just a few dollars more at the door.
[2:13] In preparation for Friday, there's a football game happening right
[2:16] now.
[2:17] And there is, which is the second season home game.
[2:20] In addition with the pep rally from last week, spirit
[2:23] week is taking place where each day has a theme
[2:25] and each person who participates will earn a point for
[2:28] their.
[2:29] Grade the winning grade gets big a world.
[2:31] I believe the sophomores are currently in first place. Oh,
[2:33] wow. Spirit week has come to a close on Friday
[2:36] with the last day being pajama day and the last
[2:39] day at, erm.
[2:40] Points due to there being a lot, going on at
[2:42] the high school, Wednesday took a pause from spirit week
[2:44] for picture day where ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th, and.
[2:48] Any faculty who wanted their picture taken could do so.
[2:51] Additionally chorus got the exciting opportunity.
[2:54] To sing at the red Sox game on Tuesday evening.
[2:57] Now onto Jayden, the new student representative.
[3:02] Yesterday at 6:00 PM during senior parent information night, the high
[3:06] school shared important information.
[3:08] With the parents slash guardians regarding the.
[3:11] Future of the seniors specifically regarding colleges.
[3:14] Colleges. I'd also like to mention the upcoming PTO meeting.
[3:18] This will be on the first PTO meeting happening on
[3:22] Tuesday, September 29th at 6:30 PM.
[3:25] It's a good way for all parents and Stoneham high
[3:27] school staff to stay up to date with events going
[3:30] on within the school.
[3:33] Next I'd also like to mention.
[3:37] The upcoming PSATs and the deadlines that go along with
[3:39] them.
[3:40] Sophomores and juniors have the opportunity to sign up and
[3:43] take the PSATs in preparation for the actual SATs.
[3:47] SATs students are set to take the P SATs on
[3:49] October 17th and are required to register by September 23rd.
[3:55] Lastly sports are now in the middle of their season
[3:58] with girls volleyball, getting a big win.
[4:01] Against . Thank you. .
[4:04] Mm-hmm . All right. Thank you so much. And welcome.
[4:07] Do we have you wanna tell them about your serenade
[4:10] at the.
[4:11] Park while we're here. oh, yes. You did mention
[4:14] the, you did mention the red Sox game. I happen
[4:16] to be in attendance. It was great to be able
[4:18] to see.
[4:19] The students have some pictures in my, in my update
[4:21] that I'll show you, but I was able to visit
[4:23] them ahead of time on the field. It happened to
[4:25] be my birthday that evening. And so.
[4:28] The, the course did sing me happy birthday before they,
[4:30] they went onto stage and then they also put up
[4:33] a.
[4:34] Happy birthday, Dr. De Francisco on the, the big jumbotron,
[4:38] which was very, very sweet thing to do. It was
[4:40] probably one. I, I will, I will say that was
[4:42] a high.
[4:43] Highlight of my career and I've been doing this for
[4:44] a long time. So I really appreciate that they did
[4:47] that. And it was, it was really fun to see
[4:48] them saying.
[4:50] On at Fenway park, there was quite a few people
[4:52] on the stands for that section too. I think it
[4:54] sold out. So we didn't even care that it was
[4:57] windy and cold. Right.
[4:58] Sarah and Catherine, not at all. .
[5:01] That's great. Does anyone have any questions? So I have
[5:04] a question. So the winners of the class, then.
[5:07] They get bagels or do they get bagel world bagels
[5:10] from bagel, world bagels. Gotcha. Just make sure on that.
[5:12] Cuz you said they went bagel world. I was like,
[5:15] I.
[5:16] Wanna bagel world too.
[5:18] That's great. All right. So there's no other questions, you
[5:22] know, feel free to head over to the homecoming game.
[5:24] You guys don't need to stay for the rest of
[5:25] the meeting. So.
[5:27] I know this is a short one for you, but
[5:28] feel free to stay if you'd like, but don't feel
[5:30] bad. I know you get, if you wanna go support
[5:32] them at the game, feel free to go, but thank
[5:34] you.
[5:35] Thank you and you can check in at the game.
[5:36] Yeah, you can send us check-ins. Thank you. thank
[5:39] you. Yep. You're welcome. Thank you guys. Enjoy, welcome.
[5:43] Jayden, we look forward to having you this year and
[5:45] next year.
[5:47] Oh, great. We look forward to having you this year.
[5:48] Thank you. You're welcome. I really appreciate that.
[5:51] All right, moving on.
[5:53] We have an athletics presentation. Dr. D Francisco is going
[5:58] to show us a video.
[6:00] And can we introduce
[6:04] principals first. Yeah, of course. Oh yes. Yep. We wanna
[6:06] move that. Well, actually it's it's it's no, it's actually
[6:09] before it it, oh, okay. Okay.
[6:11] Great. so
[6:13] E comes before F I did. I did get an
[6:16] education. Okay. All right. So introducing Mr. Zeoli and Ms.
[6:21] Marshan, if.
[6:22] You could come up. Thank you. So our approaching the
[6:26] table is our I'm calling them fondly, our interim team.
[6:30] As you know, we have an interim principal.
[6:34] A position that was available in August at Robinhood elementary
[6:38] school.
[6:39] As well as central middle school.
[6:41] And we feel very, very fortunate to have these two
[6:44] folks sitting in front of you right now that are
[6:46] filling those positions.
[6:48] Positions Ms. Marshan is working at the elementary school at
[6:51] Robinhood and Mr. Andy Zuto is working at the middle
[6:55] school.
[6:56] And I'm just gonna allow them to introduce themselves a
[6:59] little bit and talk briefly about how they've found their
[7:02] first couple of weeks in the.
[7:05] Stone on public schools, you can go first ladies for
[7:08] .
[7:10] Thank you. Good evening. I have to say it has
[7:12] been a sheer delight. It's been really exciting.
[7:16] Joining the Robinhood staff. It's a wonderful.
[7:19] High expertise and welcoming.
[7:23] It's been energizing the whole.
[7:26] Experience for the, it seems like it's been a little
[7:28] longer. I feel like I know the much better than
[7:30] I should if not only being there a few weeks,
[7:33] but it's been.
[7:34] Great fun. And I think we're learning a lot together.
[7:38] And enjoying the really enjoying being here in the district.
[7:41] I love being in Stoneham. Great, great opportunity. Thank you
[7:44] so much. And something you.
[7:46] Should know, Cindy is that.
[7:49] When I come to Robinhood.
[7:52] I was just there today, actually. And I do my
[7:54] walk around, you know, I'm really thinking about what is
[7:56] the buzz of the school and what is the culture
[7:58] of the school. And you have.
[8:00] Transitioned them beautifully. It's not easy to get a new
[8:02] principal in, in late summer.
[8:05] The other thing that I would want you to know
[8:07] is that the comments that I'm getting about the way
[8:09] you're running professional development and learning, which we've had actually
[8:12] quite a few session.
[8:13] Sessions, even though it's only the beginning of the year.
[8:16] Staff is really appreciating the support that you're giving them.
[8:19] And it's it's early on yet. So.
[8:22] We are going to enjoy you. And I'm sure that
[8:24] our time with you is going to be way too
[8:26] short. I already know that at this point. So thank
[8:28] you for being at Robinhood.
[8:30] Thank you. I paid them to say that. Yeah.
[8:32] while it's working.
[8:35] Andy. Hi everyone. I, I agree with Cindy. I feel
[8:38] very fortunate.
[8:41] I knew right from the day I came and saw
[8:42] the mentoring. Cause I.
[8:44] Texted Dr. D and I said,
[8:47] not that you need to hear it from me, but
[8:48] this is how world class.
[8:50] School systems operate. I feel really proud to be a
[8:53] part of it. This.
[8:55] Great leadership here. Great kids, the families have been super
[8:58] kind and welcoming. So.
[9:01] I really love being here. And I mentioned that to
[9:03] you the other day, I.
[9:05] I I'm gonna feel sad at the end of the
[9:06] frankly.
[9:08] Thank you. And I think I, in addition to that,
[9:11] I would just wanna add that your presence you're just
[9:14] being around the building.
[9:16] Where kids can see you and staff can see you
[9:17] and greeting kids at the door. And.
[9:20] As we know middle school is a very special space,
[9:22] right. And, you know, just being able to build relationships
[9:26] with students that you're already working to do. And.
[9:29] Helping support staff who are really working hard to build
[9:31] relationships with students is evident.
[9:34] I also appreciate that when I pick up the phone
[9:36] and call you you're on the other end of it
[9:38] and willing to do whatever it is, we need to
[9:40] make the, the day successful.
[9:41] For our kids. So again, the time will go by
[9:44] quickly and I'm sure we are also gonna share your
[9:46] sentiment will be very sad as well, but we appre
[9:48] we're gonna enjoy you while.
[9:50] We have you both. Yep, sure. And I appreciate that.
[9:52] You're, you've joined the welcome to being a Spartan.
[9:56] Thank you. Thank you. I just wanna jump in and
[9:58] piggyback on what Andy said, because one of the things
[10:01] I know last year, you all worked very.
[10:03] Very hard, hard on
[10:05] routines and structures in the district. And that was one
[10:08] of the things that for me, was very obvious.
[10:11] When I came in the transition this year.
[10:15] With students entering the building was so smooth. Teachers had
[10:17] routines in place from day one.
[10:21] There was a high level of comfort with the students
[10:23] and teachers had all the routines and plays.
[10:27] Communicated beautifully, both orally and.
[10:31] Through their anchor charts on the board. So all the
[10:33] work that you did last year on structures and routines
[10:37] and building agency for.
[10:39] Students is showing. So just so keep talking like that,
[10:43] both of you and you we'll find something for you
[10:45] to do it, so you might not get.
[10:47] Away that fast mutual admiration. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[10:52] That's great. Does anyone from the committee have questions?
[10:54] Questions. No questions. Just welcome.
[10:57] Thank you. Thank you very much. It's nice to hear
[10:59] the perspective from you guys, just coming into the school
[11:01] district this year. So thank you for everything you're doing.
[11:03] And we look forward to seeing.
[11:05] What you do while you're here this year. Life pleasure.
[11:06] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you.
[11:08] Thank you.
[11:09] Sorry, I almost skipped over you. I did not mean
[11:11] that. all right.
[11:14] Now athletics presentation. Yes. We're gonna, we're gonna give this
[11:16] a whirl, as you heard earlier.
[11:19] Our athletic director is currently.
[11:21] On the football field for our second.
[11:24] Home game. And so this was a move because we're
[11:28] worried about the weather.
[11:29] So I'm gonna give this a whirl and try to
[11:31] share with you.
[11:33] As you know, sometimes when we try to share something
[11:35] with.
[11:36] Sound. It doesn't always go the way we exactly want.
[11:39] So I'm gonna stop talking because if I talk while
[11:42] this is going, I won't narrate.
[11:44] Narrate maybe that's a blessing for y'all.
[11:47] Once I turn the sound on, I don't want it
[11:48] to echo, so let's see, I'm gonna do this in
[11:51] a certain order.
[11:52] Those of you that are part of the.
[11:55] Success of this. Thank you. Please mute your microphones.
[11:58] Microphones, you can't get this to go.
[12:03] All right.
[12:16] hello. You hear that?
[12:25] Have some fun, make sure you get loud.
[12:28] And have a laugh enjoy this year.
[12:30] It starts today, the culture of this school.
[12:34] To be the
[13:10] how did that come over? Did it come over? Okay.
[13:12] I don't over the screen. It came over on the
[13:13] screen. Fine. Yeah. Okay. Great.
[13:16] And we wanted to show you just a little snippet.
[13:19] If you remember last year we had all of the
[13:21] athletes come.
[13:23] And
[13:25] it was great to listen to them. But about 45
[13:27] minutes later, we still had all of the athletes here.
[13:30] So we decided this year, we were gonna start to
[13:32] use some videos I'd like to thank Chris Sarino for.
[13:36] Going and videoing the pep rally where you could see
[13:38] the spirit like.
[13:40] Oozing from the gym. It was, I'm actually looking at
[13:43] Dr. Burnham right now. He's he was probably, I I'm
[13:46] gonna ask you when you come up to talk about
[13:47] the.
[13:48] Field trip, how you felt about all of the commotion
[13:50] that was going on in the gym.
[13:52] And you saw the captains there. If you were watching
[13:54] the video, the captains came up and they spoke with
[13:56] everybody.
[13:57] And then you saw the list of their names. So
[13:59] we're gonna be working to make sure that we do
[14:01] this season by season so that you can be introduced
[14:04] to all of the athletes.
[14:06] Athletes that are on our fields. Our student athletes are
[14:09] balancing a lot of different things and we wanna make
[14:11] sure that.
[14:12] We are celebrating them here at school committee, just like
[14:14] we do with some of the drama folks and our
[14:17] music.
[14:18] Our musicians. So we will continue this student participation throughout
[14:22] the school year and hope you enjoyed a little sneak
[14:24] preview.
[14:27] And that's it.
[14:28] Great. Yeah, I definitely wanna.
[14:31] Share that video around. I think that's awesome. Yeah. Came
[14:32] out really good. Yeah, it did.
[14:35] Okay. Now we are moving on to athletics facility, rental
[14:39] forms.
[14:40] Forms and I have we've invited as well. Dave Pinon
[14:44] who's on the football field.
[14:46] And Chris Sereno, who is going to be Anne Diane Johnson,
[14:51] who have spearheaded.
[14:53] Work on the rental facil athletics facility and rental forms.
[14:57] We really wanted.
[14:58] Talking about systems and structures. And if I were going
[15:01] to nest this in one of the district improvement plan,
[15:03] overarching goals, it would be goal three.
[15:06] And four in some ways, because it's a system and
[15:09] structure, but it's also talks about our finances and, and
[15:12] helps us to bring in a little bit of revenue.
[15:14] So they are both gonna talk about how the con
[15:17] the conceptualized, the form and what the timeline is for
[15:20] us launching this out. Thank you for being here.
[15:22] Tonight, Chris and Diane, of course.
[15:25] And just a word about the pep rally. I've been
[15:27] at 23 Stoneham pep rallies over the years now in
[15:30] that one was gonna be, it's gonna be hard to
[15:32] beat. It was.
[15:33] Incredible the new gym, the sound equipment that we have
[15:36] in that gym. It's just amazing for a pep rally.
[15:38] So kudos to the athletic department.
[15:42] All right. Follet facilities, rental software.
[15:45] So that's what we're gonna be talking about next.
[15:48] We broke up the information tonight in a few different
[15:50] topics. The first one, how it came about the second
[15:53] one.
[15:54] Benefits of the new software and third next steps for
[15:57] us.
[15:59] So how this came about, we wanted to modernize our
[16:02] rental.
[16:03] System. We wanna make sure that it's transparent.
[16:07] It's efficient and that it's automated.
[16:10] Right now, as you probably know, we have a Google
[16:12] form that handles our rentals.
[16:15] Rentals. It's been okay for us.
[16:18] But it's very much a manual process.
[16:21] Manual entry manual.
[16:24] Scheduling of staff manual.
[16:26] Invoicing and the nightmare of tracking insurance certificates for all
[16:31] of our renters.
[16:33] And the only thing that we typically rent out thus
[16:35] far is gyms and fields.
[16:38] So now with the new high school coming online.
[16:41] That's gonna be a very much a sought after rental
[16:45] for us. So we wanted to make sure we had
[16:47] a robust platform that could handle that.
[16:49] Influx of inquiries for rentals. And we feel like this
[16:53] software can really do it for us. And again,
[16:57] Dr. D just talked about it, but we look in
[16:59] the district and we've been trying to ramp up our.
[17:03] Systems and structures, and this is just another area.
[17:06] Where we can, we can elevate our systems and structure
[17:09] structures and put the right things in place for us.
[17:12] And that's this software for us.
[17:14] The benefits of the new software.
[17:17] One of the key benefits is that it integrates completely
[17:20] with arbiter. Arbiter is our sports scheduling software.
[17:25] And Follett was able to integrate that. So we don't
[17:28] have to do any redundant work with putting those into
[17:30] the schedule.
[17:32] Are it takes arbiter information and it puts it right
[17:34] into the calendar.
[17:36] And it blocks out those days. So renters don't have
[17:38] the ability to double book on those particular days and
[17:40] times, that was a huge benefit to the athletic department.
[17:44] And it works really well already. That's been in place.
[17:48] The other thing that it does really well, is it
[17:50] tracks insurance certificates for our renters. And this is huge
[17:53] for us.
[17:55] It'll give reminders to renters when insurance certificates are due.
[17:59] And need to be updated and it won't allow them
[18:01] to rent on our system.
[18:04] Until that happens. So we always know that a renter
[18:06] has the proper insurance certificates in place.
[18:09] Before they come into our facilities to rent. Think that's
[18:13] a huge benefit.
[18:15] The other thing that it does for us, it gives
[18:16] us complete control.
[18:18] Over the
[18:21] sorry. I lost my place.
[18:24] Where am I
[18:26] over the approval paths. So what we can do on
[18:28] the back end of this is set up all the
[18:30] approval paths, so that principles are in the know athletic.
[18:34] Directors are in the know and also our custodial staff.
[18:38] We can send out notifications to them and it's all
[18:40] automated. Once something is booked. So that's a really nice
[18:43] piece of this.
[18:47] We can also prioritize rentals. So we wanna make sure
[18:49] that our sports teams and our youth organizations.
[18:53] They have the ability to rent.
[18:55] And block out those spaces.
[18:58] Gyms fields and things like that. And then we have
[19:00] the ability to open up our calendar to other renters
[19:03] after that point.
[19:07] Ultimately
[19:09] what this is gonna do for us is maximize our
[19:10] abilities to rent, but also protect our spaces.
[19:14] Making sure that our renters are vetted. They have the
[19:17] improper, proper insurance certificates in place, and we can also
[19:22] through the system.
[19:23] Invoice them prior to the event. So if that's something
[19:27] that we're interested in, we also have that ability.
[19:31] Next steps.
[19:33] Okay. So we do have software in place already, and
[19:36] we did a soft rollout. Our athletic director was able
[19:39] to reach out to our youth.
[19:41] Organizations that work with us every year.
[19:44] And we sort of piloted the program with them. We
[19:47] got some feedback from them. What was working well, what
[19:49] they thought about it. They had some suggestions for.
[19:52] Us. We were able to go back to Follet and
[19:54] ask if those could be implemented and put into place
[19:57] and they were able to do that. So we had
[19:59] a good soft.
[20:01] Rollout so far with our youth organizations.
[20:04] Next steps for us. We actually have a training tomorrow
[20:07] set up with Follett and that training is gonna be
[20:10] based on.
[20:12] How we can embed and bake in some of our
[20:14] custodial fees.
[20:16] So that as a renter, you can get a proper
[20:18] estimate on what it's gonna cost to rent our spaces.
[20:23] After that we're gonna be looking to train our leadership
[20:27] teams and our front office staff. This is gonna.
[20:29] Be really important. We need principals to be on board
[20:33] so that at the beginning of the year, they block
[20:36] out their dates. That's gonna be really, I.
[20:38] Important. So we don't double book renters.
[20:41] Principals should know, basically at the beginning of the year,
[20:43] when they're doing their back to school nights, when parent-teacher
[20:46] conferences are, when moving on ceremonies.
[20:49] Are so we are gonna have them get comfortable in
[20:52] the system. They're gonna have a username and access to
[20:55] the system, and then they can block out their dates
[20:57] for the school.
[20:58] So those will never show up as available dates for
[21:00] renters to begin with because they'll be blocked out.
[21:04] So that's really important.
[21:06] The last piece that I have to, this is we
[21:08] have to, as a district understand.
[21:11] Some of the special circumstances that might come up from
[21:14] this. And the thing that comes to mind is our
[21:16] auditorium at the high school. That's a.
[21:20] Really sophisticated site.
[21:22] And it's gonna take some planning on our end. If
[21:24] someone wants to rent that space.
[21:27] Because of the systems that are there, the lighting and
[21:29] the sound.
[21:30] Are really expensive pieces of equipment and we want it
[21:34] to be protected. So we have to think about how
[21:37] we're going to have a.
[21:39] A sound in lighting engineer.
[21:41] Be tagged on to those rentals if they happen in
[21:44] the future. So that's something we still have to discuss
[21:47] and figure out going forward with those spaces.
[21:51] Anything to add Diane? No, you covered it very, very
[21:53] well. any questions before they take questions? I just,
[21:57] I wanna talk a little.
[21:58] Bit about why this was important to.
[22:01] You know, Megan had mentioned it and said, you know,
[22:02] we should probably.
[22:04] Bring that to the forefront.
[22:06] When I started here in Stoneham last year, one of
[22:08] the things that was being spoken about around finances is,
[22:12] is revenue. And I was really clear.
[22:14] About the fact that schools are really not a revenue
[22:16] producing.
[22:18] Entity. However, the space that we do have to create
[22:22] some revenue is renting.
[22:24] Part of the reason that I felt it was important
[22:26] for you to come and explain is that we don't
[22:28] just rent.
[22:30] To somebody and shake their hand and say, yes, you
[22:32] can have the space.
[22:33] There's a lot that goes into.
[22:36] Setting us up to be successful for renting insurance.
[22:39] Fees, making sure we're consistent.
[22:42] That somebody doesn't just rent it and there's no oversight
[22:44] over who's in there. Where's the custodian. So.
[22:47] I I really thank you for coming. Thank you for
[22:49] working on this. Thank you for finding something so quickly
[22:52] that could be put in place.
[22:54] For a system and
[22:57] just coming to school committee and explaining to folks what
[22:59] it looks, feels. And sounds like when we run.
[23:02] Something like this. So I appreciate that.
[23:06] You're here tonight and that you worked hard to make
[23:08] sure we would have a system pleasure. One thing about
[23:10] fees. If I could mention, we worked with school committee
[23:13] closely on.
[23:14] Developing our policy for rentals.
[23:17] Rentals and the fee structure that's in the policy.
[23:19] Is already baked into the platform.
[23:21] So when we categorize a renter as a nonprofit or
[23:25] a for-profit renter, those serving yep. And those.
[23:30] Fees are already baked in based on the policy that's
[23:32] in place.
[23:34] So actually speaking of that, we.
[23:38] A few years ago, we started to get really good
[23:40] about.
[23:41] Renewing our fees and, and at least looking at them
[23:44] each year.
[23:45] And reaffirming what they were gonna be. We haven't done
[23:48] that since.
[23:50] August of 2025, partly because.
[23:53] We knew this was an undertaking.
[23:56] Thank you guys. It's real. I.
[23:59] Got to see from somebody using for the soft rollout
[24:02] and they had.
[24:05] Rave reviews about it. That's great. And said, it was
[24:07] like, oh, nice. So much easier. That's awesome. So thank
[24:09] you. But that is something we should probably.
[24:12] Be putting on an agenda soon to.
[24:19] Anybody else have questions. Yeah, no, along those lines, I
[24:22] was curious at the cost of the software. And if
[24:24] we'd be rolling that into the fees,
[24:26] going forward. Sounds like we'll be reviewing that soon.
[24:29] But I had a couple other questions with the connectivity
[24:32] to arbiter. Is it a two way?
[24:36] Two-way connectivity where no. So if a coach has to
[24:38] reschedule a game like tonight's football game, they'd have to
[24:41] go into this new software to make sure or it.
[24:44] No, it syncs with arbiter. So if the change is
[24:46] made in arbiter, I'm not sure the sync time between
[24:49] the two, but it would carry over to fall.
[24:52] It. Well, what about in the case where we had
[24:54] a rescheduled game in the.
[24:56] Field or a gym or somewhere it's already booked by
[24:59] if it's an interscholastic event that's happening through arbiter already.
[25:04] And then it would just pull into our system here.
[25:06] Right. And we would have to, if there were, you
[25:08] know, if we had already put practices in or anything,
[25:11] we'd have to bump those. Okay. So, well say someone
[25:13] rented.
[25:14] Say the gym, say one, the youth sports or someone
[25:16] else in a game got rescheduled. We'd be sending an
[25:19] email to them saying, we're very sorry, but we're going
[25:22] to have to take your.
[25:23] Slot, you know, if there was a snow day, for
[25:24] example, that's classic example.
[25:27] We, we would have the capacity within the system to
[25:28] pull up everybody's on that date. Send 'em an email
[25:31] saying we're very sorry. You're not gonna be able to
[25:33] use the space this night.
[25:35] Anything you've paid will be refunded. If, if that's app
[25:38] applicable.
[25:39] Due to the weather and we can do all that
[25:40] through this app, all through the system. Great. We can
[25:43] also relocate the game too. If, if this is a
[25:46] rental that we.
[25:48] You know, are in good standing with, and we wanna
[25:49] keep in good standing in the middle school is open
[25:51] if it's basketball or if it's whatever.
[25:54] We, we could also do it that way too. But
[25:56] what I'm hearing Diane say is that it's it, the,
[25:59] the program is facile. You can mm-hmm .
[26:02] Yeah, and I believe there's some safeguards within the policy.
[26:05] That pro protect protects us for those situations as well.
[26:08] Okay. Yeah. I'm, I'm more worried about like, say someone
[26:11] from outside of Stoneham trying rinse the space for.
[26:13] For whatever event. And then we end up saying, oh,
[26:16] we need it. So as long as we got that
[26:17] covered, great.
[26:18] I do like the document management and rental management features
[26:21] in there.
[26:23] Are we going, if someone were to rent the space,
[26:25] and say not live up to their part of the
[26:28] contract. Would we be able to flag them so we
[26:30] know not the future a hundred percent awesome.
[26:33] And then just something else to consider for future.
[26:36] Integrations as we're talking calendars and schools and all this
[26:38] other stuff, it'd be great if we could. I know
[26:40] we talked about a district-wide calendar. It seems like we've
[26:42] got a feeder system already, so maybe we.
[26:44] Can to prevent
[26:46] I'm not related to this, but.
[26:49] Can prevent having competing.
[26:51] Events at schools where parents are torn between two places.
[26:54] Mm-hmm, , it'll be certainly a lot easier if you'll
[26:57] be able to see all the events happening simultaneously. Exactly.
[27:00] Yeah, because right now the, the school's rather function independently.
[27:03] Yeah. And this will allow them to all be functioning
[27:05] on the same platform. So it'll be a lot easier
[27:07] to.
[27:08] Cross look. Yep. And then, you know, what's going on
[27:10] on this date? Oh, oh.
[27:12] Well, maybe somebody shift.
[27:14] Yep. Awesome. Thank you.
[27:17] Anybody else?
[27:19] Sorry. Did you say how much it costs? What, how
[27:21] much the software is? I know how much it costs.
[27:23] Oh, okay. The first year is 4,005.
[27:27] Hundred $30. That's with implementation fees. The second year is
[27:31] 3000.
[27:32] $842. And the third year is $3,957.
[27:37] And it's being paid for out of the building.
[27:40] Rental revolving account. So the fees we take in will
[27:42] be covering the cost of this. I mean, it really
[27:44] is overhead for renting.
