BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington           Stockbridge        West Stockbridge

 SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

WEST STOCKBRIDGE TOWN HALL 

 7:00 p.m. – January 14, 2016

 Present:

School Committee:   S. Bannon, R. Bradway,  D. Weston, A. Potter, J. St. Peter, W. Fields,  K. Piasecki, C. Shelton, F. Clark

 Administration:        P. Dillon, S. Harrison

 Staff/Public:              B. Doren, M. Young, S. Soule, D. Long, J. Briggs, Kristy Farina, Melinda Olds, Kate Burdsall, Sherry DeCelle

 Absent:  R. Dohoney, M. Berle

List of Documents Distributed:  BHRSD School Committee 10-22-15 minutes; BHRSD School Committee 9-03-15 minutes; Disability Definitions & Related Links from DESE Website; January 14, 2016 agenda – revised; January 14, 2016 agenda; January 14, 2016 Pers. Report; Outline of Special Education Programmatic Overview; SC MEMO Authorizing Billing

RECORDER NOTE: Meeting attended by recorder and minutes being transcribed from online streaming video from CTSBtv.org after the fact. Length of meeting: 1hr 20min

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 CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order @ 7:00pm

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PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

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

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MINUTES –

BHRSD School Committee 9-03-15 minutes

BHRSD School Committee 10-22-15 minutes

 

Motion to approve minutes: R. Bradway     Seconded: W.Fields      Approved: Unanimous

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TREASURER’S REPORT  -None

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SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT

P.Dillon:

  • Meeting Lee/Tyringham School Union scheduled Jan 26, 2016 at 7pm
  • Info from MSBA: Window open to submit SOIs by April 8th. He recommends SOI submission be held off this round. Work through the issues at hand and submit in a year from now. Bannon: If all are in agreement, it will be taken off the table for now. No committee member was objectionable to holding off on SOI submission this year.
  • Farmington River School Committee voted on meeting with BHRSD School Committee. Doreen will work on dates for a future meeting with the Farmington River Committee.

Parents @ Farmington River meeting drove the decision to meet w/ BHRSD because

Farmington River was also meeting with Southern Berkshire School District Committee.

The Committee /Sub-committee would be happy to meet with FRSD sub-committee. Public attendee, Sherry DeCelle, parent at Farmington River School spoke of her appreciation for the two schools being willing to meet.

S.Bannon: Reminder- BHRSD Committee is meeting with Lee School Committee on Jan 21, 2016 @ 7pm at Lee High School.

GOOD NEWS ITEM(S)

Muddy Brook Elementary School (MBE)

P.Dillon reporting for M. Berle, Principal: (Mary Berle is in Virginia w 8 other elementary school math experts as part of National Council of Teaching of Math. Kathy Erickson recommended Mary attend, Mary was interviewed and selected to attend. Nice national & campus connection)

  • 2nd Annual mid-year data review- uses data to improve instruction at mid-year.
  • Project Connection started again- 110 students participating = little more than ¼ of students.
  • Title 1 Tutoring (Fed program that supports family in economic need)- 50 additional students started. 14 staff members involved. Going well.
  • Running Project Connection and Title 1 Tutoring concurrently means shared buses after.
  • Kindergarten team started working w/ Flying Cloud – Working on Weather
  • First Grade project starting w/ IS183- mapping our campus
  • Library- Massachusetts Children Book Award program. New section containing books in English and Spanish or just Spanish.
  • First Annual Live Country Family Dance Night w band & live calling. Jan 22 6-7:30pm. Students have been learning dances in PE to share with family members that night.

Monument Valley Middle School (DBM)

B.Doren, Principal:

