Minutes – Feb. 11, 2016

                                   BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

                         Great Barrington           Stockbridge        West Stockbridge

                                               SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

                                  MONUMENT VALLEY MIDDLE SCHOOL- Library

                                                    February 11, 2016 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:        P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:              M. Berle, B. Doren, M. Young, S. Soule, D. Long, J. Briggs, 

Absent:                        C. Shelton

List of Documents Distributed:

-Proposed Change to MMRHS Scholarship Fund; -BHRSD FY17 BUDGET; -Budget Presentation 2_11_16 for FY17 v2;-DRAFT 2016 – 2017 CALENDAR; -February 11, 2016 Pers Report; -EC proposal for SC 2-2016; Early Childhood Entering Ages

RECORDER NOTE:

Meeting being transcribed from recorded DVD provided by CTSB after the fact. Length of meeting: 1hr 20min

                                                                    AGENDA

_____________________________________________________________________________

 CALL TO ORDER

Steve Bannon called the meeting to order 7:00pm

______________________________________________________________________________

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

______________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________

TREASURER’S REPORT

______________________________________________________________________________

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT 

Peter Dillon:

-Good News Item(s) – Skip tonight

-Proposed Change to Monument Mountain Scholarship Fund – Skip tonight

-FY17 School Calendar

– No School Committee Meeting dates yet.

-Tentative beginning and end dates to the school year.

-Starting off year w PD dates Aug 29& 30

– PK-9 Starting Aug 31

– 10-12 Starting Sept 1

Recent tradition of starting early, before Labor Day: snow-day cusion

Last Day of School- Earliest: Jun 15 / Latest: Jun 22

Shift of Union Contract does not require Union approval because it falls within the guidelines.

F.Clark: Have PD days aligned with other District Schools?

P.Dillon: Yes, 2 Full days, Several Half days. Meeting last week with BHRSD admin and other District’s admin to coordinate dates and teacher swap-days

D.Weston: Having 10-12 grades start on Sept 1 doesn’t give them 180 days of school. Dept of Ed requirement is 180 days.

P.Dillon: Will look into that

S.Bannon: First Day will still be Aug 31- just determine who will be there

Dan Weston Makes Motion to Approve FY17 School Calendar        

Seconded:   Rich Dohoney                   Approved: Unanimously

Proposed Starting Ages for Early Education: See distributed handout

PK/K/EK- Asking to back up date for ages from October 1st to September 1st. 05/01/16 the Policy Subcommittee met to discuss. Committee supports with addition of statement at bottom: “For School Year 16-17 Individual cases may be evaluated for the Superintendent.” Gives some flexibility to families caught in the transition. That will be for 1 year and removed next year. Vote on it at next meeting but would like to share these dates with families on initial outreach, labeled as “TENTATIVE”.

-Committee consensus is to do first reading tonight and vote next week and allow for parent communication of TENTATIVE dates.

Set date for Public Hearing – FY17 Budget – Superintendent’s recommendation: next regular meeting,

Rich Dohoney Made Motion to set date for Public Hearing for February 25, 2016 at 7pm in Student Center/Cafeteria of Monument Valley Middle School   

Seconded:  W.Fields                 Approved:Unanimously

FY17 Budget Presentation -Slideshow presentation by Peter Dillon and Sharon Harrison. Committee Members were given a paper copy of slideshow which will be on BHRSD website 05/04/2016-

P.Dillon:

Slide 2: Mission Statement.

We’re doing a good job of this. “Doing what we have to do. Can we do what we WANT to do?”

Slide 6: DBRMS- Writing Recognition (break in presentation for Ben Doren, DBM Principal)

B.Doren: Patriot’s Pen Grades 6-8. Sent several students to Boston for State Competition. Ruby Citrin, 6th Grader placed 1st in Massachusetts.

Slide 8: Level Programming: Meaning to keep doing what is being done with SOME changes. Currently: Health insurance & Salaries.

