BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School  – Library

December 7, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                            B. Doren, M. Berle, A. Rex, K. Burdsall, K. Farina, S. Soule

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

November 2, 2017 School Committee Minutes of Meeting
November 16, 2017 School Committee Minutes of Meeting
Updated Policies
Spanish Exchange Proposal 2018
Proposed Job Description for Special Education Evaluation Team Leader 7-12
Proposed Job Description for Special Education Evaluation Team Leader PreK-6
Du Bois Regional Middle School Improvement Plan 2017-2018 Draft for Review
Du Bois Regional Middle School MCAS Development Plan 2017-2018 Draft dated 12/1/2017
Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School School Improvement Plan 2017-2018
Muddy Brook MCAS Development Plan 2017-2018
Monument Mountain Regional High School Job Description for Director of Co-Curriculars Athletics
Monument Mountain Regional High School School Improvement Plan 2017-2018
Monument Mountain Regional High School MCAS Development Plan 2017-2018
Personnel Report dated December 7, 2017
Monument Mountain Regional High School approval letter for additional assistant boys basketball coach for 2017-2018 basketball season

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

November 2, 2017 BHRSD School Committee Minutes
November 16, 2017 BHRSD School Committee Minutes

MOTION TO APPROVE MINUTES OF MEETING FOR NOVEMBER 2, 2017 AND NOVEMBER 16, 2017:  R. Dohoney              Seconded:  B. Fields           Accepted:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

  • Good News: Dillon – On my way over here, I got an email that Monument got placed on the College Board Annual AP District Honor Roll for significant gains in student access and success.  We are one of 447 school districts across the country and Canada.  We were on this honor roll once before, three years ago, the fifth annual one.  It’s a combination of an increasing number of students taking the AP exams and the percentage of students maintaining or increasing scoring a three or higher.  That’s a big deal.  We are excited about it, and it is a testament to the faculty’s hard work.  In particular, I am excited more about the access or opportunity for people to participate in the exams and the classes than I am necessarily for the scores; although I am happy about the scores.  There is a lot of research that says if young people participate in one or more AP classes, it has a significant impact on them as learners in high school and also beyond.  We will be sharing more on that and specific details.  There were only a handful of other districts in Massachusetts, and from a quick look of it, nobody else in Berkshire County.
  • Good News: Dillon – Kristi wrote a grant, and here she is to tell you about it.  She did a nice job on it.  K. Farina – Berkshire Hills was awarded the $50,000 grant that we wrote.  We were one of nine recipients from the state for the Resource Allocation and District Action Report, better know as RADAR which you have heard spoken of before.  As we go into this work, we are going to collaboratively reviewing our resources and how we allocate then and continue to consider shifts.  In that context, we are going to be identifying some measurable student outcomes that we hope to achieve through this grant.  The grant funding will be specifically targeted toward professional development to support the work as we undertake the shifts that we identify.  P. Dillon – what is really neat about it is it is directly aligned with our recent thinking about budgeting with our reimagination work and how we do things differently.  Now we have the support of the state and a bunch of consultants behind us.  They will give us somebody who will be our coach around this.  We will be doing it as a combination of administrators and teachers working together on it.  B. Fields – is it one year?  K. Farina – we can use some of the funding this year because we will begin the process right away and through next year.
  • Good News Item(s) from Schools: See below:
  • Job Descriptions:
    • Revised Job Description: Special Education Evaluation Team Leader 7-12 – K. Burdsall – This year, we have been moving forward with the ETL position in grades 5-12 which has been pretty successful and I will get back to you later in the spring with a little more analysis of that whole position.  As we talked about last year when we presented that, it was our hope that we could start with the 5-12 and then expand it next year so it would cover the whole district.  When we approved that last year, the job description as just for 5-12 and what is in front of your tonight is a shift from the 5-12 to make it 7-12 and an addition of an ETL position for grades PreK-6.  We haven’t updated the specifics in the job description.  We are going to come back to you if we have things, once we have done more analysis and really look at what the tasks are. We will come back in maybe April or May for that; this is just a preliminary asking for your approval for the PreK-6 and adjusting the 5-12 to be 7-12 which will then allow us to move forward in the spring and get this posted.  Dillon – it is really a two-step process.  We wanted to do the job descriptions now and then talk about it in the context of the budget process and then the whole challenge around hiring is sooner we get something out, the greater the likelihood we get a high-quality person.  We might do, with your permission, what we have done in the past, which is post something contingent upon funding availability.  We could then get a candidate pool and presumably around the time we are interviewing candidates, you might approve whatever budget we are at at that point then we could seal the deal.  S. Bannon – we need to approve the job description for the team leader for 7-12.

MOTION TO APPROVE REVISED JOB DESCRIPTION FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION EVALUATION TEAM LEADER 7-12:   D. Weston                      Seconded:  A. Potter                   Accepted:  Unanimous  

  • Proposed New Job Description: Special Education Evaluation Team Leader PreK-6

MOTION TO JOB DESCRIPTION FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION EVALUATION TEAM LEADER PreK-6:   D. Weston                      Seconded:  B. Fields                   Accepted:  Unanimous

  • Proposed Job Description Revision – Director of Co-Curricular/Athletics – MMRHS – P. Dillon: This has come out of conversations at the Finance Sub-Committee level.  Rex – Currently at Monument Mountain, we have three people that are carrying out some of the duties of an Athletic Director.  Then we have five or six people that oversee a variety of co-curricular activities.  What I think has probably been happening over the years, there has not been a very cohesive vision to carry those programs forward in a coordinated way.  I think that to be cost effective and also to ensure that we have appropriate supervision of the programming and we can grow those programs and ensure safety and guidelines are being followed, it would be pertinent to have one person who is coordinating and has the skill set to really set forth a clear vision and do good oversight and grow all those programs.  A. Potter – is this a common model?  A. Rex – I have only seen it done that way.  I would say yes.  Certainly, I am seeing different things here in Massachusetts.  P. Dillon – I think the other approach and another context is sometimes a phy ed teacher is half time or less and also an athletic director.  I think we run a really robust after-school, extended day, athletic program.  One of the nice things about somebody coming in with fresh eyes, is that they seek absence in our practice and this is one of the things that was identified early.  I think it is a really idea to shore that up and we would like to think that our philosophy drives everything we do in our approach, and while a lot of wonderful things have been happening, they are a little bit disconnected, and I think we can finetune what we are doing.  A. Hutchinson – Co-curricular is only after school stuff?  A. Rex – essentially, yes.  It can go from anything to clubs or Jacob’s Pillow, the musical, the Shakespeare plays.  Separate people oversee that so there are a lot.  Our activities, our clubs really are not very vibrant.  In fact, the students who are on my Principal’s Advisory were commenting on that.  They would like to work on it and they see it as a gap.  A. Hutchinson – this is full time?  A. Rex – yes, it would be full time.  R. Dohoney – Amy just answered what I needed.  B. Fields – this points out that the evaluation system will actually be extended to co-curricular activities.   I think Dan mentioned a few months ago the fact that who evaluates all of these stipends that are extracurricular so that is a good thing.  Do you really think you can get somebody who will be able to do all of this?  A. Rex – I think so, yes.