[27:47] Right. Mm-hmm great. That was good.
[27:49] Okay. Mm-hmm there just a quick.
[27:53] Related item on our agenda coming up later is a
[27:56] policy.
[27:57] That kind of goes along with the one that we
[27:59] talked about a few months ago when we, we did
[28:01] the rental.
[28:02] Kind of community use of school facility policy. There was
[28:05] a whole bunch of procedures in there that we rescinded,
[28:07] cuz we said, you know, we will have the policy
[28:09] and then you guys.
[28:11] Make the procedures. There was just one short model policy
[28:14] that Massey recommended that we looked at at our last
[28:17] policy meeting. That's coming forward.
[28:19] For first reading tonight. So it's not final.
[28:21] But if you both could take a look at it
[28:23] and let us know if you have comments, it just
[28:26] kind of reaffirms things like you just said that all
[28:29] groups will.
[28:29] Have insurance, all groups, you know, will not.
[28:32] Smoke use alcohol tobacco, right. Things like that.
[28:35] That are a little more procedural, but we just want,
[28:37] we felt like it was important to put on paper.
[28:40] That all renters are gonna do that.
[28:42] So, but just, you know, take a look and if
[28:44] you have comments, you can let the superintendent know or
[28:47] us at the policy subcommittee mm-hmm will do, which
[28:50] you.
[28:51] Came to exactly you kidding the first time I didn't.
[28:54] One of the things that was, that's been really nice
[28:56] about.
[28:57] Having, you know, and it just was.
[29:00] Luck that you were all redoing the policy manual. When
[29:03] I started.
[29:04] And now we're looking into different systems and structures that
[29:07] are going to need.
[29:09] Procedures and protocols that
[29:12] it's aligning that we can have conversations while the policy
[29:15] subcommittee is looking at what the policy says.
[29:19] And remove the
[29:21] procedures and the protocols, but know that they live somewhere
[29:24] else.
[29:25] Because that's been a concern and it's really important that
[29:27] they do. Now. We have a system for them to
[29:29] live in, right. This isn't something that goes in a
[29:32] handbook or this isn't.
[29:33] Isn't something that necessarily, I mean, it will go on
[29:35] the website in the sense that you can access it
[29:37] from there, but it's good to know that those procedures
[29:41] and those.
[29:43] Protocols live somewhere.
[29:45] And so we've got, that's how it's supposed to look
[29:47] right. Policy.
[29:48] And then once that policy dictates what we need to
[29:51] do for.
[29:52] For procedures and protocols. So that's a perfect example.
[29:55] And that was a really nice starting point for us
[29:57] looking at the policy first, discussing that. Right. And then
[30:00] moving on to this, right. It was great.
[30:03] Corey's very happy right now.
[30:05] All right. Anybody else have questions? No. Thank, thank you
[30:08] both. Thanks for all your hard work on this now.
[30:10] There's appreciate a blue line. There you go. that's
[30:13] great.
[30:14] All right, moving on, Dr. Burnham's here.
[30:17] To discuss the sternum high school, New York, DC field trip
[30:21] approval. Thank you for coming.
[30:23] Mm-hmm . Thank you for having me. Yeah. So this
[30:26] is coming up in.
[30:28] March. Yes. Okay. And
[30:31] April, obviously I'm not gonna be the expert on these
[30:34] field trips, not having been here, right. To ever see
[30:36] them before, but I'm excited to talk to you.
[30:39] About them tonight. One of the things I kind of
[30:42] wanna start out with.
[30:44] Is there's about four places.
[30:46] In my opinion in the country that I think every
[30:49] single American should go see.
[30:52] Two of those are in these field trips, right? I
[30:54] think the trip, if you were, and I see a
[30:57] lot of people in this room who were wi with
[30:58] us at the assembly.
[31:00] For nine 11.
[31:02] Taking some of our students down to New York.
[31:05] To be there at that site, I think is an
[31:07] incredibly powerful learning experience that I think every American should
[31:11] experience and going to our nation.
[31:13] Nation's capital I think is obviously.
[31:16] Something that is valuable for every single person to see
[31:18] that in action and be there.
[31:21] And see those institutions and, and I think it's wonderful
[31:23] that our students have that opportunity. I, I think that
[31:26] field-based learning experiences are something.
[31:29] That kids remember for their entire life.
[31:32] One thing that we're really proud of is.
[31:35] You might remember.
[31:38] About five years ago, we used a company to help
[31:40] us pull those off. It was EF was the name
[31:42] of the company.
[31:44] We've moved to doing that. In-house.
[31:46] And for the past five years, what that's meant is
[31:48] we've controlled the itinerary.
[31:51] And we've kept the cost exactly the same for five
[31:52] years. There's never been a time in the past five
[31:55] years.
[31:56] Where the prices went up. I think that's remarkable.
[31:58] So those are a couple highlights that I just wanted
[32:01] you to know about the trips. Again, I haven't been
[32:03] on one.
[32:04] I did send the itineraries over your way to, to
[32:07] look them over.
[32:09] And I, I certainly can't be an expert on them
[32:11] having not experienced them, but I'm happy to answer any
[32:14] questions that I can.
[32:17] Does anyone have any questions about the trip?
[32:20] I had a que, so, so I see that the
[32:22] senior trip.
[32:23] The, the scholarships are available.
[32:25] Is there scholarships available for the sophomore trip? Yes. Okay.
[32:29] Yes.
[32:30] Okay. Yep. We have been successful over the past five
[32:33] past five years of making sure every student that wanted
[32:36] to go can go. That was my next question.
[32:38] Okay. Good.
[32:42] Anybody else?
[32:44] Everyone's looking through the itinerary.
[32:46] Yeah on the senior trip, it says cost based on
[32:50] 45 travelers. So that go, is it only are we
[32:53] capping it at 45?
[32:55] Students or are we, is that gonna be open to
[32:56] all seniors? It's open to all seniors. Okay. Yeah.
[33:02] So you just get a second bus. If the first
[33:04] one fills up.
[33:05] Is that we have been able to do that with
[33:07] one bus historically.
[33:09] But if we needed more, more vehicles, we'd have to
[33:12] look at that.
[33:16] Are they they're, they're probably just continuously sleeping in these
[33:19] .
[33:20] Buses between such a crazy itinerary. It's great though. You
[33:23] gotta keep 'em busy and there's so much to see
[33:25] in that short amount of time. So sleeping on the
[33:27] bus ride is the best.
[33:28] Case scenario. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[33:31] Exactly fair. They pump lullabies off the dispute. .
[33:38] Anybody have anything?
[33:41] No, I will. My daughter went on this. She's a
[33:43] senior now, but she went on the sophomore trip.
[33:48] And I think Connor did want us too. And it
[33:50] really is. It is such a fantastic trip. It's a,
[33:52] it's a whirlwind. It's.
[33:55] It's but Mr. V does a fantastic job with this
[33:58] and.
[34:00] He has done an amazing job organizing these. He couldn't
[34:02] be with us tonight because of some other responsibilities, but
[34:05] I will tell you.
[34:06] He takes up a lot of leadership in the school.
[34:09] And you need those kind of people on staff. Right.
[34:11] And, and he is one of those people with just
[34:13] a force of personality.
[34:16] Can really, really make things work and connects it right
[34:18] back to the curriculum. So, yeah.
[34:21] Know, Connor went last year and I think he slept
[34:23] like the entire day he got back. Mm-hmm 24
[34:26] hours straight. You're welcome. yeah.
[34:30] Yep. Oh, that's great. All right, I'll entertain a motion
[34:33] then. I'm I'm gonna ask that we separate okay. Trips.
[34:36] That sounds great.
[34:38] So we wanna do, which one would you like to.
[34:42] Let's start with sure. Sophomores, sophomore trip. Would anyone like
[34:46] to make a motion? Motion to approve?
[34:49] Sophomores going to
[34:51] Washington DC.
[34:53] second. Okay.
[34:56] All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. And I am an
[34:58] aye as well.
[35:00] Would someone like to make a motion for the senior
[35:02] class trip?
[35:04] Motion. We
[35:05] approve the senior class trip to New York city.
[35:08] Say your second, second. All right. All in favor. Aye.
[35:11] Aye. Aye. I'm gonna abstain. Okay. We have one abstention
[35:15] for Ms. Wallace and.
[35:17] I'm also an I, so that passes.
[35:19] Passes. All right. Thank you so much for coming. We
[35:21] appreciate it. Thank you. I think it's gonna be a
[35:23] great trip as almost. Thank you. Thank you. Are you
[35:25] gonna go on the trip? I am not sure.
[35:27] I know that our assistant principal, Mr. Jim grok
[35:31] is all over the New York trip. He really wants in
[35:33] on that. Mm-hmm so we'll see. We'll see. Great.
[35:36] So I had one more question. You said there was
[35:37] four places.
[35:38] Yeah. What are the other two? great question.
[35:41] so my other two are this, I think every American
[35:44] citizen should one point.
[35:47] In their lives visit valley valley forge. That was a
[35:49] site of Washington's army. As you know, when they wintered
[35:52] there.
[35:53] And that was the most diverse our army has ever
[35:55] been.
[35:56] The country really came together and we ended up having
[35:58] this incredible victory.
[36:01] And then I think when you do that trip and
[36:02] I've done this with my daughter,
[36:04] the next place you should go to get is Gettysburg,
[36:06] which is exactly where we fell apart and became divided.
[36:09] Sure. Right. And it's the high water mark of the
[36:10] Confederacy.
[36:12] They're two incredibly powerful spots to stand.
[36:15] And to really reflect on our nation's history. Yep.
[36:18] Well history lesson there. I like it. I was a
[36:19] history teacher stone in high school. thank you very
[36:23] much before we let you go. I know you.
[36:26] Came and introduced yourself when you first started. And now
[36:28] you've had a little bit of time to get your
[36:30] feet wet and I have.
[36:33] Been so impressed with your visibility.
[36:36] With students, both you and, and Mr. Groke, as a
[36:39] matter of fact,
[36:41] who was I speaking with? Act. It was, it was
[36:42] Jason who I can see who's sitting there. He's like,
[36:44] you know, when the kids are.
[36:46] Are moving around the hallways. Maybe they are supposed to
[36:48] be in the hallways. Maybe they aren't supposed to be
[36:50] in the hallways. They literally materialize from around the corner
[36:53] and say, Hey, where are you supposed?
[36:55] To be . So I think, you know, you're really
[36:57] working on, on building relationships with students and.
[37:01] I've just been very impressed with, with your ability to
[37:04] be, as Jason says, like everywhere.
[37:07] So we really appreciate your spirit and the energy that
[37:10] you've approached launching this school, school year with. And I
[37:13] think the high school students, if they.
[37:15] Were here to say would also would also agree. So
[37:17] thank you. I really appreciate that. And I can't be
[37:20] everywhere, but I'm really glad my high school students think
[37:23] I am.
[37:23] Yeah, that's right. you go?
[37:25] Just clone yourself. that's right.
[37:29] All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Have
[37:30] a good night.
[37:32] Have fun at home coming. Thank you so much. Yes.
[37:35] All right, moving on to announcement of confetti festival. All
[37:38] right, we're gonna try this again. Let's see if we
[37:40] can pull this off and have the sound work.
[37:44] So last year.
[37:46] Was the very first, if I can talk and do
[37:49] this at the SI same time, the very first confetti
[37:53] festival.
[37:54] Actually I'm gonna stop sharing, cuz I think there's a
[37:55] button I need to click while I'm doing that.
[37:58] Pause please. Ah,
[38:01] huh. Okay. Here we go. Yeah. Be ready to mute.
[38:03] Let me, let me say this before I actually click
[38:06] on the button as I don't want that squeaky noise.
[38:09] Last year, we started an annual tradition of a confetti.
[38:12] Confetti festival and the purpose of the confetti festival last
[38:14] year was really to start to begin to have a,
[38:17] a great way for us to turn our schools inside
[38:19] out.
[38:20] And the little clip that I have here also created
[38:23] by Chris Reno. If I didn't have Chris Reno, you
[38:26] wouldn't be able to see all these great things.
[38:28] What's you are going to be able to take a
[38:30] peek at is the confetti festival from last year. So
[38:33] you can have a reminder.
[38:35] Of what the festival was like. And then after it's
[38:38] over.
[38:39] I will share a little bit about what we're hoping
[38:41] to do in this year's confetti festival.
[38:43] That's why I'm going to unmute.
[39:00] Hi, there I am. Dr. D Francisco coming to you
[39:03] from Spartan place.
[39:05] Which is the site of our first annual.
[39:08] Confetti festival. This is a day when the district comes
[39:11] out and shows all of the different things we're doing
[39:13] in Stoneham to make confetti moments.
[39:16] Possible for our students. We can't wait for everybody to
[39:19] arrive.
[39:20] Our guests are on their way. And when they come,
[39:22] we will be celebrating all of those confetti moments together.
[39:38] I'm glowing.
[39:44] Something's going
[39:51] to keep me quiet.
[39:54] There's no.
[39:57] I'm like
[40:16] why. Okay. That's your work? I'm not.
[40:24] Buzzing. Yeah. So it's really fun to look back at
[40:27] that. And I'm looking at Chris and, you know, just
[40:29] remembering the energy that was in the room that evening.
[40:32] I'm looking forward to doing this again. And, and one
[40:34] of the reasons why is because we're about to enter
[40:37] this strategic planning or long multi-year.
[40:40] Planning process. And this is a great way to bring
[40:42] people out to the, from the community to come and
[40:45] see what we're doing in schools. And.
[40:48] Also educate them a little bit about.
[40:50] How they can get involved in this multi-year planning process.
[40:53] So if you remember last year I was on the
[40:56] second floor.
[40:58] Talking a little bit about finances and talking about launching
[41:01] the, the community movement around the override.
[41:05] This year, I will be talking a little bit about
[41:06] how we're using override money, but also how we can
[41:09] strategically move forward.
[41:12] In all of the areas of our.
[41:14] District improvement plan and growing those into a multi-year plan.
[41:18] So this is, I'm gonna be honest with you, a
[41:20] mammoth task.
[41:22] To be able to get all of the stakeholder.
[41:25] Feedback that is going to be important to me personally,
[41:29] Dr. Kwei and then us as a district.
[41:32] And I'm working through some ways to make it a
[41:34] little bit more manageable, but the launch of that work
[41:37] will be on.
[41:38] October 20th, beginning at six 30.
[41:41] In Spartan place.
[41:44] At our second annual confetti festival. So this is consider
[41:47] this your first invitation. You'll be getting a lot of
[41:49] information about this.
[41:51] I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in the
[41:53] next, oh, hello Stoneham. Because that's launching probably the beginning
[41:57] of October. So you'll be seeing some.
[41:59] Announcements about it. There.
[42:01] Great questions.
[42:04] Questions does anyone from the committee have questions? That was
[42:06] a great video. Mm-hmm . Isn't that great. Yeah. Nice
[42:08] job, Chris. Not awesome, Chris. Thanks.
[42:11] You got really good.
[42:13] It's gonna be a fun time. Thank you so much
[42:15] for all the info.
[42:18] All right. Dr. D Francisco's webpage.
[42:22] Okay. So the next thing that I wanted to really,
[42:24] oh gosh, Chris, you are the star of the evening.
[42:26] if you could see him on camera, he's gonna
[42:30] on his.
[42:30] Face. We wanted to start to really think about how
[42:34] we were launching our website. If we want folks to
[42:37] go there, we want.
[42:39] The spaces to be informative. So.
[42:41] Two things I'm gonna show you this evening is because
[42:43] I have the most control over working on the central
[42:45] office space in our.
[42:48] In our website. So what we are, what we've done
[42:51] is we.
[42:52] Had an afternoon where we got central office together. We
[42:55] had snacks together.
[42:57] And Chris Sarino brought all of his camera equipment and
[43:00] a backdrop, and we all got new pictures taken. So
[43:03] when you visit the central.
[43:05] Office page of the website, you are going to see.
[43:09] All of us in our glory, in these beautiful pictures
[43:12] that we're taken by.
[43:14] Chris Sarino and folks are gonna be able to really
[43:17] be able to identify people's faces.
[43:20] Faces we're working on getting emails up. So those will
[43:22] be live. Phone numbers. Are there actually, the emails are
[43:25] live. We're triaging some of the phone numbers because we're
[43:27] learning some of.
[43:29] Them don't go exactly to where they were supposed to
[43:30] go. We think that's part of the high school transition.
[43:33] So.
[43:34] We're really renovating the website in ways so that it
[43:37] can be.
[43:38] A place where people go to get good information.
[43:41] My page in particular.
[43:44] Is set up similar to how we're gonna have others.
[43:47] So Dr. Kristan, we will have a page that looks
[43:49] like this, so will all of the departments.
[43:52] All my page. The first thing that you can see
[43:54] is the district improvement plan.
[43:56] So you're able to see both the slide deck that
[43:59] I.
[44:00] Created that we use a lot at school committee and
[44:03] then also the actual document.
[44:05] My monthly newsletters will go here. There's archived from last
[44:08] year. And then of course, this year, if I were
[44:10] to drag this down, you would see my first one
[44:12] out and about.
[44:13] In September, there'll be a second in October. There we
[44:16] are celebrating graduation.
[44:18] As a school committee.
[44:21] My oh, hellos are listed here. So this was the
[44:23] first September for people to have easy access.
[44:26] I usually will put some, check this out. Guess what?
[44:29] It's the school improvement plan again, because I, if they
[44:31] missed it in the first section, I want them to
[44:33] get it in that one.
[44:35] Some current resources for folks and then also upcoming events.
[44:39] And we were at town day.
[44:41] This was that just this past weekend? Mm-hmm no
[44:42] way. Mm-hmm, just this past weekend. We were at
[44:44] town day and I have some highlights of that in
[44:46] my update. So.
[44:48] I'll wait for them to talk with you about it,
[44:50] but a little bit about what we're doing on the
[44:52] website to.
[44:53] Have people gravitate toward there and really use it as
[44:56] a resource.
[44:58] Looks great.
[44:59] Yeah, I chance came out really good. All your pictures
[45:02] look great.
[45:04] Thanks. Yeah. Anyone have any questions?
[45:06] Questions. Yeah. I love that. The contact information for people's
[45:10] up there and the phone numbers and emails. That's great.
[45:14] Mm-hmm
[45:17] all right.
[45:19] Anybody else?
[45:21] Okay, thank you for announcing that.
[45:24] Moving on. We have
[45:27] suspend age and degree requirement for substitutes. We can skip
[45:30] this one this evening.
[45:33] Because we have a new policy that makes it so
[45:35] that we don't have to approve this every single year,
[45:37] but usually we do it around this time.
[45:39] So we are going to skip K.
[45:41] And move to street data, which we are also going
[45:44] to move under Dr. D Francisco's superintendent's report.
[45:48] So we'll move on to item M Massey policy updates
[45:51] from Corey and Melanie.
[45:56] Here already.
[45:58] All right. So these
[46:01] are policies are all the changes are all posted on
[46:04] the.
[46:05] Website under the school committee page, current items for discussion.
[46:10] So I would like to make a motion that we
[46:12] waive the reading of the policies. Second.
[46:16] Okay. And all in favor.
[46:19] Aye. Aye. Aye. And I am an aye as well.
[46:21] We'll waive the reading.
[46:24] So I'll just tell you a little bit about the
[46:25] policies. One is the one that I mentioned a few
[46:28] minutes ago during the athletics and facility rental.
[46:32] Discussion it is.
[46:35] Policy KF dash R community use of school facilities. It's
[46:39] meant to go along with KF.
[46:41] KF community use to school facilities. And these are just
[46:44] kind of like reiterate. I know we say we want
[46:47] policies and not procedures, but these are.
[46:50] Important enough procedures that
[46:52] M a S C feels, you know, should be in
[46:54] the handbook. And so we.
[46:57] Are proposing to adopt these. As I said, they're mostly
[46:59] like,
[47:00] everybody's gonna have liability insurance and obey all the rules
[47:03] that we already have, but it's important enough to be
[47:06] in writing. So that's coming forth.
[47:09] For first reading and then we are proposing to.
[47:14] Just rename one of our policies.
[47:18] We have policy five dash nine distribution of communications.
[47:23] And we want to rename that to K D C
[47:25] D district communication. Just to kind of go in line
[47:28] with the template policies.
[47:31] That we have
[47:33] and the last two are rescinding to policies. Five dash
[47:36] three.
[47:38] Publication by the administration and five dash seven individual school
[47:41] news.
[47:42] These were those policies that we discussed a couple of
[47:45] meetings ago.
[47:47] That basically say every school has to have a social
[47:50] media, has to be Facebook. And we, the committee felt
[47:53] that that wasn't really necess.
[47:55] Necessary that we do believe in communication and social media,
[47:58] but we don't need to have a policy about it.
[47:59] There should be a procedure around it. So.
[48:02] Those are the changes we're proposing.
[48:05] Okay. Is there any discussion?
[48:11] Good. Mm-hmm okay.
[48:13] All right. So you don't need a vote for us
[48:14] for anything for tonight? Nope, that's enough. Okay. Thank you
[48:17] both for all your work on this.
[48:19] Moving on to the superintendent's report.
[48:23] Okay. I am going to actually start with the district
[48:27] highlights.
[48:28] Before I invite
[48:31] Diane Johnson to come up and talk a little bit about
[48:33] budget, and I'm also gonna have Dr. Kwei speaking a
[48:37] little bit about multi-tiered system.
[48:39] Of support. So
[48:41] as you're looking at our update this evening. What I
[48:44] want you to watch for is we're gonna do this
[48:46] every single time I present.
[48:49] The embedded spaces of the district improvement plan. So my
[48:52] goal is to show you.
[48:54] In the update where we're working on our goals and
[48:57] our objectives.
[48:59] Objectives. So the first thing that you're gonna see is.
[49:01] When I talk about the out and about update, you
[49:04] will see.
[49:05] This really is a culture and climate.
[49:08] Space that we're working in. So when I'm out and
[49:10] about, and I'm, I'm working in different spaces to collect
[49:13] information, to show you at school committee, what we're.
[49:16] Really doing is building a culture. We're building a culture
[49:19] around.
[49:21] The vision of a graduate, the vision of a learner,
[49:23] belonging, safety, respect, all the things that come together to
[49:27] create culture in Stoneham.
[49:29] Public schools and really beyond the classroom. Right? So our
[49:32] fields.
[49:34] Are Fenway park. When we go and watch our students
[49:37] perform.
[49:39] Drama festival. When we go to different sites, the, that,
[49:42] that all is included in building the space.
[49:46] Going to New York going to DC, the field trips we
[49:49] take.
[49:50] So having this information in my report. Yes. It's important
[49:54] for me to know.
[49:55] For you to know where I am out and about,
[49:57] but there's a means to the end there. Right. So
[50:00] we're really thinking about building culture.
[50:02] So this week we had confetti moments and first downs.
[50:06] So I wanna talk a little bit about what that
[50:08] looked like.
[50:09] This is a picture of the entire leadership team.
[50:13] Lined up. Are we on the one yard line here?
[50:15] Well, we're somewhere on the football field.
[50:17] Guess who took the picture? You get three guesses in
[50:19] the first two don't count.
[50:23] Any guesses, Chris, Mr. Sir, Chris Sarino, he was able
[50:27] to capture.
[50:28] Really the perspective of us standing on the.
[50:31] I don't know where we're standing in this space, but
[50:33] we started on the one yard line after a really
[50:35] good return kick.
[50:37] And our goal was to think about what is our
[50:40] common understanding of how we're now gonna move the ball
[50:42] down the field.
[50:44] And each one of the participants in our leadership team
[50:46] thought about either their goal for the year related to
[50:49] their school improvement plan.
[50:51] Aligned to the district improvement plan.
[50:53] Or some project related to their goal.
[50:56] And they took time to turn and talk with one
[50:58] another about the, the first downs that you need to
[51:01] get.
[51:02] In a project in order to keep the motivation of
[51:05] yourself and your team moving.
[51:06] It's called the progress principle.
[51:09] And there is a disproportionate amount of motivation for a
[51:12] small move. Like the, the motivation is really high. Even
[51:15] if you have still have a long way to go.
[51:17] So the football fields gave us a real good visual
[51:19] of that.
[51:20] You can get a really great first down and throw
[51:22] confetti and celebrate that confetti and you should, and then
[51:26] you need to get the next first down and the
[51:28] next one.
[51:29] And the next one after that until you're in the
[51:30] end zone. So the second picture is we're at different
[51:34] places because people were at different places.
[51:37] With their projects or their goals.
[51:39] So I wanted to share this with you because we
[51:41] are actively moving the district improvement plan forward.
[51:45] And we're celebrating those first downs as we get them.
[51:49] In addition, we sang at Fenway park.
[51:53] There was a sound check.
[51:56] There was waiting on the field. So on your mark.
[52:00] Get set.
[52:02] Go. And this is what our team looked like.
[52:06] Our team. So I say team because they, yes, they
[52:09] are course.
[52:11] But the amount of teamwork that went into getting ready
[52:13] for this evening.
[52:15] And you've all been to Fenway park. I'm assuming it's
[52:18] such a big.
[52:19] Encompassing field and there's our little group.
[52:24] Small standing there ready to sing. And when they started.
[52:27] It took over the whole entire park. It was really,
[52:30] I'm like, I'm getting chills. Just thinking about it again.
[52:32] So building that culture and thank you to Logan White.
[52:36] For making sure that our students had this experience.
[52:41] Getting curious in our buildings.
[52:43] Buildings. This was a celebration in one of our elementary
[52:46] schools around.day.
[52:49] And they got curious about how they could turn a
[52:51] single dot into a picture.
[52:54] So you have an astronaut, you have a new moon
[52:56] and it is a new moon. It is not a
[52:58] full moon. The artist wants you to know, and then
[53:00] you have two noses of.
[53:02] Animals coming together to create that dot. So that's how
[53:05] they're getting curious in art.
[53:07] And the culture that, that the art room is creating
[53:10] for our students.
[53:11] Students when they take, you know, a, a, just a
[53:13] cognitive break from the different kind of learning that's having
[53:15] that's happening in their classrooms.
[53:17] Classrooms. We got curious at Stoneham town day.
[53:21] So, this is a picture of that. Chris Reno did
[53:23] not take. There you go. Chris, someone else took this
[53:26] picture, but we were getting curious there and.
[53:29] This is the third cath Dr. Stanway, Mrs. O'Leary myself
[53:33] standing in front of our get curious board.
[53:36] And Monty also got curious with us. He was.
[53:40] Making the rounds. I he's having a nap there in
[53:42] my arms while.
[53:44] While officer Pacini is being dunked in the dunk tank,
[53:46] but he was getting curious about what we were doing
[53:49] at town day. And so were our students.
[53:52] Students. So every student that stopped by our booth, we
[53:55] asked them what they were curious about. Here's just a
[53:57] little sampling.
[53:59] I think my favorite is I'm curious about typing.
[54:02] So we have a colonial Josh. I hope you get
[54:04] to learn a lot about typing this year.