  • Sense of Team- Teachers, staff, admin, paras communicate amazingly well via email but face-to-face is really wonderful. All Teams meet everyday to collaborate. Once a week Student Support Team meets for exploratory learning. All conversations are centered around student learning and adjustments to improve that learning. Very proud of teachers.
  • 5th grade- created a dance to help kinesthetic learners understand two-digit multiplication. “Up, diagonally, zero-zero-zero-zero slide. Up, diagonally, then add everything together to get the product”. Set to lyrics and music w/ teacher Rob Putnam. Learning through movement.
  • Collaboration w Flying Cloud- they don’t come in with curriculum, instead the work with the teachers and develop curriculum for that session building on last years session and planning future session to make it a 3-year collaborative experience.
  • Exploratory connected w Flying Cloud in design class to do robotic
  • Excellent 2nd collaboration between DBM & MBE art teachers (Katie & Ali) around artist Sal Lewit’s work. Big exhibit at MassMoca to be visited by 2nd & 8th graders. Katie & Ali also presenting @ Mass Arts Educators Asocc this year. Amazing collaboration.
  • Annual Musical coming up Willy Wonka – w teacher Rob Putnam. Event in March and 60 students already signed up for auditions.
  • Student Council- great student leaders this year. Moved away from “popularity contest” w speeches at the beginning of the year and everyone voted based on speeches. Also have grade elected representatives build into the Student Council. Amazing 7th & 8th grade reps working w/ Ben & Exploratory Team on student/school issues advocating for themselves and their peers.
  • 8th Grade- Group of students showing levels of anxiety. They worked w school adj councilor, researched and presented on stress factors of teenagers and students. Will present to Advisory Team and 8th grade students- normalizing what it’s like to be a teeenager and not trying to hide the stress/emotions. Amazing work that’s adult supported and student led.
  • Restorative Practices-“Circle-up” is really working great to help students talk to/listen to each other and/or adults when things get tough or go unexpectedly. Circle implemented w Project Connection.
  • Farm to School- Trustees of the Reservations (land trustees) have a new position just for developing the trustee land & working w DBM to plan. Collaboration w Berkshire Grown & Co-Op.
  • Accolades to Paras- great impact on students day-in/day-out. Many are really teachers to the students either with 1-on-1 attention or augmenting classrooms and giving teacher feedback on helping individual students. Big appreciation to paraprofessionals.

Monument Mountain Regional High School (MMRHS)

M.Young, Principal:

  • Tedtalk- “Before I die..’ series by Connie Chang- Kara Staunton MMRHS librarian has echoed that by turning a wall in the library into a “in 2016, I hope to…” wall with spots for anyone to fill in. This was a student idea.
  • $14,000 from Dept of Ed in Perkins Grant for CBTE programs- for teacher materials and prof coaching from independent evaluators; observe, feedback, help set new plans. CBTE teachers will take 2 days to visit McCann Tech to see how CBTE programs are done in full vocational schools.
  • Mid-year assessments in 2 weeks- 1st semester ends Jan 22, 2016. Some teachers will implement the summer fellowship assessments. Students and teachers will start 2nd semester courses on Jan 27 2016.
  • Bill Fields, Peter Dillon, MaryAnn Young working with Skip Mead & John Warren to develop a W.E.Dubois speaker series using the Dubois legacy & commitment to education to bring in experts in the areas Dubois studied/wrote about.
  • School Center Inc awarded $10,000-$13,000 to students and teachers. A 3-teacher team (Kara Staunton, Tom Roy, Erin Fischer) working with 7 students to create a robotics program. Brock Tenini granted money for an electric go-cart for Wise Project in January. Young woman in life-skills-program asked for funding to continue guitar lessons; granted.
  • Thanks to Peter Carlotto, Ron Getchell, Frank Briggs for beautiful new back hall trophy case.
  • School Council has been meeting. Involved parents and students have 3 projects this year: 1) revamp orientation programming for parents new to MMRHS, parents moving into the district. 2) Group working with Tom Roy to make webpage content most applicable and easily accessible. Also to be working with Rich Bradway and Dave Long. 3) Group working on a Health and Wellness Initiative focussing on how do we help students and teachers manage anxiety, stress, and High School pace. Working w Pam Morehouse, school adj councilor to put in place simple practices without adding interruption or more stress.
  • X-Tech (exploring technology) is back this year. All freshman spend 10 days traveling through all CBTE classes, art, PE/health & wellness, yoda, automotive, horticulture, video making. Dr Santos presenting ER info about drug and alcohol accidents. Railroad Street Project talk about student opportunities. Nancy Gray & Pam Morehouse currently in 3rd day of drug and alcohol screening funded by DA’s office. Students very open to this program.

Programmatic Overview –

Special Education: Kate Burdsall Presenting

Kate carefully and thoroughly goes through the handout provided to the Committee: Outline of Special Education Programmatic Overview.  Her intention is NOT to go through the entire handout but to give the big overview of the programs for the entire district and then go through each school individually.