MOTION TO APPROVE JOB DESCRIPTION OF DIRECTOR OF CO-CURRICULAR/ATHLETICS:  A. Potter             Seconded:  R. Dohoney                              Accepted:  Unanimous

  • Requests:
    • Overnight Field Trip Request – Middle School – P. Dillon – you approved two out of three trips at our last meeting and we pulled one and we have some last minute exciting action and opportunity. Doren – if you remember, last year we did our first exchange with Spain and the Canary Islands.  It is really exciting because in the past Senor Heath has let alternating trips to Spain and Peru.  The Peru trip is really amazing because it based around service.  The Spain trip was immersion in culture.  A great program in French and Spanish and this was a culmination of the kids.  Last year, we were able to do the exchange and the kids from Los Palmos came to Monument Valley and spent a few weeks with us and our students went there.  We did host families.  It really transformed our 8th grade.  It was great to have the 12 or 13 kids are part of our learning community.  This year, we tried to get it off the ground and we weren’t sure we could run it if Los Palmos was going to be able to get enough students.  We also, because of our large 8th grade and the interest in it, it has turned out to be a win/win.  They were able to find a lot of kids to come over to us; about 12-15 kids to join us and we will send 22 students to Los Palmos.  It was a great experience for both the students who went on the trip and also as an exchange, it was a great experience for our students.  I am asking that you approve this program again this year.  A. Hutchinson – I just wanted to add that not just the 8th graders benefited from this but I heard about a lot of it from the 5th graders.

MOTION TO APPROVE FIELD TRIP REQUEST:  A. Potter                     Seconded:  B. Fields                          Accepted:  Unanimous

  • Additional Coach Request – Boys’ Basketball Coach – funded by Booster Club – P. Dillon – The Boys’ Basketball Booster Club would like to have an assistant coach and they would like to fund the position. This is pretty straight forward.  They are asking for your support in doing that.

MOTION TO APPROVE BOOSTER CLUB FUNDING BOYS’ BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH:  R. Dohoney               Seconded:  B.  Fields                             Accepted:  Unanimous

  • School Improvement Plan(s) – We are going to try to re-work our timing on this. We are trying to get better in doing everything earlier.  We know in the current world our budget process starts in August or actually the day after the budget voting in March, but going forward, we hope to present future school improvement plans in May.  Going into the summer, we will have a clear focus of what we are doing for summer work and then we open the school year and teachers know at the start of the school year, where we are at.  We are finishing up this last cycle of doing it now.  We will go through the overview of the improvement plans and also the MCAS plans as they are interconnected.  We will be happy to respond to questions on them.

Let’s start with Muddy Brook and work our way up.  I am really limiting the principals to sharing two to four high-level things that is in there mostly for the benefit of the TV audience who hasn’t yet had the chance to read through all the plans.  They will be on our website and people can go through them in fine detail.  M. Berle – we have three key goals at Muddy Brook.  One is a curriculum instruction goal to improve literacy and math.  Our second goal is around cultural and community and around a core value that is to provide a balanced and joyful day for students with rigor and immersion in the arts, physical activity and connection to the large community.  Our third area is organizational design.  In that area, this year we have introduced for three vertical leadership teams.  In the past, I have had one leadership team representing all grades and specialists and special education teachers.  This year, we have three of those teams.  One is focused on math, one on literacy and one is more general.  We are trying that out with very specific projects for each group and also to communication between administration and teachers and with the community.  For our #1 goal for improving reading and math, the big effort is introducing the Fundations program which is a anemic awareness phonics program to supplement our guided reading work.  We have been training folks in that in a really consistent way to support both teaming and close look where kids are not getting things then have it differentiate.  In math, the focus is the second year of the Investigations curriculum.  We are working with Kristi Farina, our director of learning and teaching, at a new set of benchmarks.  We are looking at other schools that have been successful with our combination or Investigations and other assessment tools.  I am happy to answer lots of questions.  The other deep commitment we have made a Muddy Brook and will continue to make is community partnership.  Dr. Buccino has been a huge support to us in our work with collaborative care, Laurie Norton Moffatt is here from The Norman Rockwell Museum.  With the museum last year, we developed a model for partnership with an arts organization which is our defining model now.  We have extended that to Jacob’s Pillow this year.   S. Bannon – are they any questions?  None?  P. Dillon – you may not.  That was pretty comprehensive and well developed.  Folks might think we are biting off too much and that is valid.  M. Berle – we strive to be ambitious and sometimes we have to step back.  S. Stephen – I have one question.  What does it mean to follow the MCAS Development Plan for 2017?  In your packet, you received two things from Muddy Brook this week.  You got an MCAS Development Plan and a School Improvement Plan.  The MCAS Development Plan was a request from the committee to develop a specific plan to address our scores.  I have shared that plan with you.  S. Bannon – did you share that with other people in the community?  M. Berle – I have shared it with our leadership team and I am happy to share it further.  R. Dohoney – the Fundations program, this is the first year it is being used?  M. Berle – it is.  R. Dohoney – I know I should know this but what grades is it being used?  M. Berle – that’s ok.  It is PreK through three.  What we did is some cases our data was showing us that….we had been working very hard with a different program and we were seeing gaps.  We could have done a slower rollout but we made a very intentional decision to not do a slower rollout but differentiate.  The third graders that were behind in this area, we are actually working with.  We rolled back.  It’s not that they stated all at once with the third grade but we have some third graders that are working in the second grade level.  We did it in a very intentional way based on what kids know.  Students really like it and teachers do to.  I think we have a good combination of supporting teachers with materials and also professional development.  It will continue.  R. Dohoney – Is it intended to be a permanent thing or is that a remedial program for a few years?  M. Berle – it is a permanent thing.  What will happen overtime is we will get to a point where the third graders are doing just the third grade.  R. Dohoney – but it is going to be a permanent part of our curriculum?  M. Berle – yes, we have invested heavily in it.  A. Hutchinson – It’s all about Math and ELA when currently 38% of the student take part in the lunch and breakfast program but the state also says 48% are eligible to take part.  M. Berle – yes, I put that in the MCAS development plan.  One of the things we know is that students that are nutritionally supported, eating well, have been access to the curriculum.  We now have 48% of our students who are qualifying for free/reduced lunch and about 8% are accessing the breakfast program.  The question there is what can we do to encourage folks who might need breakfast to take it but also to work with Sharon again and explore whether we are at a point that we want to go to a school-wide free and reduced for everybody.  That is a bit of a process.  S. Harrison – I haven’t done the math but unless we are at 70%, it costs more.  M. Berle – our numbers are night enough that it is something we want to look at.  The first thing is to get more kids into breakfast who qualify.  B. Fields – in the MCAS development plan, there seems to be a lot of emphasis that seems to me to harbor or come close to the line of “drill and kill”.  The idea that we are going to…”a still that is emphasized in MCAS is students lack experience and capacity to write about reading.”  I like the curriculum at the elementary school; it’s full, it is kind of expansive and I hate to see this type of emphasis.  I know we went through this before.  The idea that ing elementary school we are going to be teaching to the test and I am just very concerned about that line.  How far do you go in developing better scores and not take the route of we have to push this?  I know school district in this area who do that and I would hate to see that develop in the elementary school.  That is my own personal opinion.  M. Berle – I really appreciate that feedback and I think you are right.  There is no part of us that wants to become “drill and kill” and totally focused on tests.  I do think we did a disservice to last year’s kids when we really didn’t even introduce them to the format.  I’m sorry that we didn’t introduce them to the format or spend a little more time on it because our internal measures didn’t really match our MCAS scores.  We knew we were going to be …. It was a new test and we wouldn’t be held accountable but we….I think it is fair to the kids to introduce the formate and we should do that.  B. Fields – it is so easy to get into that line where a teacher says we have to write the way MCAS writes.  Which is terrible.  It is a very hard thing and I hope you emphasize it.  The teachers that I know realize that it is so easy to slip into that mode of we have to get ready before March.  I have a granddaughter that came home and told me about doing more math stuff.  M. Berle – but she doesn’t go here right?  B. Fields – right.  She said is it just pages of homework of this stuff.  M. Berle – for reasons, people feel a lot of pressure around the scores and we don’t want to be at the bottom of the barrel.  Why I love working here is we are deeply committed to the whole child and we do focus on that.  At the same time, we want kids to do well.  J. St. Peter – I respect Bill’s opinion, but this is school.  We take tests in school.  We have to take tests in life.  If you want to be a firefighter or doctor, nurse, etc.  I agree that it shouldn’t be our total focus but we shouldn’t be afraid to teach the kids and to let them take tests.  I shouldn’t be this big boogie man that you have to take a three-hour test.  We should embrace it and there are a lot of concepts in the MCAS that are important for children to know.  I agree it is a fine line and we don’t want to go to far one way but I don’t think we should go too far the other just because it is a test.  We are an education and it is part of education.  It is an important part not to lose sight of.  M. Berle – we all take test throughout life to do the next thing, whether it’s auto mechanic or cake decorating or lawyering.  I really hope that our families hear the message that this is not something to be scared of.  It is very helpful to the school and the kids take the MCAS.  The fact that we are on defense around participation has really been hard and that is how we got into this position of de-emphasizing so much.  I think we can find a balance and as a community we have done a really good job of supporting the whole child.  We just need to be okay with the fact that some days you need to sit down and take the test.  S. Stephen – that is my point.  I really think that all the schools to make an effort to talk to parents and communicate with parents what this plan is and why you have a plan.  The reason we suffered this year is because of opting out.  M. Berle – correct.  S. Stephen – that is pretty much what it boils down to.  The more kids we have opt out not matter how well we are doing, it makes everything moot.  M. Berle – the story I talk about is when people take the test and we are able to show what we can do, we were attracting two years ago before we have the level three designation for lack of participation.  I was giving tours to people from all over the county who were moving here intentionally.  The minute our participation dropped and we got that level three designation, those tours stopped.  We can’t really afford that as a community.  The region needs people to come.  It is a tough balance and we need to work through it together.  A. Hutchinson – It comes from the parents.  The parents are probably revisiting their own fears about testing and put it on their kids.  S. Stephen – unfortunately, it is a fact of life.  There is not getting around it now.  A. Hutchinson – it’s not the kids who are terrified of the test when they are in 2nd and 3rd grade, it’s the parents who are.  S. Stephen – I think it takes people actively communicating with parents regarding the importance of these tests.  It’s for everybody.  M. Berle – It is tricky because three years ago when we moved to PARCC we were told we would not be held accountable and it wasn’t clear to us that we would still be held accountable on participation.  We have put families through a lot.  The tests have changed twice and everyone is looking at what our commitment is.  I think at this point MCAS 2.0 will probably be with us for awhile and it is a moment to just take it.

MOTION TO APPROVE THE MUDDY BROOK SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN AND MCAS PLAN:   R. Dohoney              Seconded:  S. Stephen                          Accepted:  Unanimous

Doren – the School Improvement Plan is very similar with what Mary described and was put together when Thad Dingman was here and when Mary was Director of Learning and Teaching. The high-level review of this plan has four areas. One is instruction.  The big thing that we love at Monument Valley is knowing each student well and adjusting instruction to meet their dreams and needs.  That is what my school council made me change.  Not their needs and dreams but their dreams and needs.  We are jumping back into a real comprehensive data portrait before we….we had done that several years ago.  It was very comprehensive, lots of data and looking at it with the performance data and the rubrics.  Trying to understand what comprehensive data works and the effects on kids.  The big thing I want to talk about is school culture.  Restorative practices, we have implemented circles and community advisory.  Every student, every week is in a circle talking about things that are important to them, their lives or things adults don’t think are important to discuss.  They learn how to speak to each other and more importantly they learn how to listen and do things together.  That is a very important life skill not just a middle school skill.  It is even harder in middle school though.  We work on community building, challenges in services.  That has been a big jump this year.  Teachers and teams are starting to ask kids to do service back to our community.  We have added academic advisory and executive function which is a very important life skill.  Again, once a week those same groups of kids are looking to organize themselves and reflect on their growth, set some goals and work on some skill building as well as community partnerships.  I have seen as well, the connection that Deb and Mary have done with wrapping around kids and building up services and also appreciative of the support we get from our community partners.  For the MCAS, data analysis is very important.  One of the biggest things coming out of our data now is that we need a strong K-12 math curriculum; there needs to be alignments so we can take advantage of what happens at Muddy Brook and move that on to the high school.  Also we have had a lot of success in implementing writing programs and self-regulated strategies for development.  It is a set of strategies that help kids; in 5th and 6th grade we have implemented it fully and in 7th and 8th grade for our highest needs students.  This works a common language for writing but also a common language for reading for writing.  We are hoping that kids really understand how to read, take information out, analyze, paraphrase then start to apply it to all different areas, specifically around non-fiction.  We are also looking at low performance.  Who are the kids who are not performing well?  Who are the kids who are not performing well yet, but have had high growth.  We are starting to see the difference between growth and high growth.  One of the big observations that we made is we didn’t take serious enough the exposure to MCAS 2.0.  We took the MCAS 1.0 several years ago, jumped to the PARCC, did a lot of preparation for that then we really said that the MCAS 2.0 is a lot like the PARCC, so  feel like we focused on instruction but not exposure.  We just need to make sure kids know who to take the test.  That is really the biggest jump you see in taking the SAT or any standardized assessment is familiarity.  This year, three of the grades are going to be doing it as a computer-based test.  So that is not must familiarity of MCAS 2.0 but really just being able to take it online on a device.  It is going to be a big boost.  One of the thing coming out of data is that we have this persistent gap in our performance with low income students.  We really want to understand what the difference is.  The next generation science standard – I feel like we have done an amazing job transition to the next generation science standard but it was not preparing them for the standardized assessment that is related to it is important.

MOTION TO APPROVE MONUMENT VALLEY SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN AND MCAS PLAN:  R. Dohoney         Seconded:  J. St. Peter                             Accepted:  Unanimous

  1. Dillon – Amy is in a funny spot of being here for only a handful of months so she is inheriting a previous one. In some ways, Amy gets a pass on this.  She is being handed the baton.  She will talk about that a little bit and then in the next round we can expect one that has more of her stamp on it and also the stamp of the Department Deans and the emerging leadership groups in the school.  A. Rex- I think that is the best place to start is to talk a little about the Department Deans and the meeting that we had today.  I think they were able to provide me with a lot of context and history and what they perceived as being some of the problems with their being a period of years without any kind of structure department oversight.  The Department Chair model and from year to year sort of changes as far as school governance.  I think they really see that as creating challenges that exist within the building today and how to get work done.  It was really a very rich and lengthy conversation.  We did that work then I talked about a variety of models that I worked under and have seen as well as the pro and cons of those in similar settings.  They divided up into little groups and did some actual design thinking.  If they could have a clean slate, how would they want school governments to look, how would meetings run, when would they meet, how would oversight go.  We got back together and folks shared their ideas then we talked another hour about the pros and cons of peoples’ plans.  I think what we would like to do is put together a proposal and start to get some input from the faculty and have something finalized by the spring.  It has not been the practice at Monument Mountain and this is typical of many schools, especially high schools that have a lot of faculty, that all faculty members participate in a process in developing the action plan.  I think we would like to be able to do that.  If the faculty has ownership over the plan and they understand how to get to those end results collectively, then you see much better results.  What I have seen in the past and I think this is what has happened at Monument, is somebody puts together these school improvement plans and then part of that is around shared leadership and teacher driven initiatives.  What happens is there is not enough alignment between what the teachers are working on and there is not clear structures in terms of how decisions are made.  Someone gave me a great example today.  They had been on a committee for a whole year.  The committee met only once every other month and they were working on attendance.  They were really invested in it and they came up with all these ideas and what they wanted to faculty to do.  When the presented it at the faculty meeting, the faculty said no we are not interested.  So they felt it was a year of wasted work.  If the whole faculty works on an action plan and says we need to work on an attendance policy and we want this group to go do that and whatever they decide, we will use.  I think they are really charged around having the faculty invest in a process where they develop the action plan.  In the meantime, the work is really focused on the district improvement plan.  The teachers are focused on the social/emotional learning and starting to align the curriculum K-12, working on the MCAS plan and next week my math department gets together to review that data.  R. Dohoney – was there anything in reviewing this that jumped out at your that were not addressed?  A. Rex – I would say that it’s too vague and a good example is if you are working on a universal by design that was in their units,  I would go further in outlining in who is leading that work.  When is that work going to happen?  How many hours or professional development is needed?  Faculty need to see that.  How are we then going to reflect and evaluate on our work at the end.  I would say making it a little more robust and detailed.  R. Dohoney – school committee members have complained about vagueness in the past too so that it interesting.

MOTION TO APPROVE THE MONUMENT MOUNTAIN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN AND MCAS PLAN:  R. Dohoney                            Seconded:  A. Potter                              Accepted:  Unanimous

  • MCAS Plan(s)
  • FY19 Draft Preliminary Operational Budget Review – P. Dillon – we are going to present in the earliest time ever, the draft preliminary budget. What we will do is talk through it.  I will give the large overview then Sharon will go into some of the details around the numbers.  It is really important as we do this, this is very early.  We don’t know the House 1 numbers from the governor.  We don’t know the minimum local contribution.  There are a whole bunch of unknowns but this is a starting point for a conversation.  This comes out of a lot of work from the Finance Sub Committee.  They reviewed it but more importantly, it is not their budget, it is the administration’s budget with their input.  You have a big binder in front of you.  You should put all of your important budget stuff in it.  Sharon will give you some context but this is quite a remarkable moment in our development as a school committee and as a district that we are going into the budget process with this much information.  Harrison – I will give you a little tour of the book.  What we have put together is all of the material from the Finance Subcommittee meetings, all of the detail, down to the number of students in classes.  For the high school, you are going to see all of the sections.  So when we talk about staffing, you will understand what we are talking about with class sizes.  We start with the draft budget, like you see normally in your budget books.  Again, this is our draft preliminary.  What we did was responded to what we have heard from the school committee over the last few years and that is they would like to see the initial request from the administrators, then it would go back to the finance subcommittee for more work.  I put in the basic changes for FY19 and I wanted to point that out because you will see some changes in FY18 for example the ETL was not in the original budget.  When you look at the FY19 budget, you will see a line for that because that was in contingency.  You will see some changes on the FY18 but the changes that I am talking about in the budget book are what you are seeing from 18-19.  Then we go into each of the departments.  The details for facilities and operations, maintenance plans, the work plan then the other thing I provided is a six-year history of expenditures for each of the departments and the schools.  We started this process I believe in May so you will see that only going through May FY17 but as we get into the schools which we presented in the fall, we have the whole FY17.  For members of the public, there are unbound copies for you as well on the counter.  Then we get into each of the schools and again we have an overview of met needs and resource allocations.  We look at programs for special education across all schools; we have the numbers of students per section, per grade; amount of time for specialists.  It gets a little more complicated as we go into the middle school because they have a different schedule than the elementary school.  You will see that by subject area.  It will be a little more complicated as we get to the high school as we get into the special education programming that you have heard about from Kate in the past.  Then there is technology with the details.  What our hope is as you look at the agenda in the sleeve, is that each of the next few meetings, before we present the overall budget after the governor’s House 1 is you have a chance to look at each of these sections based on this schedule.  Then if there is additional information you need, sending a note to Peter prior to that meeting and we can bring it and delve deeper into the detail  for each of these sections rather than a soft overview, we really want to get into the detail like we did the with Finance Subcommittee.  I just wanted to give you a little background on the book so you understand it.  We are not going to get into all of this tonight obviously because you haven’t had a chance to look at it.  We wanted to give you an overview.   P. Dillon – I am hoping this will be a really valuable tool.  There is probably more information there than anyone wants to needs, but if you dig into it, if you have a particular thing you’re interested in, it’s a great book, particularly the multi-year trends.  R. Dohoney – at the Finance Committee we had a lot of questions about presentation and I think Sharon and Peter took our recommendations about reorganizing it.  Some of it, once it is explained to you, you really get it.  I really like the enrollment breakouts at the high school.  It is really informative once you understand the format.  I would contact Peter or Sharon if you have any questions.  P. Dillon – we are always available to talk through it.    We can do it one-on-one or in a little group.

The way Sharon and I divided this presentation is I will run through the first 11 slides; it is a high-level overview then Sharon will go through the detail.  We always start with the mission and I think it is important, especially in town meetings where people are not living this all the time.  Our mission is to ensure all students are challenged through a wide range of experiences to become engaged, curious learners and problem solvers, so effectively communicate, respect diversity and improve themselves and their community.  This year, the whole budget process was revised based on two comments from the school committee.  The school committee rather than just the finance committee wanted to review this and for us to back it up so we had more time to discuss the budget.  There has been a feeling at least the last couple of years that between when we finalized the budget and when we vote on it, there is not enough time to really wrestle with it.  I think we have built in quite a bit of time.  Some people might argue too much time but if we finish early that is not a bad thing.  The next slide:  two important timelines, the third week of January will get our revenue estimates and that is also around the time we will know about the local contribution which will let us make calculations to the towns.  The big thing that always comes up is most of our operating budget is driven by per capita calculation.  This year, once again, Great Barrington’s percentage creeped up a little bit.  Stockbridge and West Stockbridge stayed commiserate with Great Barrington going up.  Your policy: to achieve the greatest education returns and contributions to the educational program in relation to dollars expended.  This is neat because it lines up with the RADAR work.  I think we figured it out and now we are actually going to have some tools to concretely measure some of it.  Not all of it.  To establish levels of funding that will provide high quality education for all our students.  The school committee and the citizens, our taxpayers, have been really committed to doing that particularly in the context of the operating budget.  To use the best available techniques for budget development and management.

In terms of our proposed budget, this is different than we have done in the past, in addition to all the things we like to fund, we are going out a little more on a limb in terms of what we care a lot about.  The first one is professional development and support of student growth.  To get students to where we want them to grow and achieve and variety of things, either math or artistic achievement or anywhere in between, we want to invest in professional development both bringing outside people in and working with people internally to train their peers.  The next one is meeting students where they are, and we do that in a lot of different ways but subgroups in this, we have had as a district both ups and down with paraprofessionals and numbers of paraprofessionals.  As we get a population that in some ways has a wider range of needs, we are using paraprofessionals in some cases to meet those needs.  Some of those needs are academic, some are medical or other.  More work around instructional technology particularly in the elementary school, we have made a commitment in the other buildings more.  We are carefully reviewing all programs and schedules at all of the schools.  That will come up for some of the implications for things.  The third one is around special education; increasing specialized programming; improving language-based programming and meeting our mandates and obligations.  We had a long history of sending students out because they had complex needs and we couldn’t meet those needs.  We have done a good job of creating programs and we have been able to bring back a lot of students and we have continuing work to do there.  The last one and this is an umbrella one, is around after-school program access.  We will be talking more about this particularly in the context of some of our after-school programs but we would like to increase access and open up opportunities for the widest range of students.  Historically, Project Connection’s funding was really targeted to a subset of our students.  We have done a really great job with those students but other students and classmates and peers who would like to participate in that, we have not afforded them the full range of opportunities to do that.  We will be coming back to you with some ways to do that.  The next one is around this rationalized after-school activities at the high school.  This is a lot of what Amy alluded to in the created of that reconfigured position that is around athletics but also co-curricular.  There are a lot of neat things going on but the approach hasn’t been as coherent as it could be.  I’m going to stop here and Sharon will go into the numbers and where we are.  As you get into numbers, people freak out but these numbers are so preliminary, now is not the time to freak out.  If you are going to freak out, you want to freak out the third week in January.

  1. Harrison – Right now in our Draft Preliminary Budget, the gross budget is $28,072,494 or an increase of $1,607,542 which equates to about a 5.73% increase. What I want to point out about that is this is pretty consistent over the past few years. I have been giving the school committee the rough percentage increase in December.  They asked what we expect our operating budget to increase and it has been between 5.25 and 6%.  This is pretty consistent with where we have started in the past.  When you look at the budget, 43.17% of that $1.6 million is contractual salary to date.  I just want to point out as people go through this draft budget, it is going to look like people are getting increases.  You are going to see 3%, 6%, 7% in some cases.  In a number of cases for the administrators, independents and teachers, those increases really are just showing the actual change from the FY17 budget because those salaries were not settled at that time to the FY18 which is reflected in 19.  In 17, if you were making $50,000 and there was a 3% increase, that would have been in contingency for the FY18 budget.  So that FY18 salary is really what is showing in 17.  We have done that before.  So Peter’s salary in FY17 was put in for FY18 because it hadn’t been settled for FY18 when the budget was set.  So when I show the FY19, it is not set for 19 but it is reflecting the FY18 actual.  So he hasn’t gotten a 3% for 19, it is just because we are crossing two fiscal years.  I can do an example.  I know it is confusing.  It is going to come up every time.  You are taking the FY17 salary, increasing to 18 but not reflecting it until 19.  The same thing with teachers.  Some of the other contracts were settled so you are actually seeing the two-year increase in one year.  I just wanted to point that out.  Except for Unit A, those aren’t settled.  The remaining change for the 1.6 is almost 57%; the largest increase there is on the health and dental benefits.  That is $5 million budget that I am anticipating increasing about 11% or $550,000.  The rate will be set at the end of January so about the same time we get the governor’s budget, we will get this rate.  I’m fairly confident that it will be less than the 11% because we were actually running about 97% of claims to income.  I am expecting it is going to be lower than the 11%.  However, it is always better to reduce the budget than have to put it in after the rates are set.  We put back the $116,000 for the extraordinary maintenance at the high school.  As you know, we had this in a number of years ago and then when we were going through this last high school project vote, we took it out in anticipation of that potentially happening.  Since it didn’t, we recognized we may have a few years until we have another project.  We have put the $116,000 back in as a request.  Salary changes – when I talk about the salary changes here, I am talking about that section when you look at the change section, you are going to see recommendations for changes in positions.  For example, Peter talked about the instructional technology position at the elementary school.  Mary will talk more about that when we get into the detail with the elementary school, but what we are looking at is to increase that from a .5 to a 1.0 FTE position.  That would not be for just teaching technology.  Really what Mary is looking at is to really have that instructional technology teacher help teachers embed technology within their teaching so students are using technology, understanding how to search, understanding what is factual and what is not; so it is embedding that technology; not pulling kids out to just teach them about technology.  Those are the kinds of salary changes I am talking about.  Transportation is increasing 3.85% or $61,815.  Again, these are our recommendations.  Most of that is in anticipation of the increase.  I have that 1.45% again.  Once December’s numbers are out and we have the annual, that could come down a bit.  The other part of that, which is about half, is we are recommending in order to offer that equity for after-school activities, to reinstate the late bus runs K-12 so that we can provide more after-school transportation.  Professional development increases slightly less than that.  That is do all of the work that we have been talking about with the changes at the schools.  We will talk more about that in detail both at the school level and with Kristi when we do the full budget.  District-Wide Technology and Food Service – some increases in there for additional district wide-software, hardware and to recognize the average need in the food service.  We continue with contingency salary – it is negotiations.  The ETL you just approved the director of co-curricular athletics; a communications/outreach person; if you have questions on that I will let you talk to Peter because he is more verse in that.  P. Dillon – it is not clear – clearly a person would do it but it may not be a position.  It may be a consultant line.  We are tentatively putting aside $25,000.  What I am envisioning now, and this will be an ongoing conversation, is that some portion of that upfront would go to designing an outreach in communication and it is planned to bring in somebody to do that.  The second part of it would support somebody in doing that work.  So, it may be an external person, maybe from Berkshire County or not, who comes up with us with a plan and does analysis, focus groups, all that stuff; then somebody on the ground likely from our community would likely do some of that day-to-day work.  S. Harrison – the $47,000 is the increase to the contingency line over last year.  These are the changes to the particular lines not the amount of the line.  The administrative has to do with mostly with leases for printing and copying and we are getting overwhelmed with all of the required hard-copy material that we have and this is not uncommon across the state.  There are a number of companies that assist in that and help digitize and go through all the material.  That is something I would like us to look at for next year because we are getting to the point where we can’t even move in our archives and the kind of money we are spending for what we are archiving offsite should make up for that just over a couple of years.  P. Dillon – one of the nice things about a lot of that if not all of it, are both in the school buildings and in some of our stuff, because we have largely moved to all electronic systems going forward, we are able to back that up.  Really what we are talking about with the exception of some of Sharon’s financial documents, the legacy documents that we are stuck with.  Going forward we will have many fewer documents we are stuck with.

Then we get to the smaller things, texts, supplies and materials, the special education materials for the new programs that we have; non-discretionary spending is down.  You will see the individual lines might increase but as a group, they have gone down and a large portion even with increases is the ability of Kate to bring back a number of our students to provided services internally.  We are also being able to use that non-discretionary savings to support our staff and hiring staff so we have more robust programs and avoid sending students out to other programs.  The operations and custodial, Steve always uses a very sharp pencil on his budget.  This next slide is pretty straight forward.  We have the bond at $1.8 million which is next year’s cost.  Those bonds will be retired in fiscal 2024.  Then we have our short-term borrowing.  We have 2 ½ more years on that including FY19.  The interest is on the $10 million outstanding.  The assessments to member towns are based primarily on three considerations.  Population allocation, minimum local contribution and net assessment.  The only one we can tell you about now is the population allocation.  We don’t know the other two until we get the governor’s budget and minimum local.  You see that as Peter has already said, Great Barrington population went up slightly; Stockbridge is down and West Stockbridge is up slightly.  B. Fields – what’s the number Peter said for Great Barrington?  Is it 6 that is has gone up.  The number of students…P. Dillon – it is always a moving target.  I don’t have it right in front of me.  S. Harrison – it is on the October 1 numbers.  We can get that to you.  P. Dillon – six or eight, less than 10.  In some cases the numbers are so small; a couple of kids graduate, a family moves in or out of town; somebody living in Stockbridge moved to Great Barrington, etc.

  1. Harrison – it is important to remember the variables in play; House 1 is due the third week; minimum local contribution comes up subsequent to House 1; health and dental rates are set the last Monday in January; we are negotiations with Unit A and there are always unanticipated program changes based on mostly on families moving in and out of the district.
  2. Bannon – this is so preliminary but so helpful to get this information now as a basis for this as opposed to January. Are they are questions or comments? D. Weston – There was a lot of work done early and I think we need to be appreciative of that work.  A. Hutchinson – so there are no art teachers on the block?  P. Dillon – there is an art teacher on the block.  It is in the changes.  We will go into this in greater detail, but since you brought it up, we can talk about it now.  There are three art teachers at the high school.  For the third year in a row, I am recommending that we eliminate one of those positions.  I don’t do that lightly.  I used to be a principal of an art high school.  I worked there for eight years; I care deeply about the arts.  When you go into the fine-level enrollment detail in the context of the numbers of kids in those classes, as the fiscal scores of the district, I can’t rationalize having three art teachers.  Turn to the page with class sizes in the 6-8 range.  I can’t recommend that we have class sizes that small.  S. Bannon – any other comments or questions?  We are very appreciative of getting this information this early.  It is a building block and it is really important to have it started.  There are a lot of pieces of this puzzle to put in but it is a really good start.  Those of you who haven’t gone to the finance subcommittee, all the data that we look at is in this book.  P. Dillon – as you look in the book, you can go to the high school section and you turn to page 6, and this could be the case for anything, what you will see is the raw data there around class sizes.  Each box is tied to a particular position and then the green and purple alternate based on the fall or spring semester.  As we have conversations and we use the art one because you brought it up, look at that and you will see what class size is.  What is interesting is to look at that in comparison to other class sizes. If you look at art in comparison to English or French, you can analysis the data and see particular trends.
  • Updates:
    • Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project – P. Dillon – there are so many of these shared services projects that it is hard to get your head around it. The one that is on the agenda, is in the context of the grant we got.  We met the other day.  The superintendents and I, around the technology report.  Andy and I didn’t have the time to meet around that but we will in advance of our next meeting we will share that report.  Our various technology directors are working together and Al Scroci who is the visiting superintent from Lee, Lee set aside some resources from him to do some work with the technology people trying to implement what is outlined in that report.  I am optimistic about that and that is sort of exciting.

 

Good News:

 

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School –  Mary Berle,  Principal:   We have lots of good news from Muddy Brook.  Our winter concerts are coming up December 14th for grades 3 and 4; EK, PK and KDG on December 20th and Grades 1 and 2 also on the 20th.  Kids have been working really hard preparing for the concerts, and we hope to see you there.

 

This week the DA’s office has been working on an anti-bullying curriculum with our 4th grade that will continue with the younger grades in the next few weeks.  We are also welcoming to the District Attorney’s office and this year was particularly sweet.  This great 3rd and 4th grade team is figuring out how many straws we use at Muddy Brook.  They are doing math problems to demonstrate the waste, and they are beginning to petition all students to refrain from using a straw if they can.  They are working on training younger students on how to fold open cartons without a straw.  They are also pricing paper straws and we are hoping to have a budget neutral solution to the plastic straw problem at Muddy Brook.  It is kind of fun.  We also have an outside consultant on this, a woman named Melissa Elstein who is the daughter-in-law of one of our great volunteers Ari Katzman, who has been sending us great videos and information from NYC about her campaign there.

 

We just finished our data meetings for ELA.  These are very useful meeting between teachers, the admin team and also our learning specialists who review all the reading data and how kids are improving up to this point in the year whether they are improving and making shifts.  It is always a big week for us and we just finished that.  We really encourage all families to read at home at night, and that will help with supporting our developing readers.

 

Our PTO auction closed this week.  They raised $14,000.  Hilary Howard and Betlinn Young-Taft and many volunteers and well as many businesses contributed to this great event.  This is basically our field trip budget so we are incredibly grateful to the PTO.