[54:06] There's lots of science on there. There's math. There's being
[54:09] curious about social studies.
[54:11] So once Leo's curious about everything, which is great.
[54:16] So, this was just one way for us to engage
[54:18] our students in our booth.
[54:21] The other was to engage our parents getting curious about
[54:24] their fifth, fourth, third, second, first. And you can't see
[54:27] kindergarten.
[54:28] But these pamphlets really help parents to understand how they're.
[54:33] Their elementary school student is, is moving through different phases
[54:37] of development.
[54:38] Academically, social, socially and emotionally.
[54:42] And then finally we had some fun.
[54:44] We, we had 150. We were prepared to make 150
[54:49] key chains. We ran out.
[54:51] So we had that many students really cycling through our
[54:53] tables. Monty got a key chain. I don't know if
[54:56] you can see it down in the corner, but he's
[54:59] probably wearing.
[54:59] His name and a Stoneham keychain. And I went ahead
[55:02] and made myself an oh hello, Stoneham, keychain.
[55:05] To wear around my lanyard. So we had a wonderful
[55:07] time. Thanks to Dr. Castonguay for going into the dunk
[55:10] tank.
[55:12] She's brave and was cold. It's cold. Oops, cold. And
[55:16] it was a little pink. I wonder why that was,
[55:18] oh, it's a little pink in the.
[55:20] Dunk tank. curious. I was curious right after me.
[55:24] Right, right after. Right, right after it was a little
[55:27] pink.
[55:29] Before you go onto that. Does the committee have questions
[55:30] on anything so far?
[55:33] I'm not good about checking in, in the halftime here.
[55:35] Okay. Those pamphlets looked great. Are those something we made
[55:38] the third, fourth? We did not make them. Okay. But
[55:40] they're, those are cool.
[55:41] These are a book.
[55:43] Called yardsticks. Okay. The author is not kidding. Chip wood.
[55:48] And he is
[55:50] really wrote a wonderful book about.
[55:54] Elementary development I've yet we, it actually goes through eighth
[55:58] grade. I've yet to find one for the high school.
[56:00] Like this, a couple of our teachers came by the
[56:03] booth and they've asked for us to have these for
[56:05] open house nights. So we're going to start to think.
[56:09] About handing these out at open house nights. And what
[56:11] it really does is it talks about the age swing.
[56:13] So one of the pamphlets for example, will give you.
[56:17] Age five age six, age seven. Right? So entering.
[56:21] In and moving out of.
[56:24] And they're very helpful, you know, if a, if your
[56:26] student is playing on their own and not maybe.
[56:29] Interacted with a lot that might be developmentally appropriate for
[56:32] them to be playing alone.
[56:34] During that particular phase. So it gives, it gives our,
[56:37] our grownups at home a, a heads up. So I'm
[56:39] glad you noticed them. They.
[56:41] They were people were taking them. So I think we'll
[56:43] make that investment next year and, and make sure that
[56:45] we have them for open house.
[56:47] Okay, could we have 'em at the confetti festival for
[56:49] the, we can have them at the confetti festival. Great
[56:51] idea. We were very cool. I asked you about the
[56:54] high school one. Yeah.
[56:56] And I think we, there's a, there's an implementation teenagers
[56:58] gap there manual. Yeah. There's a research gap there that
[57:01] if we would like to write a manual, .
[57:04] Good luck. We might not have as fancy as a
[57:06] name as the other author, but any of those, you
[57:09] know, we can, we can certainly.
[57:11] Think about that. And, and maybe we can put some
[57:13] guidelines together as well. I'm just being reminded. I'm, I'm
[57:17] looking to my right and.
[57:19] And Jason EPKs there. Maybe he would like to take
[57:21] a shot as an English teacher of writing some manuals
[57:23] for a freshman, sophomore spare time. No big deal.
[57:26] he.
[57:27] He's smiling. He's excited. He says, yes. He's curious. Yes.
[57:32] Okay. The second thing that we're gonna talk about is
[57:35] street data. So before we get into the street data,
[57:38] I want to talk about why that's important.
[57:40] This is goal three. This is communications.
[57:44] Systems and structures and it's about our.
[57:47] To assess our other channels for community communication through our
[57:50] use of social media.
[57:53] My thing is social media, Stoneham, TV, Stoneham, independent council
[57:56] on aging and the public library.
[57:59] So specifically, this one is asking.
[58:03] Us to talk about social media. The questions that I
[58:06] sent out at the very bottom of my last newsletter
[58:09] for street data were about.
[58:11] Looking at wood families.
[58:14] Look at Facebook or Instagram, if we did some posting
[58:17] there, I know some of our schools have sites there
[58:19] and those seem to be pretty well.
[58:22] Looked at, but I'm also thinking about doing this at
[58:24] the district level.
[58:26] And wood families be interested in looking at it. I
[58:28] was actually particularly interested in the elementary school.
[58:32] Because those are the ones that tend to use theirs
[58:33] the most.
[58:34] And out of the 81, which is actually.
[58:38] Pretty good for a newsletter survey.
[58:40] People 44 were from elementary school. 44 were from middle
[58:44] school.
[58:45] 20 were from high school and four were from preschool.
[58:49] And the elementary school and middle school actually tied for
[58:51] the most participation.
[58:53] So I can show you what that looks like here.
[58:58] Facebook came in at, you know, I never really look
[59:01] at Facebook and I'm indifferent about social media are your
[59:04] blue block.
[59:05] And your red block mm-hmm and then I would
[59:07] probably look, and yes, please are your green block and
[59:11] your orange block. It's pretty halfway.
[59:13] Pretty divided, you know, pretty 50, 50.
[59:16] Enough for me to think about, okay, what am I
[59:19] putting on Facebook? Because if I've got that many people
[59:21] that will look at it,
[59:23] you know, we're word will travel.
[59:25] Instagram came in a little bit more likely for people
[59:29] to look at Instagram.
[59:31] So I'm gonna wanna make sure that I link those
[59:34] two accounts and that whatever we put up is going
[59:36] up on Facebook.
[59:38] And on Instagram. So 81 responses was, I, I feel
[59:41] pretty good. I, I would like to see that grow.
[59:44] So I'm alerting you at the bottom of the.
[59:46] Newsletter every time I send it out, there will be
[59:48] some form of street data. This was to post or
[59:51] not to post next time. I'll do a different.
[59:54] A different topic and just get some feedback from families
[59:57] so we can communicate in ways that are gonna reach
[59:59] the audience.
[1:00:01] Does anyone have any questions about that?
[1:00:04] The good thing about Instagram is it's linked.
[1:00:07] You can link it to like five different social media
[1:00:09] pages. So that's why people are probably saying Instagram mm-hmm
[1:00:12] , but Facebook is one of those that you can
[1:00:14] link it to. So, yep.
[1:00:16] So it's pretty easy to do. I mean, you post
[1:00:18] in one place and it goes to both. So.
[1:00:20] Not a heavy as a li of a lift.
[1:00:24] The next thing, that, that was my out and about.
[1:00:27] If you have any questions about out and about now
[1:00:29] would be a good time to ask them.
[1:00:32] Okay. We good.
[1:00:34] Mm-hmm and Diane is making her way to the
[1:00:36] table. And as she does, I want to highlight the
[1:00:38] fact that we are now moving into the overarching goal.
[1:00:42] For from the district improvement plan.
[1:00:44] And that was I I'm actually gonna read it. And
[1:00:47] I think it's important for us to, we haven't talked
[1:00:49] about this one as much, and now we're getting into
[1:00:52] the space where.
[1:00:53] We're gonna be able to, so that goal was to
[1:00:55] develop and sustain safe, functional, and future focused learning environments
[1:01:00] by addressing.
[1:01:01] District facility needs through strategic planning.
[1:01:04] Preventative maintenance and long-term capital improvements.
[1:01:08] The district will implement a transparent, collaborative and fiscally responsible
[1:01:13] budgeting process.
[1:01:14] That aligns resources with student needs.
[1:01:17] District priorities and the vision of a learner and vision
[1:01:20] of a graduate.
[1:01:21] While fostering trust and engagement with staff.
[1:01:24] Families and the broader community.
[1:01:26] So the budget report we're about to present.
[1:01:29] Falls under this goal and specifically.
[1:01:33] Under this objective.
[1:01:35] And objective four, two.
[1:01:38] So the overarching goal is four. This is the second
[1:01:40] objective there.
[1:01:42] Talks about developing a common understanding of the budget process
[1:01:45] in our schools and a transparent way to share and
[1:01:48] monitor our finances with all stakeholders.
[1:01:51] Digging in a little bit deeper.
[1:01:53] And action step under that objective is budget reporting.
[1:01:58] Develop budget reporting for general.
[1:02:01] Grant and revolving funds on a quarterly basis.
[1:02:04] To all stakeholders and I'm very happy and proud to
[1:02:07] say that we're gonna do that for the first time
[1:02:09] under my tenure tonight.
[1:02:11] And Diane has prepared. So I'm gonna come out of
[1:02:13] this deck and I'm going to go into this one.
[1:02:17] Has prepared a financial
[1:02:19] report for us that what I want you to think
[1:02:21] about as she's presenting it is that this is the
[1:02:24] first time under this district improvement plan.
[1:02:27] That we've started to define what this transparency will look
[1:02:29] like.
[1:02:31] And I would also like to mention that on Monday
[1:02:33] we have a subcommittee meeting of the.
[1:02:37] Budget and finance subcommittee for school committee. So we'll be
[1:02:40] looking for feedback at that meeting.
[1:02:43] Around both this report and the next report.
[1:02:46] So I'm gonna let Diane talk to you a little
[1:02:48] bit about what you'll be looking at tonight.
[1:02:51] And I'm sure she'll give you just a peak at
[1:02:53] what you'll be looking at in the future.
[1:02:55] She's worked really hard to make sure this is digestible.
[1:02:59] And also shows future movement. And I really appreciate her
[1:03:02] head down philosophy. These she's had these past couple of
[1:03:05] weeks while we're all starting school to get.
[1:03:07] This ready for you, Diane. Thank you, Kristen. Good evening,
[1:03:11] everyone.
[1:03:12] This is the FY 26 financial report.
[1:03:16] And for everybody else in the known world who doesn't
[1:03:18] think in terms of fiscal years,
[1:03:21] this is about the data that was last school year,
[1:03:23] that ended June 30.
[1:03:25] The reason we're talking about it now is because I
[1:03:27] have to file.
[1:03:29] The dreaded end of year report the E O Y
[1:03:31] R for Dessie department of elementary and secondary education by
[1:03:35] September 30th.
[1:03:38] It's some perversion of, I don't know what that we
[1:03:41] have to file this massive report, right? During the start
[1:03:43] of school.
[1:03:44] But there it is. It's been part of my life
[1:03:46] for the whole 20 years. I've been doing this.
[1:03:49] So basically while everybody else goes on summer vacation, you're
[1:03:53] closing down the fiscal year. You're tidying up the books.
[1:03:56] And then when everybody comes running in the door in
[1:03:57] August, you're trying to get this report done.
[1:04:00] But I'm happy to say that it's done.
[1:04:02] And I've sent it to, it's been approved by the
[1:04:04] town auditor and I've sent it to.
[1:04:08] Our chair and to the superintendent for their signatures.
[1:04:11] Signatures and it'll be filed ahead of the deadline next
[1:04:13] week. God willing.
[1:04:15] So this information comes from my work to get that
[1:04:17] report completed.
[1:04:23] So school funding in Stoneham has an in most municipalities
[1:04:26] has three main sources.
[1:04:28] The general fund, which includes taxpayer support and chapter 70
[1:04:31] state aid.
[1:04:32] Grants, which generally can be classified as federal state or
[1:04:36] private in origin.
[1:04:37] And revolving funds, which are specific areas defined by law,
[1:04:41] where schools are allowed to collect fees and pay expenses
[1:04:44] related to the.
[1:04:45] Activities.
[1:04:49] So, this is how we ended last fiscal year. And
[1:04:51] it was very frustrating to me that I couldn't report
[1:04:53] more closely on last fiscal year, but it was a.
[1:04:56] Budget I inherited and a chart of accounts that I
[1:04:59] struggled with.
[1:05:00] So I was able to do this year's end of
[1:05:02] year report by crosswalking last year's chart of accounts to
[1:05:06] my new chart of accounts.
[1:05:09] Accounts, and then use that to develop the end of
[1:05:11] the year report.
[1:05:12] So all of this reporting is based on my new
[1:05:14] chart of accounts.
[1:05:16] Accounts crosswalked back.
[1:05:18] So
[1:05:20] as you see from the pie chart, the vast majority
[1:05:22] of what we spend in the schools here is the
[1:05:24] general fund, the dark blue.
[1:05:27] The orange is grants.
[1:05:29] Grants and the gray.
[1:05:31] Is revolving, which includes
[1:05:33] includes circuit breaker and food services of the two major.
[1:05:37] Revolving accounts, but we'll look at those.
[1:05:40] More closely individually.
[1:05:43] For federal grants.
[1:05:45] Grants. Those are mostly entitlement grants.
[1:05:47] Grants. There's not a lot we can do to increase
[1:05:49] the funding. That's pretty much at the whim of Washington.
[1:05:53] There's a lot of work involved in federal grants, a
[1:05:55] lot of applications, lots of reporting, lots of re rules
[1:05:59] and regulations.
[1:06:02] These grants are administered through Desi's grant portal.
[1:06:06] Gems and these grants can also run up to 27
[1:06:09] months. So you can have multiple fiscal years running simultaneously,
[1:06:12] which can get a little confus.
