Minutes – May 4, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Monument Mountain Regional High School – Library

May 4, 2017 – 6:30 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                S. Bannon, W. Fields, J. St. Peter, R. Dohoney, A. Hutchinson, D. Weston, S. Stephen, D. Singer, K. Piasecki

Administration:                      Marianne Young (for Peter Dillon)

Staff/Public:                            M. Berle, S. Soule

Absent:                                   P. Dillon, A. Potter

List of Documents Distributed:

December 15, 2016 Meet & Confer Minutes; April 13, 2017 Minutes; Custodian, rev. 5/4/2017; Custodian Supervisor, rev. 5/4/2017; District Maintenance Supervisor, rev. 5/4/2017; Head Building Custodian, rev. 5/4/2017; Skilled Maintenance, rev. 5/4/2017
May 4, 2017 Personnel Report

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

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately after completion of the 6:30pm Executive Session.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

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

EXECUTIVE SESSION:  BHEA Unit C

Motion to adjourn to Executive Session for the purposes of negotiations to discuss a proposed contract between The District and BHEA Unit C accordance to Mass General Laws, Chapter 30A, Subsection 21A, #2 and #3.  Holding the discussion in open session may have a detrimental effect on negotiations. The School Committee will reconvene in open session:  Richard Dohoney           Seconded:  William Fields      Roll Call Vote:  Unanimous

MINUTES

BHRSD Meet & Confer Meeting dated December 15, 2016
BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated April 13, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:   W. Fields                 Seconded:    J. St. Peter               Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT

• Good News Item(s) – None
• Job Descriptions – Revisions:
  • Custodian; Custodian Supervisor; Head Building Custodian; Skilled Maintenance; District Maintenance Supervisor: Young – I do not have copies of the job descriptions.  They were in provided in the packet.  What you will need to do is vote on the changes.  The change anticipates custodians’ additional responsibilities due to snow, weather or additional events outside of their regular hours.  S. Soule – Just clarification of something that we talk about in the interview process when we are hiring somebody that all of those jobs, will at some point in time require that you work more than 40 hours a week.  Instead of relying on that being a verbal agreement, I would like to see it in writing in the job description.  S. Bannon – The union has already seen his and agreed?  S. Soule – I think they have seen it.  I have talked to Paul about it and what the process was.  You guys vote then we impact bargain it but I don’t think there is really any bargaining to do because everybody has pretty much worked those hours when requested so it is more of a formality at this point.

MOTION TO APPROVE EACH OF THE REVISED JOB DESCRIPTIONS:  J. St. Peter        Seconded:  S. Stephen    Approved:  Unanimous

• Proposed Vote – Unit C Contract

MOTION TO APPROVE UNIT C (PARAPROFESSIONALS) CONTRACT:  R. Dohoney       Seconded:  S. Stephen     Approved:  Unanimous

• Administrative Search Updates:
  • High School Principal Search – M. Young – the high school principal search is well underway. There is a committee of about little over 30 people who will be participating in the interviews on May 11th.  The committee includes faculty, students, both Mary and Ben, members of the community and parents.  They are scheduling those interviews and once they occur, Peter will advance finalists to public forums.
  • Director of Teaching and Learning Search – M. Young – this position has been advertised and applications are coming in. Right now Peter is focusing on facilitating and setting up the interviews for the principal and the next step in the Director of Teaching and Learning search will be putting the search committee together.  That search committee will review the applications and he will set up the interviews.  Bannon – do you know how many applications for the principal have come in?  M. Young – 9.  A point that I learned last week; I thought that was a low number for applicants but I am told by an attorney for schools out in the eastern part of the state that they are getting even fewer than that in many school districts across the Commonwealth right now.  D. Weston – they have made the certification process very challenging.  I was in the first group that had to it the new way but mine wasn’t evaluated fully.  They just used our information as benchmarks as scoring examples.  It was challenging and a great deal of work.  S. Bannon – I think my experience is more for Superintendent searches and we used to get 30-40 people for that.  That may have changed by now too.
• Updates:
  • Regional Agreement and Town Meetings – The budgets passed overwhelmingly and with applause in Great Barrington and West Stockbridge. The Stockbridge vote is on May 15th at Town Meeting.  Weston – On Tuesday night at the Stockbridge Library, some people asked some very good questions.  They were challenging questions but they were good.  I think we cleared up some misinformation.  I think just to credit Rich Bradway who did a lot of work on this; Judge Rutberg and Bronley Boyd have done a ton of work on this; so did Peter and Sharon.  We are just getting a little more prepared for the town meeting so we can get the message out clear and concisely and avoid some misconceptions that are out there.  B. Fields – when will it come up at the Town Meeting?  D. Weston – we don’t know where it is on the warrant.
  • Re-imagination –
  • Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project (SBSSP) – M. Young – they had a great meeting with all of the superintendents and tech people as well as representatives of the Governor’s office. They will be sharing updates about technology, grants and professional development at the June meeting.  The Berkshire County Shared Services Group that meets on Saturday morning in Dalton every three weeks, had a meeting last Saturday.  The Governor’s representative to Western Mass was there as well as Senator Hines; there was an article in the Eagle about it today and we keep plugging forward with that group.  I am cautiously optimistic that we will come to some recommendations by the middle of summer.  That group will not make any decisions; they will make recommendations and they are very conscience of the fact that they have to get support of the citizens in order for anything to work.  We will see what happens.

SUB-COMMITTEE REPORTS:

• Policy Subcommittee – None
• Building and Grounds Subcommittee – None
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee – Weston we met on the 27th in Richmond. It is a little different this year because we are actually evaluating him with three other school committees.  The Shaker Mountain Union is comprised of Richmond, Hancock and New Ashford school committees so it is a new process.  We met and it was a very productive meeting.  Very positive group of people to work with and we are going to be sending out some paperwork for people to us to do evaluations and then we are going to meet again on Flag Day which is June 14th to go over that information and finalize his evaluation.  S. Bannon – Peter is at a Teacher of the Year ceremony for Ally Fischer and Sharon is at the a business administrator’s meeting; so we are lucky to have Marianne filling in. 
• Technology Subcommittee – None
• Finance Subcommittee: We have a meeting scheduled for May 10th and one for May 24th, both at 5:30pm
• Regional Agreement Amendment Subcommittee – None
• District Consolidation & Sharing Subcommittee – S. Bannon – we are trying to get a meeting set up with Southern Berkshire and I think we do have a meeting with Shaker Mountain. Dohoney – there is some discussion that we are going to combine the shared services joint meeting with Shaker Mountain with the Superintendent’s Evaluation because all of the members from the other side are from both committees; so basically we are convening them twice to meet with different subsets of our group.  That is on June 14th in Richmond at 6pm.

PERSONNEL REPORT:

• Long-term Substitute Appointment(s)
• Resignation(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)
• Volunteer(s)

BUSINESS OPERATION: – None

EDUCATION NEWS – None

OLD BUSINESS – None

NEW BUSINESS:

• Public Comment
• Written Communication

Motion to Adjourn:    B. Fields               Seconded:  K. Piasecki                     Approved:  Unanimous

Meeting Adjourned at 7:58pm

The next meeting is scheduled for June 1, 2017 at Monument Valley Regional  Middle School.

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary