Minutes – August 24, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library

August 24, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                S. Bannon, J. St. Peter, K. Piasecki, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson, B. Fields

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                            B. Doren, N. Thompson, A. Rex, K. Burdsall, K. Farina, S. Soule

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated July 27, 2017
Personnel Report dated August 24, 2017

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:    — hr. 50 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

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

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

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

MINUTES:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated July 27, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:   A. Potter                Seconded:  J. St. Peter                  Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:  N/A

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s): See below
• Introductions:
  • Amy Rex, MMRHS, Principal
  • Kristi Farina, Director of Learning & Teaching
• Requests:
  • MMRHS – Additional Boys Soccer Coach funded by Booster Club: Dillon – they are anticipating 50 plus players are preseason so I am excited about that.  It is nice to have another person there to support them.

Motion to approve Additional Boys Soccer Coach:   A. Potter                Seconded:  B. Fields                  Approved:  Unanimous

• Review and Approve Student/Family Handbooks: Dillon – We have three handbooks, one for each of the buildings.  You noticed when you read them that we are moving toward having a section that is fairly universal across the three buildings as well as one part that is specific to each of the buildings.  The assistant principals worked together to try to get more aligned, and I think going forward we will be even more aligned.  Anything anyone noticed?  I read them all cover to cover but even I miss a typo.

Motion to approve 2017-18 Student and Family Handbooks for Monument Mount Regional High School, Du Bois Regional Middle School and Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School:  B. Fields                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

• Updates:
  • Berkshire County Educational Task Force: Dillon – The group continues to have the long-term goal, but they also talked about incremental steps in the context of the long-term goal.  It made additional room for some of the work that we are undergoing and have been talking about which is the three districts as a stepping stone toward potential whole-county district and also ongoing collaborative efforts.  They talked a little about our meeting.  Some folks watched it on CTSB and wondered about it.  Steve and I shared some of our insights that we are continuing conversations and will see where we land.  S. Bannon – they emphasized more that the countywide district was an aspirational goal; not that it is new but they are emphasizing it.  A. Hutchinson:  One thing that has been in the news media is something about a branded education.  Can you tell me what that is?  P. Dillon – I think the notion was, if as a county could get one the same page, then we could all move toward excellence.  Some of us are close to excellence and some of us are working harder to get there, but if we could all get there from wherever we are to that excellence spot, then as a county we could potentially attract additional people and businesses to come to Berkshire County as a thoughtful, learning community; start a business, bring a family here, become part of our community.  That is what I think they were describing in branding.  There is another meeting this Saturday, and I will be going to that.  We will see what else the group wants to do.  The other thing I should mention is this notion that the discussion has been dominated by structural change which is probably the most significant thing and opportunities around educational improvement so the group is going to try to double its efforts to coherently articulate what that educational improvement will look like.  Expect to hear some more of that going forward.  The intention was that Rich would make a motion at the next School Committee meeting about our future participation or lack of participation or where we want to focus our efforts.  We will see what happens there.  B. Fields – the Task Force has money from the state, correct?  P. Dillon – there are all of these different phases.  There was Phase 1 that was largely funded through a state grant.  This last round is getting through Phase 3.  Brian Fairbanks who is a member of the group from Jiminy Peak has strong business connections, and I think he went around and shook the trees for money, and a lot of banks stepped up and secured enough money for this next phase of the work.  There is money there.  The question is what is the role of the group. At the end of the day the group is purely advisory in nature and the real authorize rests with select boards, mayors, citizens, etc.  I think there will be more discussion and more listening.  B. Fields – I ask that question Peter because my concern in regards to this whole thing is could there be money from this to study the options available in South Berkshire?  P. Dillon – there are two things.  There is not money designated from the group right now but we are still finishing up one of the Governor’s’ community compacts which the six south county schools.  That work has been around professional development, technology integration, curriculum work, grant writing and the last step of it is potentially shared services connected to special education.  That is really project based and kind of work that would set the stage for additional collaboration but it is funding to support on the ground collaboration; not funding to support merging two districts.  B. Fields – I ask relative to the study that was done; they brought in the group from UMass called the Donohue Group.  P. Dillon – they started with the Donohue Institute then they shifted to the District Management Group.  B. Fields – Could there be something like that done for just South Berkshire where they study the situation here along with what you said existed already?  It seems from my reading of the minutes that they looked at options.  I am looking at just South Berkshire and would it be the Task Force’s recommendation for South Berkshire?  P. Dillon – I think there is enough raw data in there to pull that information out and get what you want to do would not be a very heavy life.  It may be problematic if we vote to withdraw.  We should do that quickly.  B. Fields – no matter what the information is there.  P. Dillon – yes, the information is there.  S. Bannon – they have done a really good job of gathering data.