The frame of this handout information is the info Kate has pulled together and gathered from others in the department that contributed, describing what their programs are/what the programs provide to students. Great information for Committee to see what is happening within the SPED  programs day-to-day.

3 revisions to be noted ahead of time:

pg1- Number of Students in BHRSD by Disability Category should read 230

pg6- Overview from Sensory Vision Teacher missing. Submitted today and will be added to report

pg9- At MBE, list of Paraprofessionals list all paras, not just SPED paras and that list will be amended to only include only the 12 SPED Paraprofessionals

All numbers in the report are based on the Oct. 2015 SIMS report. SPED #s are always changing and while the report numbers may be reflective of the current data, they may not be absolute for where the district is at this very moment.

The report, Outline of Special Education Programmatic Overview, is attached to this meeting’s minutes for public viewing.

Jen Hiza from the Center School in Holyoke is at MBE working with Mahalo program but is also training staff so that eventually, when she leaves, the teachers will be able to continue her work.

Q&A:

F.Clark: Amazing and Student focused program across the schools as presented. Q: We’ve talked about collaboration with other schools for shared SPED programs resources.

Kate: : Discussing with Sandy Hubbard, Special Needs Director for Southern Berkshire School District where the student needs are showing and how programs in each district can be shared. Also with all other area districts, we are discussing how we can all work together to provide for the special needs of a few hand-fulls of students across the area. Those discussions are happening and trying to figure out what the appropriate next steps are.

F.Clark: Do we have space in our programs to bring in additional students?

Kate: Some programs, maybe. Others, not really. “Bridging the Gap” is a program we could put a couple more students in right now, “Life Skills” at MMRHS has room for 1 or 2 more students. Hesitant to expand beyond ourselves with the TLC program at MBE or DBM because both programs are good but they’re not fully developed yet.

Sam Ernst from Central Berkshire is coming to observe “Life Skills” and “Bridging the Gap” because those programs are working so well and C. Berkshire is trying to develop/better their programs.

B.Fields: Does the number 230 include 766s and 504s?

Kate: Not 504s. Although being director of special services director, I intentionally made this overview specifically for SPED only.

B.Fields: But some of these numbers cover the 504s as well?

Kate: 504s may have similar disability categories, but that will be a different report separate from special education.

Weston:We added an assistant speech pathologist because we weren’t meeting a need. Has that need been met?

Kate: I think so. We were understaffed at school start because of a late summer resignation. Started year with a full time speech pathologist and a full time  SLPA. Hired a full time SLP, Shannon Coleman, in October and we need to live this program now, fully staffed, a little longer before I can give a definitive answer. All have full caseloads.

D.Weston: Social Worker hire; proposed shifts say budget neural but we’d like to see strong numbers on that to see real concrete numbers of what costs are.

Kate: I can do that.

D.Weston:  Would the staff who are working for higher levels of training eliminate some of these service contacts once their training was completed?

Kate: Maybe, maybe not. Maybe because those training now have a full teaching load, so to provide other services with that training would cause a vacancy somewhere where there is a need.

D.Weston: Could we hire more staff rather than contract out or would that be more expensive?

Kater: It may be cost neutral. We could look more into that.

December 22nd visit from the Governor & Lieutenant Governor:

P.Dillon: Signing of Community Compact Six School District involving 17 towns. Largest Community Compact signing. Funding: $75,000 cash, $50,000 range (exact unknown) for technology. Smitty and Peter talked w local banks and The Berkshire Taconic Foundation and have received an additional $20,000 from local banks- Lee Bank, Berkshire Bank, Adams Community Bank. Berkshire Taconic contributed more. Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project is now focusing on curriculum work, professional development, SPED programs.

Updates:

Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project (SBSSP): Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project is now focusing on curriculum work, professional development, SPED programs.

Discussions with Shaker Mountain, Lee & Farmington River- Earlier discussion about Farmington River, joint meeting already w Shaker Mountain, joint meeting w Lee coming up. All conversations are going very well.