S.Harrison: Continues Presentation at Slide 19

Slide 37: Minimum Local Contribution: Based on equalized value for the town assessment value, population, and capital income

Slide 40: Assessment to Member Towns- Even though operating budget increased only 3% because of the total decrease in the Revenue (down 20.45% ), the total assessment to the member towns went up 6.66% = $20,505,923

Q&A/Discussion:

S.Bannon: Ask administration to come back with things for the next meeting or they can email between the two weeks.

Q- F.Clark: Health & Retirement costs? Changes proposed that would save district money?

A- S.Harrison: The average net change to health insurance for FY17 is ~6.6% .  Active Plans- HMO, PPP, PPS- the average change is ~13.9%.

Change in Medx Plan (for retirees over 65 who are on Medicare who receive Medx supplemental insurance through the District)- BHRSD is self-insured as member of Berkshire Health Group. Medx was also self-insured.Therefore, it was broke apart. Most expensive item is pharmacy. Keeping medical self-insured and fully insuring pharmacy part. Result = 25% plan reduction resulting in 6.6%. Over 200 retirees and/or spouses on Medx plan and ~200+ individuals on Active plans, 46 early retirees on Active plans (people hired after 55 but haven’t reached 65 of which 7 will never be able to go on Medx because they retired before withholdings).

Q- F.Clark: Do we pay for spouses and are we obligated to do that?

A- S.Harrison: Now we are because Committee voted & approved of that years ago.

Q- F.Clark- Is that reversible?

A- S.Harrison: I don’t believe so.

S.Bannon: We can find out.

F.Clark: But they’re not retirees.

W.Fields: Yeah, but their spouses.

F.Clark: In this day-&-age, people work and have their own retirement.

W.Fields: But what a way to deter people to apply here for jobs.

Peter Dillon: Tomorrow the 3 bargaining groups are moving to vote on a deductible insurance plan. Win-win: save the district money and ease transition to a deductible plan.

Savings were reflected in tonight’s powerpoint presentation and would take place July 1.

Also analyzed sick and personal days, showed spike in May & June. Proposal for vote: up to 3 unused sick/personal days can be rolled into “sick bank” at end of year instead of use-or-lose policy now that has contributed to May/June spike.

S.Bannon: If they approve the 2 changes, we will vote on them at next meeting.

S.Harrison: Retirement part of Fred’s question: has gone up a little over 8% increase =$44,900

R.Dohoney: $400-$600 thousand range for cuts was determined by Finance Committee – Summer analysis, early Fall high-impact items on budget to include SPED, November decided to go to standard method of operating – start with a level program budget. Mid November those numbers were shown to be a great enough increase (assessment increases: GB-8.54%, St-11.42% , WS-6.78% )  resulting in realization that level program budget wouldn’t work. That lead to the $400k-$600k number.

F.Clark: Very impressed with all work been done by finance committee and administration. This budget has $250,000 less of transfer from E&D over last year. Choice and tuition is $130,000 income. The lending we’ve committed to is also an increase for the ST borrowing and the High School Extraordinary Maintenance. Those three items is a $250,000 increase to the budget. We’ve held the line on operating costs despite the salaries, Insurance,, retirement costs going up but the operating that number is within reason. It’s just some of those other things that have come in to hit us with the budget.

S,Bannon: Discussion to continue next week and see where it goes.

-UPDATES   P.Dillon:

-Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project (SBSSP)- On St. Patrick’s Day all of the superintendence we’re going to meet with a delegation from MassIT & The Education Super Highway. Governor and lieutenant governor in-kind contribution to our  type of work. Going to look at shared services involving technology. another meeting focused around professional development and those shared days.

-Discussions with Shaker Mountain, Lee & Farmington River- Setting up meetings with both. Steve Bannon is helping with that.

W.Fields: Regarding the shared services, it was $100,000 Grant given to us?

P.Dillon: $75,000 was given to us by the state for the in-kind service and roughly $20k – $25k  was given to us by various banks. For use in five areas:   Technology; professional development; curriculum for a grant writer to sustain the work; opportunities around special education.

______________________________________________________________________________

SUB-COMMITTEE REPORTS

Policy Sub Committee- F.Clark: Met Tuesday. Reviewed Elementary Starting Age, Agreed to revisit the peanut allergy & reach out to the nursing staff for help. Talked about fund sources for certain technology and crowdsourcing. NARCAN- leaving it to the nursing staff. List of drugs that nurses can administer is out of date and outside policy so keeping with state law, which is what the nurses follow.

Building and Grounds  Sub Committee -None

Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee  -None

Technology Sub Committee -None

Finance Sub Committee– covered above

Regional Agreement Amendment Sub Committee- meets Feb 24 @ 6pm District Office

District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee -None

PERSONNEL REPORT – No retirements announced

______________________________________________________________________________

BUSINESS OPERATION

______________________________________________________________________________

EDUCATION NEWS -None

______________________________________________________________________________

OLD BUSINESS-None

______________________________________________________________________________

NEW BUSINESS

            F.Clark: MIAA determined MMRHS Division 4 for football this December. Now in a league with big teams like Pittsfield and Taconic. Explained, when asked, that is was because We are in a co-op situation (Monument and Mount Everett) so we have a large pool of boys who can come out for football. There’s a problem with that because the reason we have a co-op is because we don’t have enough kids to go out for football.

MaryAnn Young: Football in MA is a very hot topic for several years. The structure the MIAA set out, a few years ago, was received with a lot of criticism and so now they are reevaluating that structure. It was time to realign all the teams and when they didn’t that in the Commonwealth, Monument was moved up a division because they combined the total enrollment of Monument and Mount. Everett as the number of students that can fill this team. Mary Ann, Paul, and Steve Dinello met and felt strongly that they would not be appeal because they did not want to break up the co-op with Mount Everett just so that we could be brought back to a lower division. Monuments numbers have really hovered at a very low number for a number of years and the co-op with Mount Everett has really strengthened that number and is found to be a very fine partnership. Felt moving up a division and the teams that we would be playing would not be that big of a factor.  Berkshire County is District G. We met with District F (Pioneer Valley) a little over a year ago to talk about joining with them in different sports because we were really don’t have enough teams to complete full schedule if we stay with just Berkshire County. Looked at how to join with District F as we see sport enrollment either stagnate or decline. It has been decided that District G will join with District F for a one year. One year was decided because that is how long it will take for the MIAA to redo their guidelines. This will allow for all of the teams in Berkshire County and Pioneer Valley to create an equal playing field for all football teams. This means that Monument will be playing smaller schools, like ourselves for whom we would be most competitive with, (even including Mount Everett) within the two districts rather than a larger school like Taconic or Pittsfield. All of these changes have been heavily considered and we will be go,ing into the new football season in a higher division but we will be playing teams that the coaches principals, and athletic directors feel will be fair competition.

R.Dohoney: Thinks the co-op part needs to be revisited by this Committee as he is not very comfortable about the idea of a co-op.

MaryAnn Young: Paul and Mary Ann have a lot of information that they can share with the committee because they have spent the last couple of years with other athletic directors finding out exactly how co-ops can benefit athletics and what teams will be able to stay intact because of the co-op principle.

R.Dohoney: Part of the problem is financial and part of the problem is strategic. Questions how many more tricks, gimmicks, or sleight-of-hand are going to be done to prop up a failing school and where do we fit in the mechanism.

Steve Bannon: After the budget will bring this issue back to the table.

______________________________________________________________________________

PUBLIC COMMENT -None

______________________________________________________________________________

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION-None

______________________________________________________________________________

The next meeting is scheduled for February 23, 2016 at 6pm Joint Meeting w Town’s Selectboard and Finance Committee Members

Selectboard Meeting Room, Old Plain School, 50 Main St, Stockbridge

Motion to adjourn Public Session: W.Fields             Seconded: D.Weston 

 Approved: Unanimously

Meeting adjourned at 8:20pm

Submitted by:   Rebecca Burcher, Recorder

______________________________

Rebecca Burcher, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary

Berkshire Hills Regional School District does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or homelessness.