Good News:

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School –  N. Thompson, Assistant Principal:  We are almost finished with our hiring.  We are trying to finalize that by tomorrow.  We are finalizing our paraprofessionals.  Ali Benton, our art teacher, went to Crystal Bridges Art Museum this summer with 23 other art teachers from around the country to do a leadership course.  She will be bringing her work around that back to us.  Emily Olds, our ESL teacher, took courses studying K-3 students who are learning English as a Second Language.  She wrote standard-based report cards and did three curriculum work integrated science, social studies and language arts and math units.  Many of us, including Mary and I, participated in the Center for Peace Through Culture work.  We were at a three-day workshop last weekend with 12 other teachers from the school, learning mindfulness and the importance of breathing and slowing down in the education world and the world today to really help kids slow down and absorb the learning.  Earlier in the summer, there were 12 teachers that went to a Pioneer Valley books reading program with  Jan Richardson and they are bringing back new ideas related to guided reading.  We just purchased Fundations which is a phonics program so the year will begin with really unwrapping that as the new program in the school.

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Ben Doren, Principal:  We had our Open House for 5th graders yesterday.  The summer has been really nice and pretty mellow for those that have been in all summer.  We get a lot of prep work done but then the 5th graders come and there is so much excitement that comes.  It is a great way to kick off the week before school.  In addition, the custodians have been working hard all summer.  This place is brand-spanking fresh!  It is beautiful.  Kudos to Scott and his crew for working hard and making things ready for every body.  We had a lot of great summer curriculum projects.  We are talking a lot about alignment in the school and trying to get people to work together.  Seventh grade science and math worked on some alignment to bring co-teaching and parallel teaching.  5th and 6th grades were working on an expansion of academic times and have really moved away from a study support period to making five period of academic.  We are doing a double block now of literary, fiction and nonfiction for every kid.  6th grade did an indepth study this year.  There is a lot of excitement around being able to expand from 45 minutes to 90 minutes while still maintaining our social studies, math and science instruction.  7th and 8th grade is looking in the next year to do some work around collaborations.  Our 8th grade social studies teacher, Chris Lucey worked on some units in 8th grade but also looking at the larger 7th and 8th grade progression around American History; bringing in real world application to social studies to make social studies and history relevant for kids.  Big push in science; great partners with Flying Cloud.  They have been working with us on projects all through the past couple of years, but this year is the first year Flying Cloud is going to work in all four grades through the year.  The big push is the next generation science standards which push beyond just content and process into alignment with literacy and math and very much about real world applications and getting kids engaged in actual doing of science.  They are working on a big project with us that is being led by Miles Wheat our assistant principal.  We will also have a deeper engagement with Audubon to get us outside with projects around earth science and nature.  Our 8th grade team is really putting it together.  Every year we take our trip to Washington, DC.  We do a project around that.  Kids take their finals and they wrap up the year.  We have a few days before graduation where grades are done and we are doing community activities with the kids and they thought that they could do a better job with the extra days so they are doing a community service project for all of the 8th grade students.  They will have a choice of about 10 different choices and will be getting out into the community and do right by our community.  It is amazing use of these stipends to make learning much richer for kids.  Our mentor project had a meeting today with our parent volunteers as well as our community partners.  We are partnering well with Railroad Street.  Right now we have about 60 8th graders who will be mentors and continuing their mentorship from 7th grade with 5th graders which is about 40% of our students being mentors.  It is a great way to get that leadership in the school.  We have launched (almost) our ABC program (Autism and Behavior Center) which compliments our TLC (Therapeutic Learning Center) which houses our emotional behavior disabilities program.  We did a great hire with Ellie Rizzo who has a lot of experience both with autism but also with high-needs students with severe disabilities.  That is really going to enrich our community by bringing our students back to DBM as opposed to sending them out but also enriching our community here by having an inclusion piece by having our students engage with students with severe disabilities.  This is the first year  that we have a full inclusion program.  I want to acknowledge Muddy Brook in the work we have been doing in partnering in over seven years and the work that we have done in alignment to make sure that all students can participate not only in reading and math but also in social/emotional.  This is the first year that we have seen from 5th grade to 8th grade the fruits of our labor.  Very few kids are in substantially separate classrooms.  We are able to do some of the advanced work in the grades where we do differentiation for our high level students.  We are not having to move kids because we can’t offer them the kind of advancement and enrichment they get in their own grade.  We are almost done with hiring.

Kate Burdsall, Director of Student Services:  I just want to share that we run a summer life skills program in conjunction with Southern Berkshire, Lee and Lenox.  It is a program that we have been running for years.  It ran this summer from July 5th to August 3rd, Mondays through Thursdays from 9am – 1pm.  We had 21 students from the four districts that are part of the program.  We had two teachers and a lot of support staff.  They do a bunch of things based out of this building, it is their home base, but they are really out and about in the community doing pre-vocational and work experiences.  They are doing some things are farms, at Gymnastics Unlimited, they had some puppeteers come in and work with them here, they have a local musician that comes in as well; it was a great summer for the kids in that program.

District Level – Peter Dillon, Superintendent:  We had a very positive retreat and it happened in two parts.  We spent a day at Ramblewild with Luke Blume our former phys ed teacher from the high school.  The  morning was spent in team building and challenges, some of which were complicated including to get all of us to balance on a platform and have it not move.  It took us about 14 tries to get that right.  It was around working together and good communication.  Then we spent three days in Stockbridge looking a lot a goal setting, supervision and evaluation, the start of school, professional development and administration.  It was a good start.  Going into the year, I couldn’t be more excited by the team that I get to work with.  They are really thoughtful people doing really good things.  I would like to transition to two new people, one new and one in a new role.  The first person is Amy Rex who is our new high school principal.  Some of you met her in the context of the interviews; some on the committee and some in the audience and some are just getting to meet her now.  Amy comes to us after a very successful career in Vermont where she was the Secondary School Principal of the Year this past year.  She has big shoes to fill at MMRHS and we have really high expectations for her.  The other thing about Amy is she is a prolific in a very positive way social media user so expect great newsletters, posts and insights into her thinking and her reflection on how students are thinking.  Welcome Amy.

Monument Mountain Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal:  Thank you for putting your trust in me and hiring me and to serve Monument Mountain Regional High School.  My background has demonstrated my commitment to education in a very real and holistic way.  I feel my skill set and my principles and values around teaching and learning are both going to be a match and a real asset for MMRHS.  I am very excited about getting started.  It has been a very busy four weeks since I arrived and some of the things I would like to highlight in my short period of time is the fabulous and highly professional welcome that the district administrative team has provided for me.  Going to Ramblewild was a pivotal day for me in terms of transition.  I left my mindset of Vermont on that day and entered the Berkshires and this district.  I am feeling a lot of trust and comradery and colleagueship was very exciting for me and it was a fabulous day.  The following subsequent days digging deep into the work and sharing around what the challenges were and what the highlights of this district are felt very positive.  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to have a meeting for a couple of hours with the department deans at MMRHS.  That is a new model that they have put into place.  We spent about two hours just talking about who are we as a shared leadership team and what would our focus be for this school year.  I was extremely impressed and excited that collectively they all weighed in and wanted to focus on quality teaching and learning and not about day-to-day logistical things.  Sometimes it is easy for folks to get caught up in that.  The hard work is really around teaching and learning and improving the quality even if you are a great school, getting better is harder.  We had 32 teachers over the summer who were part of the summer fellowships and conducted their own professional learning.  I have just started to get a glimpse of that work.  They are sending me their results of what they were doing.  I am very impressed with the thoughtfulness, attention to rigor, creative practices, innovation and really wanting to engage their students more deeply in higher-order thinking.  I am very excited to see what they did over the summer transfer into the classroom.  One of my goals and hopes is to spend as much time in the classrooms as possible.  That helps me learn the school, the culture, the students, etc.  In terms of hiring, we just recently hired a full-time math teacher because our math teacher has gone to the district office.  We had a part-time teacher in the middle of the summer was able to secure a full-time position in another district, so we had to replace her and we just finished that hire.  We have had a little bit of tough luck with chemistry.  We are not wanting to settle for a less than adequate teacher.  It looks like we will start the year with a long-term sub who has chemistry background and teaching background but we are not giving up finding the right person.  We need to hire one more paraprofessional.  I am happy to answer any questions or have any other dialogue from the board.

Dillon – the other person in an equally important role but not by any means a new face is Kristi Farina, who after 27 years at the high school, was unanimously selected by our search committee to step into the role of Director of Learning and Teaching. Many of you know Kristi in another context; she has taught your children, etc. Welcome Kristi to this role.  Kristi is off to a great start and the best thing is when you hire somebody and you realize a couple of days, weeks or months in, you totally picked the right person.

Kristie Farina, Director of Teaching:  Thank you for this opportunity.  I am really excited about this work.  Colleagues from the high school have been asking me how has it been going and right now I just feel like I have a summer job but I think next week it is going to feel weird that I am not returning to the classroom.  I am happy and enjoying it.  I echo Amy’s sentiments about the admin retreat.  It was a fabulous experience and even after 27 years as a teacher, coming onboard as an admin, that experience was very useful.  The admin really gelled and we work well together.  It made me more excited for the work ahead.  I appreciate that time that we spent together.  One of the first things that I got to dive into this summer when I started, was the work with Project Connection.  It just so happened that my first week starting, Mary, Ben and Peter were all on vacation so I was the admin at the elementary school.  I have obviously been well aware of Project Connection but to be there and experience it and see all of the kids K-8 involved in the work and the number of community partners that are involved in providing services and educational experience and service learning to our children, to help equal the playing field for them, was remarkable.  It gave me a whole new appreciation of that program.  That is really quality work that I am even more excited to support in this new position.  I also am very passionate in mentoring and teacher coaching so I have been working to redesign and reinvigorate the mentor program.  Tuesday I had an induction day for teacher mentors and first and second year teachers.  I am looking for work to the work with that group to really lift up the education experience of our students by supporting new teachers that come into the district.  I think it is critical work to be involved in.  I am also looking forward to continuing the reimagination work that we began last year.  As an admin team, we planned to keep a committee going that would be a professional development district-wide committee and have representatives from each building.  We will be able to use that committee to continue the conversation and discuss what professional development needs there might be as a result of those conversations.  I have also been working closely with David Long trying to support the initiatives of the IT department that they have been planning to roll out in the buildings.  He and I have been discussing ways that I can facilitate with him; how to support innovative ideas that teachers have in terms of using technology and how we can support spreading that through the school system more intently.  There is a lot of other work that I will be undertaking but those are some of the things that I am excited about.  Thank you again for the opportunity.  A. Potter – The Title I funding, have we been hearing anything?  K. Farina – the Title I funding that we received this year was about $7,000 more that what Josh had predicted.  I have heard anything going beyond that.  P. Dillon – the big thing is the White House/Secretary of Education; do that want to redirect those funds to other things that they care more about?  Time will tell.  B. Fields – is that a congressional issue?  Could Congress override whatever the Department of Ed does about Title I?  P. Dillon – my understanding is that the Department of Ed will make a proposal…there were threats about Head Start but everybody loves Head Start so it never really took.  I am not particularly nervous about Title I but time will tell.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: N/A
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee: J. St. Peter – we met yesterday and had a fairly long, productive meeting. The two main points on the agenda were the summer work update in the schools as well as the elementary school traffic flow that we touched on at a previous meeting.  For the elementary traffic flow the big thing is the safety factor having to do with cars parking along Monument Valley Road and unattended cars in the drop-off circle which is a fire lane.  A memo will be going out Monday, effective Wednesday in hopes of elongating that traffic drop-off circle by blocking off the entrance and forcing people to take a right so we can have a long queue going into the school as well as encouraging staff and visitors who do not have children to part closer toward the road.  People with children can use the spots closest to the soccer field so that they can access the sidewalk safely without having to cross any parking lot traffic.  It will be a trial and error.  We will find out how many parking spots we truly have and if we need more.  We are going to try to do something to make it safer.  Dillon – I think this is a good and exciting direction.  There will probably be a bunch of us, Steve Soule and I included, in orange vests or shirts, trying to help people figure this out on Wednesday.  Like anything, we have to teach people a different way of doing it when they are used to going a particular way.  If we are standing there in orange shirts, hopefully they won’t hit us and they will figure out where they need to go.  J. St. Peter – we have a new phone system in the high school.  It is a huge upgrade and a great system.  It is a hybrid system and the phone is tied into the PA system, the bells and the phones.  There were some limiting factors because of the age of the building.  We were able to convert and have a really good system.  That is a big plus.  The old Verizon T1 line that connects us to the outside has become obsolete and we have upgraded that to a SIP trunking; it is the newest in technology.  We are also transiting from Verizon to another contractor who has given us a lot better service and a better price point so that is encouraging.  During this upgrade there was an analysis done of all of the lines and we have been able to eliminate a bunch of lines which saved quite a bit of money as well.  During one of the breaks in the fall or winter, we are going to upgrade the elementary and middle school as well.  Eventually the district office as well so all the phones will be connected together and will be a lot more efficient for all.  Project Connection is a great and viable program, but it is an added strain on the buildings in the summer and after school but it has been marginally better this year.  We are hoping that as time goes on it gets better and better.  With students in the building it is harder to do the off-season work that is traditionally done in school.  It has taken some time to adjust to that and has required more work but we are getting better at it.  A lot of painting has been done; a lot of new white boards in the high school, projectors in the all of the buildings, etc.  Also at the schools, we have changed all of the key fobs and all staff will have IDs with microchips to get into the buildings which is a big upgrade.  In the old D10 room at the high school had been changed into a new music room for study.  They have a lot of new great music stations.  There were desks on wholesale for $1,300 but thanks to Ron Getchell’s expert carpentry skills, he was able to make them for about a third of the cost and they are a lot sturdier.  We have 11 new desks in there with keyboards, monitors, etc. specific for the music program.  We have new bathroom dividers at the high school, new eye wash in the lab, etc.  We successfully put in the first new boiler this past year and hope to put the second one in during the fall if all goes as planned.  The DEP came to audit our wastewater facility.  There were a few minor problems; the main one being the alarm that goes from the motherboard to the actual alarm was found to be faulty but that is going to be fixed tomorrow by the alarm company.  I would like to publicly thing Peter Carlotto and Frank Briggs for the high level of sophistication that both the wastewater as well as the regular water system takes along with all of the time and effort they put in to keep it running.  It is a huge endeavor.  It is almost as big as a town system.  They have done a great job.  B. Fields – It is too bad that Frank and Peter are not taped talking to the DEP because you would be amazed at how our guys are so expert and how the DEP officials kind of nod.  It is amazing.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee: N/A
• Technology Sub Committee: N/A
• Finance Sub Committee: B. Fields – we did an overview of the Special Ed Department in regards to the budget, previews of plans, what it consists, etc. It was wonderful.  A lot of my questions were answered.  It was a very good analysis of what we offer in regards to Special Ed.  It was well done.  Special Ed is a major part of the budget as we all know and we got a really good look at money and revenue coming in.  We have done some new things in Special Ed to reduce the number of out-of-district placements and that number has gone down.  As we do that more and more, we will see more staff increases within the district.  We have an excellent program to the point that there are some requests from outside districts to come into our district and take advantage of the programs we offer.  Under Rich’s chairmanship, we are going to do more reviews as we go along during the year.  Dillon – as soon as we can we will get all of that information up on the website so that people are able to have it as a reference.
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee: N/A

Personnel Report:

• Certified Appointment(s): The BCBA position and the Team Leader position (Special Ed position working in this first year; it is a pilot position in grades 5-12; plus students past 12th grade who are older and entitled to services); the BCBA position is a highly specialized skill set that works with kids on the autism spectrum.  Bannon – do you think dividing stipends into quarters is probably counterproductive.  If you have a leader then divide it into quarters that is not exactly the intention of this stipend except to give everyone a little bit of money.  P. Dillon – it is around distributed leadership and sharing responsibility but we will discuss at our next meeting.
• Non-Certified Appointment(s):
• Leave of Absence(s):
• Resignation(s):
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s):

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment:
• Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  A. Potter             Seconded:  B. Fields                  Accepted: Unanimous

Meeting Adjourned at 7:50pm

Submitted by:    Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

The next school committee meeting will be held on September 14, 2017 – Regular Meeting – Monument Mountain Regional High School