[1:06:14] Confusing. These are the ones we're doing right now. Now
[1:06:18] you'll notice prism says that it's both federal and state.
[1:06:21] Prism is a multi-year grant that we're doing to support
[1:06:24] literacy. We're in year three.
[1:06:27] It started out as a state grant, but now it's
[1:06:29] a federal grant.
[1:06:31] And they're changing the rules of the game midstream.
[1:06:34] Dr. Stanway is gonna tell you more about that. Mm-hmm
[1:06:36] . I had to report them this year on the
[1:06:39] end of the year report as a federal grant.
[1:06:42] But I'm putting them on our report as a state
[1:06:44] grant, because I think.
[1:06:46] I think they belong there.
[1:06:48] But I give the state what they want.
[1:06:50] Our state grants.
[1:06:53] Grants are usually more competitive.
[1:06:55] They're also summer administered through Desi.
[1:06:58] Dessie but not all of them. Like the nursing grant
[1:07:01] is an example of one that isn't.
[1:07:04] Isn't and earmarks previously were not administered through Desi, but
[1:07:08] now they're going to be.
[1:07:10] And they have different deadlines, different start and end dates,
[1:07:13] different award amounts. They happen all over the place all
[1:07:16] over the time. They all.
[1:07:17] Run on their own interior logic, all of which has
[1:07:20] to be managed.
[1:07:22] Managed and private grants.
[1:07:25] Grants. We have a variety of private grants, Stoneham business,
[1:07:30] and community grants. We get a variety. We had four
[1:07:33] of.
[1:07:33] Those in FY 26.
[1:07:36] They're very helpful, but they also have a variety of
[1:07:38] application deadlines, different start and end dates, different reporting requirements.
[1:07:43] And they can come from lots of different sources. They're
[1:07:45] almost always competitive.
[1:07:48] In a bigger district, you would have a grant office
[1:07:51] to manage all of this, but here in Stoneham, we
[1:07:53] cobble it together as best we can.
[1:07:56] Key things to remember about grant funding. It is by
[1:07:59] far the smallest source of our revenue. Not that we
[1:08:01] don't relish every penny.
[1:08:03] But it's small relative to everything else.
[1:08:06] They take a lot of work to manage.
[1:08:09] From start to end.
[1:08:11] And that you have to spend them according to what
[1:08:13] you said, you were going to spend them on. When
[1:08:16] you do a grant application, that's a promise to spend
[1:08:18] them.
[1:08:20] On something. That's why they gave you the money.
[1:08:23] You can't say you're gonna spend it on one thing
[1:08:24] and then spend it on something completely different.
[1:08:27] That's why you have all those reporting requirements. So you
[1:08:29] can prove to them that you did in fact spend
[1:08:32] it on what you said you were gonna spend iton.
[1:08:35] Not every district is as scrupulous about that as they
[1:08:37] might be.
[1:08:39] And that's why things have gotten tighter and tighter and
[1:08:42] tighter in terms of repro reporting requirements.
[1:08:47] Okay.
[1:08:49] Revolving accounts.
[1:08:51] Accounts. These are fun. This is my favorite.
[1:08:56] so what you have here.
[1:08:58] Are what was spent.
[1:09:01] In fiscal 26 last year.
[1:09:05] And the balance as of June 30.
[1:09:09] So that's a point in time.
[1:09:12] The thing about a, a revolving account is it's always
[1:09:13] flowing.
[1:09:15] For example with food services.
[1:09:17] Services. We get reimbursed by the feds in the state,
[1:09:19] through the state.
[1:09:21] Afterwards. So all the meals we served in June, the
[1:09:24] cash didn't come in until July.
[1:09:27] That's why we had a deficit balance on June 30.
[1:09:30] Because we hadn't received the payments for the meals we
[1:09:32] served in June.
[1:09:33] They didn't come in until July. That's a pretty normal
[1:09:36] circumstance, unless you happen to have a PA a positive
[1:09:39] balance, which we did not this year.
[1:09:43] Our main, our main revolving accounts are circuit breaker.
[1:09:47] Food service.
[1:09:50] I'm building rental.
[1:09:53] Early childhood. We see such a strong, positive balance because
[1:09:57] they front load their tuitions.
[1:10:00] Tuitions. So a lot of those tuitions are really for
[1:10:02] this year.
[1:10:03] They just collected them in the prior fiscal year. So
[1:10:05] they're gonna spend down.
[1:10:07] Their account will drop precipitously as the year goes on,
[1:10:09] they just front load it. And then as they approach
[1:10:12] the end of next year, they'll be loading up tuition
[1:10:14] for the following.
[1:10:15] Year. So they're just on a different fiscal cycle. I
[1:10:17] don't know why, but I guess they always have been.
[1:10:20] So, and student activities encompasses a whole bunch of things.
[1:10:25] Lost Chromebook chargers. That was a new one to me.
[1:10:28] But lost books, things like that. Drama.
[1:10:32] Things like that. Go in here. Athletic stands alone. The
[1:10:35] state wants to track that separately.
[1:10:40] All right. General fund.
[1:10:43] This is how we landed at the end of the
[1:10:44] general fund.
[1:10:46] Our budget versus our actual expenses.
[1:10:49] Expenses. We brought it in pretty darn close.
[1:10:54] And these are the voting categories.
[1:10:57] That you've seen before.
[1:10:59] This is how we landed with the final expenses.
[1:11:02] Expenses now we weren't able to do a lot of
[1:11:06] detail as the year was going. And I didn't like
[1:11:08] that at all.
[1:11:10] And I'd like to show you.
[1:11:12] A forecast of the kind of detail.
[1:11:15] I want to be getting into, as we move into
[1:11:17] FY 27.
[1:11:19] And beyond on this page, I've just taken for example.
[1:11:24] Teachers union salaries.
[1:11:26] Salaries at the top. You see only art teachers.
[1:11:30] Teachers and you'll notice that there's two different object codes.
[1:11:33] 5 1, 1 0 1 and 5 1, 1 0 2.
[1:11:36] Which are 26 pays and 22 pays.
[1:11:40] Pays I broken the teachers out by these two categories
[1:11:42] so I can project the salaries. It's very difficult to
[1:11:45] project salaries. If they're being paid on two different pay
[1:11:48] cycle.
[1:11:48] Cycles in the same budget code.
[1:11:51] So I had to separate them.
[1:11:54] So you look in prior years, they were all lumped
[1:11:57] together.
[1:11:58] But now they're separated as we move for the next
[1:12:01] few fiscal.
[1:12:02] Years we're gonna see that separation and it it's gonna
[1:12:05] make more sense, but now it looks lumpy.
[1:12:07] Lumpy, the next group is the Robinhood and that's the
[1:12:11] whole elementary school.
[1:12:13] Teacher salaries. And you can see, again, the teachers were
[1:12:16] all kind of compressed together in a few lines.
[1:12:20] But now we've opened up categories, not only by the
[1:12:24] pay cycle, so I can better project salaries.
[1:12:27] Salaries, but also by special we've separated special ed.
[1:12:31] And sub-separate so we can have a sense of what
[1:12:33] sub-separate is costing us.
[1:12:35] Over time, just so we know.
[1:12:38] So we can really do analysis relative to the cost
[1:12:40] of in-district versus out of district.
[1:12:43] And I've also separated, separated out the categories that we
[1:12:46] need to report onto the state.
[1:12:49] Like medical, therapeutic and psych.
[1:12:52] Psyche and all of these things that tended to be
[1:12:53] jumbled together and now are broken out more Gran in
[1:12:56] a more granulated way.
[1:12:59] The final one is the total teacher's salary.
[1:13:04] All pulled together.
[1:13:06] And you can see from FY 23, we went from
[1:13:09] $17.9 million.
[1:13:12] FY 26 of 20 point.
[1:13:15] Roughly $20.9 million.
[1:13:17] An FY 27, the budget as of June 24th.
[1:13:21] Which was uploaded into Munis was 25.6.
[1:13:25] I'm working right now. And what you'll see in October
[1:13:28] is the update with all the summer hires and everything
[1:13:30] that's changed.
[1:13:32] So we'll have a better picture of where we actually
[1:13:34] landed for salaries.
[1:13:37] Salaries once all, once I get all of those.
[1:13:39] Hires and changes, updated.
[1:13:41] Updated. So
[1:13:47] questions.
[1:13:48] Questions. I'm happy to go back to any slides that
[1:13:52] interest you, anyone from the committee have questions.
[1:13:55] Questions. Yeah, I, I have a question. I.
[1:13:57] First, thank you. This is, I like the granularity. I
[1:13:59] like the breakout that you're doing. I think that's really
[1:14:01] good.
[1:14:04] Back up on the, on the revolving side.
[1:14:08] For that food services is that is the expenditure a
[1:14:11] hundred percent reimbursed or just a portion of it.
[1:14:17] Is it a hundred percent reimbursed?
[1:14:21] No. Some of the revenues that come in are from
[1:14:25] food sales, beyond the national.
[1:14:27] Food Sur national.
[1:14:30] School lunch program.
[1:14:33] We sell like additional
[1:14:35] additional meals or additional components.
[1:14:38] Components. And those are a cash basis. We sell lunches
[1:14:41] to teachers. We collect fees for that. Okay. Some of
[1:14:44] it is sales. It's a very small portion.
[1:14:47] Of it all right. Most of it, the, the lions
[1:14:49] share by far is, but not all of it. Okay.
[1:14:51] So then I guess my next, my follow up to
[1:14:53] that would be maybe it might help to have that.
[1:14:55] Alright receivable, or to offset that negative end of year
[1:14:58] balance to know what our balance would be expected. If
[1:15:00] you have that, it's a see, that's the whole thing
[1:15:02] of a.
[1:15:03] Revolving account. It's always moving. Right. But if you, and
[1:15:06] that's why, if you, but my thought is if you
[1:15:08] had the, what you're expecting as an outstanding payments at
[1:15:11] that.
[1:15:12] Time that receivable balance of say, all right, we're, we're
[1:15:14] expecting X number of dollars in.
[1:15:17] In reimbursements.
[1:15:19] Reimbursements factoring having another column, just to show that we're
[1:15:21] really not in that for someone that doesn't under have
[1:15:24] that knowledge or have that transparency.
[1:15:27] Or the window into when you see that we're a
[1:15:29] negative 50,000 at the end of balance, we know that
[1:15:31] that's not the actual, when you talk about account receivables,
[1:15:34] that's not the actual.
[1:15:36] What we're expected to have, right. So if we can
[1:15:38] have something in there to show that, Hey, we're not
[1:15:39] really negative 50 we're really are expected cash balance.
[1:15:44] For the, for the income, I mean, at the end
[1:15:45] of the fiscal year. Yeah.
[1:15:47] Right. The inflows that were, that the inflows that were
[1:15:49] expected at the end of the fiscal year would be
[1:15:52] this. So like we have, so what the June number
[1:15:54] would've that? That's a real.
[1:15:55] Point in time snapshot mm-hmm yep. Yep. And, and
[1:15:58] everybody understands how school lunch works. Mm-hmm so.
[1:16:03] Yeah, sure. No, I'm just, yeah, but you know that
[1:16:06] that's typical.
[1:16:07] You know, it is really hard to show.
[1:16:15] Sorry. No, it's okay. No, do we know, do we
[1:16:16] know what that, in what, as of.
[1:16:19] At the end of fiscal year 26.
[1:16:22] Did we know what the open.
[1:16:25] What monies were coming into offset that 50,000. I don't
[1:16:28] have that number off top. No, no, no, but I
[1:16:30] mean, it's known, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So my
[1:16:32] thought is.
[1:16:33] If you had included that on here, then we would,
[1:16:34] I'm not saying put it as the balance.
[1:16:37] I'm saying include that on here. So we know, all
[1:16:39] right, this is what our balance is now, but then
[1:16:41] we have.
[1:16:42] Receivables that are expected to come in.
[1:16:45] After the fiscal year end, that would offset. That would
[1:16:47] offset that 50,000. Okay. Yeah, that, that's my only thought.
[1:16:50] Yeah. And I think, I think too, this is, what's
[1:16:52] gonna be helpful.
[1:16:53] About, I understand what your question is and mm-hmm
[1:16:55] right now, here, we have the opportunity to do a
[1:16:58] lot of education when we're presenting the report. Mm-hmm.
[1:17:01] . But then when we go and we create a
[1:17:04] budget book that someone might pick up absent of Diane
[1:17:07] sitting here and being able to answer.
[1:17:09] Questions. These are the kinds of things that we need
[1:17:12] to work through when we're thinking about the budget book.
[1:17:15] And we're thinking about what we post.
[1:17:17] I remember that when I was doing this for the
[1:17:19] override.
[1:17:20] Education.
[1:17:23] The beginning, we weren't as like, we were just putting
[1:17:25] those numbers out there. And if you remember, we started
[1:17:27] to add some asterisks.
[1:17:29] Asterisks to some of those presentations. So.
[1:17:32] I think growing into what we wanna see and balancing
[1:17:35] the PA the, the, the difference between this is a
[1:17:39] snapshot. This is what it was when.
[1:17:40] We recorded it. This is actually what is going in
[1:17:43] at the FY, the end of FY 26. This is
[1:17:45] what we're putting in the report. Mm-hmm however,
[1:17:48] you know, in thinking through some of those things, I
[1:17:50] think.
[1:17:52] Especially with revolving accounts because they got a lot of
[1:17:54] questions about revolving accounts.
[1:17:56] Accounts last year when we were talking about budget.
[1:17:59] Some things and grants, which is part of the reason
[1:18:01] why Diane structured this, the way that she did.
