Minutes – Feb 2 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington           Stockbridge             West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library

February 2, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:          P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                B. Doren, M. Young, M. Berle, J. Briggs, M. Olds, D. Long, E. Mooney

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

BHRSD School Committee 10/13/2016 Minutes; BHRSD School Committee 01/19/2107 Minutes

February 2, 2017 Agenda; February 2, 2017 Personnel Report; FY18 Proposed Budget dated February 2, 2017 (Preliminary Working Draft)

Memorandum submitted by Kate Burdsall, Director of Students Services and Mary Berle, Principal of Muddy Brook Elementary re: Additional Special Education Teacher Position at MBE; Memorandum submitted by Kate Burdsall re: Board Certified Behavior Analyst Position and Programmatic Overview Update; Memorandum submitted by Kate Burdsall re:  Combined Autism and Development Skills Program Position and Programmatic Overview Update; Memorandum submitted by Kate Burdsall re: Education Team Leader Position

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 hours 55 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman 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, 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 for October 13, 2016

BHRSD School Committee minutes for January 19, 2017

Motion to approve both minutes:  S. Bannon     Seconded:  B. Fields    Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT – None

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT–

• Good News Item(s) – See below
• Dillon – We will jump right into the rest of things. I will have Sharon talk about this in a second.  On our agenda we were going to have two potential votes on allowing a five-year contract for transportation and then approving and potentially awarding a transportation contact.  We got the bid in and Sharon will talk about it.  My strong recommendation is that we do not vote tonight and you will understand why after Sharon talks about it.
• Approval/Vote to Allow a Five (5) Year Contract for the Upcoming Transportation Bid Rather Than a Three (3) Year Contract
  • Harrison – As we discussed before, we went out with a joint bid with Southern Berkshire. We tried going countywide before and that hasn’t worked, so we thought we would start small.  Southern Berkshire and Berkshire Hills went out together.  We received one (1) bid which we opened Tuesday and I was quite surprised.  I had anticipated a significant increase given what is happening in the market.  I was not anticipating a 37% increase in the cost.  This is why we are asking to hold on the vote.  We have talked with the bidder, and we are in negotiations to try to mitigate to balance their need because of their increasing expenses, just like us with health insurance which has increased over the past five years.  There have been a couple of years where there are no increases in the contract, so we are trying to balance that with our need to balance our budget.  We are in discussion with them to see how we can mitigate the increase and have it more level over the five years of the contact.  I put a proposal together and sent it to Southern Berkshire for them to review.  I hope to send that out to the bidder tomorrow and to hear at the beginning of next week.  What I did give to you, so that we would have some perspective, because we were quite shocked when we looked at the most recent survey.  We see that averages are coming in an average of $110 for a route.  Unfortunately, in the county we were the first bidders to go out to bid so we don’t have anything to compare to.  The one outlier is Mt. Greylock and nobody can explain why they are so low on their contract.  We were wondering if they had a two-tier system like us with the elementary and the middle/high school and it was the cost per run so it would be double.  I did verify that today.   It is the day cost for the bus and I don’t know why and I’m sure they will ever get that kind of deal again.  They are going out next year for a bid.  I also wanted you to see the survey so you can see what is happening around the county.  Monday the bid is coming in for Central Berkshire so we will have an idea on another contract that is happening.  You can see that Lenox and Adams/Cheshire are preparing a bid to go out.  I know that there is one other district but I can’t remember which one it is.  Pittsfield runs their own buses so they don’t have a price per route, they don’t estimate it that way and I am waiting to hear from North Adams.
  • Dillon – do you also want to give context as to what happened in Southern Berkshire for a comparison standpoint? S. Harrison – Southern Berkshire had bid in the past on a per run basis and they had two contractors that ran their routes.  They did it on a per run and their increase is estimated to be about 60% because they had very low rates and they are going to be pulled up more into the market.  It is interesting; we are trying to partner with them and help them yet keep our costs down and recognize that there is going to be some market increase.  E. Mooney (public)(inaudible…) As far as the five-year and the three-year contract going forward, what is the financial rationale?  S. Harrison – the bidders, anyone who hires a contractor will be bid and will amortize the cost of the bus over the length of the contract so if it only amortized over three years it is going to be much higher per year, so the five year actually helps us on the cost.  E.  Mooney – what happens if fuel goes up again?  S. Harrison – we don’t have a fuel escalation clause so that is on the contractor.