 

Today, we had a wonderful assembly.  It was the My Plate assembly.  About 20 students who participated in Projection Connection, but it was open to all 3rd and 4th graders, practiced with a Broadway star, Helen Butleroff, who has made a commitment later in life to work with children and teach them about nutrition.  She is also a registered dietician.  The entire school was wrapped for an hour watching classmates and also former Broadway stars perform a wonderful show about eating well.  We are very grateful for that.

 

Finally, the Holiday Stroll is this weekend, Saturday at 4pm.  Many thanks to the Drucker family for making Barrington Outfitters available for Muddy Brook.  There will be a combination of Teacher Tales, Story Improve, a bake sale, etc.  We hope to see families there.

 

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Ben Doren, Principal:  Good Evening.  Right before Thanksgiving, we did our second mentor training.  It is important because we have our 8th grade mentors working with our 6th graders who were trained last year.  This year, we really did a big investment.  We tried to get them in the September training to become leaders so the the training right before Thanksgiving was about bringing on the 7th grade mentors that were identified and giving a leadership role to the 8th graders to try to build that capacity.  Many of our mentors in 7th and 8th grade were mentees; they had a mentor when they were in 5th and 6th grade.  There is a very big give-back and we are about to roll out a very big connection coming up in the next week that is important.  We have 75 mentors across the 220 7th and 8th graders so that is a really nice leadership program.

 

We just finished up, actually tomorrow will be our last, of our five vertical meetings.  We have released days but it is really important.  Miles Wheat our assistant principal and myself have split up the departments and are taking release days with a very specific agenda and working through that and actually making connections in the spring with Kristi to do K-12 connections which is really exciting.  It is very important to have all the teachers get together and do some work.  The thing that we will be focusing in on a lot is solidifying our assessments; that is the essays the write, the writing they do in English, the research they do in social studies, the labs which is now evidence and reasoning in science, as well as in math, the perseverance in math projects and sticking through it.  Exploratory has done a great job with Habits of minds which deals with reflection, developing craft, doing all the different aspects that connect the exploratory arts program.  What we like about it is teachers start speaking about a common language; these are common assessment in the way that they are the same things kids are expected to do from 5th to 6th to 7th to 8th grade.  The assessment itself is about the units.  There is a lot of work that goes in rubrics that we use to assess and understand from year to year.  This is the end of about four years of really hard work starting with the Understanding by Design building units of study and about how this idea that we actually have an aligned set of assessments that says something about how a kids grows and develops from year to year outside of some our benchmarks like AIMsweb or MCAS.  It is a deeper way of understanding how kids grow.  I have been very impressed and inspired at how teams or taking these conversations and trying to push, integrate and connect.

 

We also talk a lot about instruction and data and whether we are having success; what are the methods that are working.  One thing in particular, is our writing program called SRSD.  It really works, it is a bunch of strategies that help kids write.  The English department is really moving ahead strong which it but it is really inspiring the social studies and science department to align a way of  working with writing across the board.  We also look at data, MCAS, etc.  The English department has a really interesting plan for approaching that.

 

We did a set of meeting around ESL integration.  We have had a very parallel ESL program supporting our English Language Learners.  It is becoming more a part of our regular instructional experience.  Our ESL instructor and I put together a whole package of information and data on the students as well as strategies; met with all the teams and it is really starting to build a much close connection.

 

We had our 2nd Annual Music Fest last week.  Student put together a whole night, basically a talent show, with band, chorus and orchestra performers.  Last year, we raised a bunch of money.  This year they raised about $300 for the performance music program.  What I love about it is, I try to help them get organized and they don’t want any part of it.  They want to organize.  They do a raffle, admission, food sales, and gather a lot of students together.

 

Project Connection Open House was great last week.  It is a very mature program.  We have a parent body that is really invested in it.  Kids and parents come back, we have new families come one, it is a whole potluck dinner.  It is an annual activity where we celebrate twice a year.

 

We also have African dance from Berkshire Pulse coming in every day this week in the afternoon with all grades doing PE classes.  Berkshire Pulse wrote a grant and were able to bring a dance instructor and drummer.

 

We are continuing with the WEB Du Bois education committee and trying to make connection to the UMass archives as well as the center year and locate activities.  It is a great way to make a connection on the 150th celebration of Du Bois’ birth.

 

We had the orchestra concert last night.  We couldn’t use the risers.  We couldn’t see all the kids and that was terrible.  The reason why is there were so many kids on that stage and that was wonderful.  We are really making a difference.  The idea that from elementary to middle school all have to do an ensemble, the orchestra hasn’t been large in the past years and now they are packing the stage.  It was a great concert with great playing and some kids taking some chances with solo and trio work and even more so the way the ensambles played together.  Tomorrow is the first student council dance, the Snowflake Dance.

 

Monument Mount Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal:   We too have been busy with a lot of arts and musical performances.  I had my first Christmas in Stockbridge on Sunday and attended the student choral, orchestra and jazz band  performances at St. Paul’s Church.  It was wonderful.  On Monday, I had the honor of attending the Railroad Street Youth Project and annual event at Chrissey Farms where they raise money and honored their apprenticeship program for culinary.  We received a wonderful meal, but the most exciting part of that evening was that they have the Youth Empowerment Program, and this is their first year in being about to support students furthering their education through a scholarship.  Two Monument Mountain students received scholarships.  Eva Letteron received a $500 scholarship, and Sheila Francisco received a $5,000 scholarship with a match for a second year.  She is planning to pursue higher ed in the field of nursing.  It was a real honor to be there with her family.  She is a first generation college student.  It was heartwarming and wonderful.

 

Jacob’s’ Pillow has been at Monument Mountain the past two weeks, and they culminated today in a performance.  There was a diverse set of classes that were involved including horticulture, art, some English classes, etc.  Those students really enjoyed that program, and I got to see a little piece of it to day.

 

We had a group of students attend the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Leadership Conference in the eastern part of the state.  I have put together a student Principal’s Advisory Group.  We had our second meeting today and we are starting to shape out some projects that they will help me lead throughout this year.

 

We had one of our largest Poetry Out Loud performances.  Last week was the semi-finals and next week will be the finals.  We have some really amazing performers and one lucky winner will go on to the state competition.

 

The department deans did a little early release today, half day, and did some design thinking around governing structures that will help move the work forward at Monument Mountain.  That was a pretty powerful afternoon of hard thinking and some great ideas.  We look forward to shaping those and sharing them with you.

 

We will be busy the next couple of weeks with the holiday concerts, performances, spring musical is getting ready and doing tryouts this week and next.  We have a lot going on.