[1:18:04] Those kinds of things are gonna become important. So we'll
[1:18:07] add that to our list and.
[1:18:10] Yeah. Yeah. Even, even that asterisk, Aaron just says expecting,
[1:18:14] you know,
[1:18:16] open receivables or something. Yeah. Some, yeah, even if, even
[1:18:18] if it isn't, even if we aren't able to produce
[1:18:21] a, an amount that is, you know, we feel good
[1:18:23] about.
[1:18:24] Saying, this is the amount we're getting. Mm-hmm for
[1:18:26] sure.
[1:18:27] We can say we can put an asterisk. Yeah, exactly,
[1:18:30] exactly. That's what a projection is. Right? So it's it.
[1:18:34] It's bound to change and.
[1:18:36] Mm-hmm , you know, if they were swings or.
[1:18:38] Just the same way. We, we project and estimate what
[1:18:41] we're getting for chapter 70. We don't know until, until,
[1:18:44] until after.
[1:18:46] Your husband. Yeah. But we make those assumptions. Yeah, though.
[1:18:49] Mm-hmm .
[1:18:50] Yep. Then I also had a question on the grants
[1:18:54] and I'm assuming you have this, I'm not asking for
[1:18:56] it per se, but I was just wondering, do you
[1:18:58] have software to help?
[1:18:59] You manage that or like, well, you know, the financial
[1:19:02] software Munis yeah. Were required to.
[1:19:05] Were required to have separate.
[1:19:08] Funds for each of these.
[1:19:10] And we break out. For example, title two.
[1:19:13] We have a fund code and then we have a
[1:19:15] different org.
[1:19:17] For each fiscal year, so that within the same fund
[1:19:20] they're related.
[1:19:22] But we know each fiscal year, because for example, we
[1:19:25] still have some funds available on title one mm-hmm .
[1:19:27] So FY 26, title one is.
[1:19:30] Still open and allowable. Yeah. And then FY 27 will
[1:19:34] be arriving sometime this fall.
[1:19:36] And so we'll wanna spend down 26 before we start
[1:19:38] 27, but we may be spending both concurrently. And so
[1:19:42] it's very important to keep that clean.
[1:19:45] There'd be no way you could report accurately back to
[1:19:47] these grantors if you didn't keep them clean in that
[1:19:49] way. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so you do have that
[1:19:52] burned down then of.
[1:19:53] Where yeah. Munis makes that possible. Okay, good. No, I
[1:19:55] was, I was, I was just hoping you had something
[1:19:57] to help me. I know how much work it is.
[1:19:59] Thank you that you have.
[1:20:01] That you're supported in that way. Yep.
[1:20:05] Any other questions from the committee?
[1:20:08] I've got one. So if you look at the slide
[1:20:11] that has the general fund voting categories.
[1:20:16] Yes, this one.
[1:20:18] So now
[1:20:21] all the crosswalking now to the new chart of accounts
[1:20:24] has been done for these numbers in FY 26.
[1:20:27] That's got your new chart of accounts.
[1:20:29] Accounts mm-hmm .
[1:20:34] so that then the 26 will be comparable to
[1:20:38] 27, right? Yes. Right. Okay. So 26 is in the
[1:20:41] new chart.
[1:20:42] Of accounts. So is it accurate to say, like we
[1:20:46] shouldn't look at 25 to 26, those numbers really? You
[1:20:50] can.
[1:20:50] Can't like say they're apples to apples cuz a lot
[1:20:52] of stuff moved around. Right. So it's not that.
[1:20:55] Professional development, you know, really went up by that much.
[1:20:57] We might've just moved stuff from another line. Right. Mm-hmm
[1:21:00] so I can't really vouch when six words, anything
[1:21:02] start and you.
[1:21:04] Go on. Okay. I can't vouch for anything before 26.
[1:21:06] Right. But I do think the general, the big lines.
[1:21:11] Are probably pretty good.
[1:21:14] Okay. Not a hundred percent. I can't swear to it,
[1:21:16] but okay.
[1:21:19] And I think too, what, you'll, what we did add
[1:21:22] money into the professional development fund. So it wouldn't be
[1:21:25] surprising.
[1:21:26] To me. I don't, I, I don't know if it's
[1:21:28] exactly what this represents here, but we did put that
[1:21:31] we also did in the curriculum development fund. So it
[1:21:34] doesn't.
[1:21:34] Doesn't surprise me, but then we took it out. So
[1:21:36] remember when we were doing some of that movement last
[1:21:39] year, because we were still negotiating. So we.
[1:21:43] Proposed that we were gonna put money in these categories,
[1:21:45] but then we had to back some of it out
[1:21:46] when we were doing the negotiation. So I think we're
[1:21:50] positioned now.
[1:21:51] Over the next few years to.
[1:21:54] Do what you just said, be able to do some
[1:21:56] comparison year over year, but why I'm really glad that
[1:21:59] you said that is because.
[1:22:01] Of the same reason of why you said what you
[1:22:03] just said. Mm-hmm if we've got, we have to
[1:22:05] decide now in the, in the subcommittee.
[1:22:08] How, what we are going to present in our budget
[1:22:10] book.
[1:22:12] And when these things live up live and we're.
[1:22:16] Continuing. And I, I wanna be really clear about this
[1:22:18] just because we are in a year of, other than
[1:22:22] the cafeteria.
[1:22:23] Not a lot of negotiations and naughty year where we're
[1:22:26] thinking about an override doesn't mean we shouldn't be talking
[1:22:29] about.
[1:22:30] And doing some really good education and predicting around finances
[1:22:33] and money.
[1:22:35] I wanna make sure that when somebody goes and looks
[1:22:36] at this chart, they don't say if I'm comparing 25
[1:22:40] to 26 and I see because it it's what.
[1:22:43] You just said, Diane came in and really.
[1:22:46] I mean, I remember when you first started and you
[1:22:49] said, I know what I could do. I could recreate
[1:22:51] the whole chart of accounts. And then I said, can
[1:22:53] you do that for FY?
[1:22:54] FY 26 and you went.
[1:22:57] Not while I'm also doing this, this and this, but
[1:22:59] guess what? You did it anyway.
[1:23:02] And so now we're in the position where.
[1:23:05] We're not gonna have to wait a whole nother year
[1:23:07] to be able to do those comparisons. So our FY
[1:23:09] 26, FY 27 and FY 28, when.
[1:23:13] We're really thinking about that three year.
[1:23:16] Negotiation swing, perhaps override conversation swing will have some really
[1:23:20] good apples to apples comparisons. I'm really glad you said
[1:23:23] that.
[1:23:24] Mm-hmm because now when we talk footnote, you know,
[1:23:26] I on a presentation or something yeah. To say, you
[1:23:29] know, new chart of accounts, I mean, people do that
[1:23:31] in, in.
[1:23:32] Accounting all the time. Yeah. You always see the footnote
[1:23:34] at the bottom, you know?
[1:23:36] Numbers restated and you know, 20, 24, whatever. So, well, even
[1:23:40] last year when Diane was.
[1:23:43] Not last year, but last fiscal year, when Diane was
[1:23:45] going over, she had made footnotes about how.
[1:23:49] Hey, this, this salary.
[1:23:52] Was was over.
[1:23:54] Listed under here. It's really, we moved it up over
[1:23:57] here. So that's why you're seeing such a big swing.
[1:23:59] So yeah, so we can add those. I think.
[1:24:02] Diane before we post this up, but this is.
[1:24:05] I really appreciate the collaboration around how we're kind of
[1:24:08] thinking this.
[1:24:10] This through and each one of these little, so just
[1:24:13] like Diane showed you.
[1:24:15] Here. I'm gonna brag on you, Diane, a little bit,
[1:24:17] just like she showed you here. And you're only really
[1:24:19] getting a snapshot of the details so that she can,
[1:24:22] she wanted to be able.
[1:24:23] To walk through and explain little bit by little bit,
[1:24:25] but every one of those voting categories does this. So
[1:24:29] where you see the little plus.
[1:24:32] To the left of the bucket.
[1:24:34] Sh we can click on that and pull down all
[1:24:36] the detail underneath each one of those things. And then
[1:24:39] if I ask her to sort it in a certain
[1:24:40] way,
[1:24:41] she can sort it by location.
[1:24:44] By subject by all of these great things for us
[1:24:46] that.
[1:24:48] When we're working in the budget and finance subcommittee, and
[1:24:51] we're looking at all of that in the detail and
[1:24:53] deciding what we wanna share out in ways.
[1:24:56] With, as we grow the budget book.
[1:24:58] It's it's really helpful. And we're also looking at other
[1:25:01] budget books in other towns to decide. We have some
[1:25:04] downstairs sitting on my desk right now with little.
[1:25:07] Earmarks in each one of them about how we want
[1:25:09] to gather and present.
[1:25:11] So it won't be be, it will be.
[1:25:14] Good to have the detail that we wanna have. And
[1:25:16] then now we're gonna just figure out how do we
[1:25:18] present this with a lot of entry points for people.
[1:25:21] From the, I'm just gonna look at your chart.
[1:25:24] To, I wanna look at what your chart means in
[1:25:27] an appendix or something like that. So one of the,
[1:25:30] one of the big things that the national.
[1:25:33] School business association says is that you should build a
[1:25:35] school budget, like a pyramid.
[1:25:37] That you should start at the top of the pyramid
[1:25:39] with the least amount of detail.
[1:25:41] It should be mostly narrative with very few numbers.
[1:25:44] And then you should go down, down, down, down, down
[1:25:46] in detail.
[1:25:48] So that people can read down to their level of
[1:25:49] comfort.
[1:25:51] Because some people are just want the executive summary. They
[1:25:53] want words only a couple of numbers.
[1:25:55] Some people want more details. Some people want more detail.
[1:25:58] Some people want more detail and some people want to
[1:26:00] drill all the way down to the bedrock and that's.
[1:26:04] That's fine. And you should create it that way so
[1:26:05] people can drill to whatever level they want. Mm-hmm .
[1:26:09] But if you do it the other way, and you
[1:26:11] start with all this detail, you'll lose half your audience
[1:26:13] right there. So.
[1:26:16] You know, that envisioning something that starts high, like, like
[1:26:19] this level.
[1:26:21] And then creating all the detail.
[1:26:23] With the footnote that you don't have to go any
[1:26:25] deeper than you feel comfortable. Mm-hmm mm-hmm . I
[1:26:29] remember having to sit down with a school committee member
[1:26:30] who.
[1:26:31] Was an attorney and walking him through the budget and
[1:26:34] I'm, and I told him just that you only have
[1:26:36] to go as deep as you feel comfortable. And he
[1:26:38] was like, oh, thank God.
[1:26:40] Mm-hmm and he was pretty much like executive level
[1:26:41] only. Great. I'm done. Yeah. Like makes sense to me.
[1:26:44] I'm fine. And, and other people just like, they wanna
[1:26:47] go down. Yeah.
[1:26:48] And that's fine. It it's really what works for you
[1:26:51] and to make a budget book that is flexible, that
[1:26:53] allows, like you said, all those points of entry.
[1:26:56] Yeah, as educators, we certainly don't wanna lose 50% of
[1:26:59] our audience. on the giddy up intro of the
[1:27:02] lesson.
[1:27:03] So, I mean, I'm really proud of this for a
[1:27:06] lot of reasons. I think.
[1:27:08] Not the least of which is.
[1:27:10] And Diane alluded to this a little bit at the
[1:27:12] beginning, you know, when everybody goes away for the summer
[1:27:14] and starts to think about winding down and reflecting as
[1:27:17] she's gearing up to.
[1:27:18] Put the fiscal year to rest.
[1:27:21] We've asked.
[1:27:23] Rightfully
[1:27:26] her and me to.
[1:27:29] Get to a place where we can be transparent about
[1:27:31] this is very important.
[1:27:33] And so what I like about this is I feel
[1:27:34] like it's progre, we, we hit a first down. I'll
[1:27:37] just use my analogy, maybe even a second down.
[1:27:40] And celebrating that moment and now planning. Okay. How are
[1:27:43] we gonna, how we've got a whole new set of.
[1:27:46] Of let's get the first down. Right. And what is
[1:27:48] that first down? It's gonna be the subcommittee helping.
[1:27:52] To kind of decide, okay, how are we gonna show
[1:27:53] up in October?
[1:27:55] No, we won't be talking about FY 26 anymore. We'll
[1:27:57] be talking about what we're spending.
[1:27:59] And I like when you say Diane FY 26 was
[1:28:03] what we spent.
[1:28:05] FY 27. Everybody is what we're currently spending right now
[1:28:09] to fund our school year. And FY 28 is what
[1:28:12] we plan to spend.
[1:28:13] You know, it's the, where we were, where we are
[1:28:15] and where we're going of the finances.
[1:28:18] Finances. And so you've, you've given us a nice peak
[1:28:20] into how we're gonna be able to do that. Well,
[1:28:24] anyone have questions.
[1:28:26] Questions from the committee.
[1:28:29] Thank you for all the work. Thank you. Yeah, this
[1:28:31] is very well done. Thank you, Diane. For all your
[1:28:33] hair, I'm excited to play with the numbers. in
[1:28:35] no way.
[1:28:37] Melanie's gonna win no way. No, I'm a bedrock person
[1:28:38] down. We're out. I wanna open the Melanie has identified
[1:28:42] herself as a bedrock person. we aim.
[1:28:45] You please. I do want to make one comment, like
[1:28:50] on, similar to piggyback on what we talked about before.
[1:28:53] With the, the rental system and now with the financial
[1:28:57] reporting and.
[1:28:59] Something that isn't known to the greater public, but we
[1:29:02] saw.