 

 

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 SUB-COMMITTEE REPORTS

  • Policy Sub Committee- S. Bannon: Doreen will set up. Need to get going but almost every night there is already a meeting on the calendar.
  • Building and Grounds Sub Committee- R. Bradway: no meeting yet.
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee- D.Weston: nothing new
  • Technology Sub Committee- R.Bradway Met last night w 2 agenda items-

1) review 2015-2016 technology purchases and upgrades- Committee already approved ~ $100,000 in capital costs for updates/upgrades on computers and network. Dave Long reported at meeting that new laptops have been purchased or upgraded and costs were a little lower than expected so Dave put that money into network updating where items will be purchased in coming weeks and get those under way.

2) Ongoing issues with IT- Dave did audit on our software licences and support contract and savings can be found there. Usual costs are $38,000 annually and that can be lowered to ~$17,000. Biggest IT ongoing issues is in printing: printing costs and daily help desk tickets. Dave is going to research that more to see what can be done to improve those services and reduce costs. Dave also looking at ongoing network monitoring, issues with and managing all Ipads district has, how to utilize technology to help with operational protocols workflow to manage things like IEPs, website, asset management to keep track of all we are producing.

  • Finance Sub Committee- S.Bannon: Meets next Tuesday 01/19/16 at 4:30pm at District Office
  • Regional Agreement Amendment Sub Committee- S.Bannon: Meets next Tuesday 01/19/16 at 6:00pm at District Office
  • District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee- R.Bradway hasn’t met. Waiting for other districts to schedule meetings (Farmington River)

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PERSONNEL REPORT

  • Retirement(s)
  • Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

Retirement(s):

Congdon, Christine               Assistant Principal – Monument Valley                        06/30/16

Huggins, Mary                      Paraprofessional – Monument Valley                          06/30/16

Extra-Curricular Appointments:

(all 2015 – 2016  unless otherwise noted)

Rates/stipends listed below are based on the FY15 Exhibit B Chart.  These may be adjusted once negotiations are finalized.

Monument Mountain Regional High School

Bierwith, Robert      MCAS – Academic Support Tutor      MCAS Grant               Stipend:  $25/hr.

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BUSINESS OPERATION                                

Approval to Authorize Insurance Billing to Other Districts/Municipalities

S.Harrison: Recommends we start billing other towns and districts for their proportional costs. There is a motion in the packet. Note: this is M.G.L. 32B and up for removal for next year, so if we get the bills out this year she is uncertain what will happen next year, if it is removed.

D.Weston: Do we stand to gain or lose?

S.Harrison: We may come ahead but it’s about a break even.

MEMO explaining M.G.L 32B Section 9A 1/2 in this Committee meetings electronic packet.Motion made by Dan Weston:

That the Berkshire Hills Regional School District School Committee, in accordance with M.G.L. Chapter 32B, Section 9A 1/2, certifies the amount of $11,444.19 be billed to various districts for their share of FY15 health insurance payments for BHRSD retirees.

Seconded:  J. St.Peter                 Approved: Unanimous

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EDUCATION NEWS– None

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 OLD BUSINESS– None

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 NEW BUSINESS

B.Fields: Based on yesterday’s accident out front of the MMRHS, can the Committee send a letter to the Department of Transportation

P.Dillon:Article in Edge and today’s Eagle about the intersection. Dangerous area. Police coverage is only when available and if there is another emergency, that police coverage must respond to emergency and leave the school coverage.

DOT says from statistical data, that site doesn’t have enough data to revisit as an area of concern but on an emotional/social level, there may be something there. The Committee writing a letter would be a good idea and he could write it on the Committee’s behalf, share at next meeting, get a vote on it OR the Committee could empower Peter to write the letter so no time is lost after last night’s accident.

Bill Fields makes a motion for the Committee to empower Peter Dillon to write a letter to the Dept of Transportation about alternatives to address the traffic problems around and leading up to the High School, from both the North and South.

Seconded by F.Clark     Approved: Unanimous

 

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PUBLIC COMMENT– None

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WRITTEN COMMUNICATION- None

The next meeting is scheduled for January 28, 2016 – Audit Review & Regular Meeting –Monument Valley Middle School

Executive Session Agenda

for the Purpose of Negotiations

(Chapter 30A, Sections 21, 22, 23 # 3) 

Motion to move to Executive Session by S.Bannon. Roll Call: All “yes”, So moved.

Public Session Adjourned at 8:20pm

Submitted by:   Rebecca Burcher, Recorder

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Rebecca Burcher, Recorder

 

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School Committee Secretary