 

Sub-Committee Reports:

  • Policy Sub Committee:
    • EB – Safety Program; EBB-First Aid; EC-Building & Ground Management; EC-Buildings & Grounds Maintenance; ECA-Buildings & Grounds Security; ECD-Authorized Use of School Owned Materials; EEAEA-Bus Driver Examination & Training; EFC-Free & Reduced Price Food Services; FA-Facilities Development Goals; FF-Naming New Facilities; FFA-Memorials; GBA-Equal Employment Opportunity; GBEB-Employee Conduct; GBGB-Staff Personal Security & Safety; GBGE-Domestic Violence Leave – S. Bannon – we have for a second reading a whole host of policies. Fields – on FA-Facilities Development Goals “to the best use of local resources” in the second paragraph “it is the school committee’s intent, wherever possible, to partner with the MSBA”, I don’t see the relevance to that whole sentence in that paragraph.  I don’t think it is possible to partner with the MSBA.  I know we voted to send an SOI but….  Can we just strike that sentence?  S. Bannon – we absolutely can.  R. Dohoney – I think it is a project by project basis.  I don’t think we need to make it our policy.  I think it is kind of counter to what we have talked about to date with things going forward.  I think just striking that one sentence would be fine.  S. Bannon – it is keeping it neutral which is what the committee we are forming to go into it neutral.

 

MOTION TO APPROVE ALL SECOND READINGS OF ABOVE POLICIES WITH THE EXCEPTION OF REMOVING THE SENTENCE FROM  FA-FACILITIES DEVELOPMENT GOALS WHICH STATES “to the best use of local resources, it is the school committee’s intent, wherever possible, to partner with the Massachusetts School Building Authority”:  R. Dohoney                   Seconded:  B. Fields       Accepted:  Unanimous

 

  1. St. Peter – You had a policy meeting. I was wondering if the valedictorian/salutatorian…S. Bannon – we haven’t gotten that far yet.  We have another meeting scheduled in two weeks.  R. Dohoney – there is not way that will be changed for this graduating class then?  S. Bannon – it will not.  R. Dohoney – I am not saying I agree with the current rule or not but …. S. Bannon – David Adler is not coming in June to speak to us.

 

  • Building and Grounds Subcommittee: N/A
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee: N/A
  • Technology Subcommittee: N/A
  • Finance Subcommittee: Dohoney – we did meet and it was predominantly around what you are going to hear tonight.  We are working on formatting.  S. Bannon – what about the next meeting.  R. Dohoney – we have the meeting scheduled for this coming Tuesday that was scheduled a long time ago.  When you see this schedule going forward, we have a finance committee of January 9th to review input from this.  I’m thinking we cancel the meeting this Tuesday.  S. Bannon – It’s fine to only have the January 9th meeting.
  • District Consolidation & Sharing Subcommittee: Bannon – we had one meeting November 21st with Southern Berkshire and Lenox was night enough to join us.  We have another meeting scheduled December 21st at 4:30pm and Southern Berkshire has invited Lee and Lenox.  Without being judgemental, anything you read about any other meeting is incorrect.  R. Dohoney – I thought it was a good meeting.  It was the first meeting I have been at since I joined the school committee where we met with another school district and the term merger was used and nobody threw anything.  It was good.  I’m not saying there was a lot of progress but the meeting was good.  One thing that came up was the discussion of if we are going to go down this road of maybe hiring some sort of facilitator to help the discussions, similar with what we did for RAC.  That would require some mild appropriation.  It think it was $5,000-$10,000 total for the RAC.  I would like to be able to go back to that meeting on the 21st with Steve, Anne and Sean and just be able to tell them that Berkshire Hills is open if you folks want to hire a facilitator.  If anybody has an objection to that, you should probably say it now.  It was floated as an idea.  People are going to come back with proposals including the superintendent and Peter.  S. Bannon – you’re right.  I don’t think we are ready to vote but if people have strong objections to it, let’s hear it now so we know.  B. Fields – would the purpose of the facilitator to be able to fill in for technical information like it was in the RAC.  R. Dohoney – no, it sounded more like someone who is a facilitator…A. Potter – somebody who is neutral.  R. Dohoney – exactly.  P. Dillon – so people who were then could participate and not focus exclusively on process.  R. Dohoney – there was discussion at some point about a consultant but that is way far away.  S. Bannon – it seems like you have the consensus within reason.

 

Personnel Report:   P. Dillon – I think it is fairly straightforward.  I don’t have anything to add.

  • Certified Appointment(s) – we do have a new chemistry and physics teacher at the high school and she comes to us via California and comes with a PhD. She is replacing the position that we lost.  I was at the high school today for a number of meetings and I happen to drop into her class.  They were talking about where elements come from.  What is remarkable about this, because none of us have probably studied where elements have come from, this has changed dramatically in the last six years.  What we were all taught about elements is not what students are learning now.  I am a fan of science and it was news to me.
  • Long-term Substitute Appointment(s)
  • Non-Certified Appointment(s)
  • Leave of Absence
  • Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

 

Business Operation:

  • Acceptance Vote for Bridging the Gap Donation – S. Harrison – Could Kate or Amy talk about the Bridging the Gap Donation? Burdsall – last spring I was contacted by a woman who is part of a motorcycle group out of Westfield.  This group does a fundraiser every year and they pick a group they want to fundraise for.  I am assuming someone in that group, there are a bunch of folks from the Berkshires, and I am assuming one of them was friends with Dede Warner or knew her and the connection she with Bridging the Gap House.  We worked on putting that all together.  They did their fundraiser in August and I think in October they presented us with a check.  I was blown away by the amount of money they raised for Bridging the Gap.  S. Harrison – it was $7,017.82.  S. Bannon – I knew Dede but can you explain in a few sentences what Bridging the Gap House is.  K. Burdsall – Bridging the Gap House is a house that we have on Fairview Terrace in Great Barrington.  It is a program for kids that go to Berkshire Hills that are 18-22 years old.  It is a transition program for students on the autism spectrum.  One of our parents Dede Warner helped create this program many years ago.  This group of people did an amazing job and we are very thankful for their fundraising effort and that money will be used for that program.  S. Bannon – We have to vote to accept this donation.

 

MOTION TO ACCEPT DONATION FOR BRIDGING THE GAP HOUSE:  D. Weston                         Seconded:  A. Potter                Accepted:  Unanimous

 

  • Approval Vote for move of calendar year 2016 FSA balance to TPA Fee revolving fund – S. Harrison – I ask to move the balance in our previous calendar years flexible spending account to our TPA Fee Revolving Fund. As you may be familiar, if an employee contributes to an FSA, by IRS regulations I can’t give that money back to that employee because they already had the tax benefit of that so the money goes to the employer.  What we had in the past, which benefits everyone, is use any money that is left in the FSA to cover the FSA fees as well as the fees for our 403b.  This past year happened to be a bit; $2,693.20.  I would like to move that into the fee revolving fund so we can continue to pay fees on those programs.

 

MOTION TO TRANSFER FSA FEES TO FEE REVOLVING FUND:  R. Dohoney                            Seconded:  B. Fields                      Accepted:  Unanimous

 

Education News:

 

Old Business:

 

New Business:

  • Public Comment
  • Written Communication

 

  

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  R. Dohoney             Seconded:  J. St. Peter                 Accepted: Unanimous

 

The next school committee meeting will be held on January 11, 2018 – Regular Meeting – Du Bois Regional Middle School, 7pm

 

Meeting Adjourned at 8:50pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

 

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School Committee Secretary