[1:29:04] An HR update that our staff can finally wow.
[1:29:08] Actually see their time off remaining live.
[1:29:12] So these are all things that we.
[1:29:15] Have been wanting to do and, and build the, these
[1:29:19] structures and these procedures and have these systems.
[1:29:23] And for, you know,
[1:29:26] money was tight and we couldn't do it.
[1:29:28] Staffing was tight. Staffing is still tight, but like, so
[1:29:31] there were so many things that like all of these
[1:29:33] things had to just keep getting.
[1:29:36] You know, shoved to the side and it's so fantastic
[1:29:39] to see.
[1:29:41] These things that we have wanted to do for years.
[1:29:44] Be able to, to start to come to fruition, fruition.
[1:29:48] I'm so glad.
[1:29:50] Thank you, Diane. Thank you so much.
[1:29:53] And we will slide back into finishing up the report
[1:29:56] with Dr.
[1:29:58] Stanway is gonna bring us home. She's gonna talk about
[1:30:00] multi-tiered systems of support.
[1:30:02] This nest underneath overarching goal number one.
[1:30:06] For teaching and learning.
[1:30:08] More more specifically, this talks about creating our first objective,
[1:30:12] which is thinking about those six to eight high level
[1:30:15] practices. And.
[1:30:16] The action step behind that is high level practice, focus
[1:30:18] area.
[1:30:20] Of consistent classroom, routines and structures.
[1:30:22] Structures. Okay. So we are building a lot of structures
[1:30:27] as Jamie was just talking about different kinds of S.
[1:30:31] Structures. We are doing this in our classrooms and with
[1:30:34] our professional learning this year as Dr. D Francisco alluded
[1:30:37] to.
[1:30:38] Earlier in the meeting, we've had a lot of PD
[1:30:41] already and it's September 24th. So we're really, you know, moving
[1:30:44] along.
[1:30:45] And here on the slide, you see the structure for
[1:30:50] mine over so I can look at it.
[1:30:52] Our theme this year is really getting curious.
[1:30:56] And we are look getting curious about creating our learning
[1:31:00] environments to meet all of our students' needs.
[1:31:03] We're focused in on that, through our multi-tiered systems of
[1:31:05] supports.
[1:31:07] Supports you've heard us talk for the last two years.
[1:31:10] Really is we're really identify, we've identified the seven high
[1:31:14] level.
[1:31:15] Instructional look fors with our staff.
[1:31:17] And so this year we got together on September 17th and
[1:31:21] 18th with our staff.
[1:31:23] And we were really able to start the conversation with
[1:31:27] staff across the district around consist one of our look
[1:31:30] fors or instructional.
[1:31:32] Routines is consistent classroom, routines and structures.
[1:31:36] Structures. And so staff were really able to apply that
[1:31:38] through that zero to five.
[1:31:40] Think space that we've also talked about quite frequently and
[1:31:44] we are using as a structure.
[1:31:46] To think through and identify, you know, what our common
[1:31:48] understanding is of consistent classroom, routines and structures.
[1:31:53] Structures the through line through all of this and the
[1:31:55] backdrop of it is our.
[1:31:57] You know, school-wide district-wide book read, which is power of
[1:32:01] our words. So it's language.
[1:32:04] And we're really thinking about that, what it looks like
[1:32:06] in our classroom and tier one.
[1:32:09] And then we pulled it through.
[1:32:11] Safety situations. So
[1:32:14] deescalation being one and, and also emergency situations.
[1:32:18] If you wanna go back to that one slide from
[1:32:20] silk. So this is an example.
[1:32:23] From our September 17th and 18th work from our.
[1:32:28] Early learning center. And so you see at the top
[1:32:31] there at the zero, that's a common understanding.
[1:32:34] Of consistent classroom routines and structures and staff spent time
[1:32:38] really defining that and having.
[1:32:42] Collaborative conversations at every school about, you know, what it
[1:32:45] looks like.
[1:32:47] Sounds like, and feels like in our classrooms, preschool.
[1:32:51] Through grade 12. So
[1:32:53] during this time with the through line of language.
[1:32:57] We then moved into, you know, how our words matter
[1:33:01] in the instructional space, whether it's academics, social, emotional, and.
[1:33:05] Behavioral and staff were able to.
[1:33:09] Listen to Mrs. O'Leary and myself.
[1:33:13] Doing a voice O voiced over presentation on deescalation strategies.
[1:33:17] And we were really.
[1:33:19] Very intentional and Mrs. O'Leary was very thoughtful.
[1:33:22] In planning this about making sure that we connected it
[1:33:25] back to our language and how we use our language
[1:33:28] to help students who.
[1:33:31] Are struggling to regulate emotions and behavior.
[1:33:34] To get back to center and to deescalate.
[1:33:38] We connected this then to standard response protocol.
[1:33:43] And some of you may remember, or even participated in,
[1:33:46] I think maybe school committee might have with, I love
[1:33:49] you guys training.
[1:33:51] And we are, we revisited this, you know, thinking about
[1:33:54] the language that we use during true emergency situations. You'll
[1:33:58] see.
[1:33:59] On the screen here that the, you know, these are
[1:34:02] the icons in the language for a hold.
[1:34:05] And we have to put the building on a hold,
[1:34:07] a secure.
[1:34:09] When we actually have to lock down.
[1:34:11] Evacuate and shelter.
[1:34:13] So this was just, you know, sort of revisiting it.
[1:34:16] We spent a short amount of time on this, so
[1:34:19] that principals can then go back again.
[1:34:21] And talk in greater detail with staff to make sure
[1:34:24] that we started the year off.
[1:34:26] Thinking about this, ensuring the safety of all of our
[1:34:29] students and connecting it back to the language that we
[1:34:32] use.
[1:34:33] And I'll just do a little shout out. There's some
[1:34:35] evidence for my professional goal right up on the screen
[1:34:38] which is safety. So this was a nice.
[1:34:41] Opportunity for us to, to attach that to language.
[1:34:47] Catherine also is
[1:34:50] she manages so much in the course of a day.
[1:34:52] And one of the things she manages is the prism
[1:34:54] grant.
[1:34:55] We thought this would be a nice thing for you
[1:34:57] to actually just look at in a timely way that
[1:35:00] Diane just presented about all the grants and time and
[1:35:02] effort and how.
[1:35:04] We keep track. This is.
[1:35:06] The prism grant, just a little peak of, I mean,
[1:35:09] I can bring it up if you want them to
[1:35:11] see the whole thing. Yeah. I don't know that they
[1:35:13] wanna go through the whole thing, but.
[1:35:15] It's certainly there. I could share the link.
[1:35:18] But the requirements from the department of education have grown.
[1:35:23] Significantly with the prism grant on the back end.
[1:35:27] So we are very fortunate to have this funding and
[1:35:29] it has, it has given us lots of opportunities to
[1:35:32] expand our literacy curriculum.
[1:35:35] Our instructional practices. We are, you know,
[1:35:38] engaged in a robust professional learning plan because of the
[1:35:41] grant at the elementary it's preschool through grade three.
[1:35:45] But you'll see on the screen, it's a, it's a
[1:35:47] screenshot. It's a picture of an action plan.
[1:35:50] And on the document tabs on the left.
[1:35:54] Each tab are areas that we are required.
[1:35:57] Required to map out in our prism literacy action plan.
[1:36:02] So we have.
[1:36:03] Goals and calendars in our agendas. We have to have
[1:36:06] a professional learning plan.
[1:36:08] A pre-K work plan, a K three work plan that
[1:36:11] are connected back to our goals.
[1:36:13] And assessment plan.
[1:36:16] We engage in a learning systems scan, and we have
[1:36:19] to rate ourselves each year.
[1:36:21] The other component of this is that teachers across the
[1:36:25] district are asked to participate in a survey developed by
[1:36:28] brown university, which.
[1:36:30] Is actually measuring the impact.
[1:36:33] Of the activities and the professional learning and the grant
[1:36:34] on teacher knowledge around literacy in the science of reading
[1:36:38] and, and that's quite an extensive.
[1:36:41] Survey. So I'm really grateful for the teachers who have.
[1:36:44] Been really wonderful about participating in that.
[1:36:47] And, and leaned into it and will be asked to
[1:36:50] do that again this year.
[1:36:52] And we are now required to and what you don't
[1:36:54] see. Oh, you might see on here is fund use.
[1:36:57] So I keep a very detailed.
[1:36:59] Spreadsheet of how we are spending our money and all
[1:37:02] the documents that are attached to it.
[1:37:05] But I now need to.
[1:37:07] You know, seek permission from.
[1:37:09] My contact at Desi for everything that we spend.
[1:37:13] So there's the oversight of the grant.
[1:37:16] And sort of the time and effort that goes into
[1:37:18] it is this is just an example. I am happy
[1:37:20] to do it, and I am thrilled that we have
[1:37:22] the money, but I just wanted to show.
[1:37:24] You it really tied into what Diane Johnson was just sharing
[1:37:28] with you is that we do not have a grant
[1:37:30] manager.
[1:37:32] We are all wearing lots of hats. This grant is
[1:37:34] not just.
[1:37:36] My I'm not just managing it. Diane is helping me
[1:37:38] manage it. My administrative assistant Alex Nuen is helping me
[1:37:42] significantly.
[1:37:44] To manage it and keep track. Jill Anderson is, is
[1:37:47] helping to pay things so.
[1:37:49] It is, you know, it's, it's really that, you know,
[1:37:52] team effort here and making sure that we're following through
[1:37:56] on all of the grant expectations.
[1:37:59] Thank you. You're welcome. And that is the end of
[1:38:01] the superintendent's report.
[1:38:03] All right. Any other questions? Discussion.
[1:38:08] Okay. We are moving on. We have our school building
[1:38:11] committee update, which we are going to soon put under
[1:38:14] committee.
[1:38:16] Lays liaison subcommittee reports, but I'm assuming no.
[1:38:19] Report we're meeting on Monday, Monday night, Monday night. Okay.
[1:38:24] All right committee lays on subcommittee reports.
[1:38:30] Well, I have a couple.
[1:38:32] So we'll see, we'll do it.
[1:38:35] Do
[1:38:38] stone and coalition.
[1:38:40] And there's a couple things. So on Saturday from three
[1:38:43] to six, there's gonna be the recovery Fest.
[1:38:46] Which is gonna be on storm common. They're gonna have
[1:38:48] vendors there, community.
[1:38:50] Resources, inspirational speakers.
[1:38:53] Speakers raffles. I don't like that word, but there's gonna
[1:38:55] be lots of raffles.
[1:38:57] Raffles. If it rains, it will be in the Stoneham
[1:38:59] town hall.
[1:39:01] Meeting room.
[1:39:03] The strong coalitions also, and the storm health department is
[1:39:07] partnering and putting together mental health, first aid trainings.
[1:39:12] Trainings there's gonna be a two-parter.
[1:39:14] So it's gonna be on October 5th and October 6th.
[1:39:17] And if you want more information, you can go to
[1:39:19] their website.
[1:39:21] Stone coalition.
[1:39:23] And then stone Alliance against violence.
[1:39:28] Is putting on a comedy for a cause.
[1:39:31] It's going to be at.
[1:39:33] Prince pizza in sagas.
[1:39:36] Sagas and mostly it's gonna have pizza.
[1:39:38] Comedy and donations.
[1:39:41] To save.
[1:39:44] Great. Thank you very much.
[1:39:46] Anything else. All right, I'll take a motion. I had
[1:39:49] one, sorry, from the S B C E F. They're
[1:39:52] having their annual character breakfast.
[1:39:54] At got shifted from the springtime to the fall.
[1:39:57] And then I'll be Saturday, October 17th, from nine to 11
[1:40:00] at the high school Spartan place.
[1:40:03] It's $8 per child, adults and children under one are
[1:40:06] free.
[1:40:07] It's an opportunity to have breakfast juice, coffee, donuts games,
[1:40:12] play for the kids to play games, earn prizes and.
[1:40:16] Come dressed up as it's Halloween season and.
[1:40:19] There'll be other volunteers that are dressed up as.
[1:40:22] Different characters. So it could be a good event.
[1:40:25] Great. Thank you.
[1:40:28] All right. I will take a motion. We do have
[1:40:30] a need for executive session.
[1:40:33] Would someone like to make a motion and read it,
[1:40:34] please?
[1:40:36] Actually, I'm sorry.
[1:40:38] What about new stuff? I mean,
[1:40:40] yes. Is there new items? I'm sorry. No, I don't
[1:40:42] have I missed that one. Does anyone have any new
[1:40:44] items?
[1:40:46] It's not on here.
[1:40:47] Is it not? Yeah, it's right. It's at the bottom
[1:40:49] way. Oh, it got cut off on mine. Okay. Yeah.
[1:40:51] All right. Sorry. Anyone have any new items?
[1:40:56] Okay.
[1:40:57] Was someone like to make a motion for executive session?
[1:41:01] I'll make a motion to enter into executive session for
[1:41:04] the purpose of collective bargaining per master in law, chapter
[1:41:06] 30, a section 21 a and.
[1:41:09] Three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with
[1:41:13] the cafeteria unit or litigation. If an open meeting may
[1:41:15] have a detrimental effect.
[1:41:17] On the bargaining or litigating position of the public body
[1:41:19] and the chair. So declares not to return.
[1:41:22] Is there a second, second.
[1:41:25] Okay. We'll do a roll call, Melanie. Yes. Jamie? Yes.
[1:41:28] Corey. Yes, Jr. Yes. And I'm a yes as well.
[1:41:31] Thank you so much. We Ajour and have a good
[1:41:32] night.