• Proposed Motion to Approve & Award 2017-2022 Transportation Contract
• FY18 Budget Update/Feedback
  • Dillon – The next thing we want to talk about and get some feedback on, we also have a sheet on this, is the upcoming years’ budget and where we are. Sharon can speak to this and at different points, I think the Finance Sub-Committee can speak to this as well.  Sharon, do you want to talk people through this?
  • Harrison – so we were asked by the Finance Sub-Committee to bring our initial preliminary working proposed budget to the School Committee for comments, feedback, questions, etc. What we put together we won’t call a level program but you will hear there really are some programmatic adjustments. Our thinking on this is developing a budget that we feel provides the best quality education for all of our students.  As you will see, this does include the bid on the buses as it came, so we are really hoping to bring that down.  You will see that the gross operating budget goes up just over 4%, school choice is down, and enrollment across the county is down, so our choice is down.  The regular tuition looks like it goes up but actually the estimate amount is about $882,000.  Thought between the hit on the choice and losing almost $100,000 in regular tuition would be a little too much for this budget so I used a little over $100,000 from the tuition revolving reserve.  The gross capital budget is set and it is based just like your mortgage.  Chapter 70 has gone up based on $20 per student additional from the final FY17 budget.  Chapter 71 Transportation Aid is about 64-65% of our actual cost last year.  I am very conservative in this area despite the fact that the state may budget a 70% increase until they look at the final end-of-year report.  They would really know how much it is going to be and we have been hit in the past where it has dropped to 40% after we had budgeted 60-65% so we tend to keep that low.  The transfer from E&D is our recommendation and it is $125,000 from last year plus $89,972 from the regional transportation reimbursement fund.  In 2014, the state passed a law that would allow regional districts to set aside an amount in excess of what they budgeted for their transportation receipts into a revolving fund to mitigate those changes when they are not giving us the 70% we had budgeted or those 60% that we had budgeted.  So given the fact I used it last year, that amount fell to E & D.  I felt it was appropriate that we give it back to the community.  So it is the $125,000 plus that nearly $90,000 plus a little more to bring it up to $250,000 instead of $214,932 which is what it would have been.  Interest income is low that is why I kept it at $7,500.  Misc. income, Peter and I had discussed this.  What I did here, we added $30,000 from the shared services revolving fund that we are getting from the shared superintendency.  The MSBA reimbursement is a flat amount for the entire life of the loan.  That brings us down to a net difference of 4.38 and what that does is, you will see, an allocation of assessment brings 6.66% for Great Barrington, 1.81% for Stockbridge and a decrease of 3.99% for West Stockbridge.  I want to point out that a good part of Great Barrington’s percentage increase is that they went in their allocation so the number of students from 69% to 72%, so there is 3% right there.  Stockbridge went down, West Stockbridge went down and Great Barrington’s minimum local contribution went up about 2%.  Even if we did nothing, the combination of the change in the assessment allocation, the enrollment, and the minimum local contribution would create an increase for Great Barrington.  On the second page, I thought it was important as we were thinking about what we want to have happen, is a graphic of where our major expenses are.  Education is a service industry so the majority of our expenses are in salaries and benefits.  The next largest is the transportation.  Again I am hoping that it is going to come down through negotiations but until that happens, I put in what we say in the bid.  The next amount is tuition and educational professional services.  That includes choice out and out of district placement for our students in private schools.  It includes professional services that the principals were talking about for our students with high need.  We have consultants that come in to work with them.  Then utilities, heat for the buildings, keeping the lights on, facilities and maintenance, other mandatory are insurances, legal, and legal settlement for special education settlement.  After that you can see in those things, educational materials, supplies, other administrative costs which is other insurance, professional development, student activities.  There is not a lot left to cut in that area.  This is what the budget looks like as of this meeting.
  • Dillon – from a process perspective, Sharon and I, with the help of the administrators are putting together a budget book and a budget presentation and we will share that but these numbers for the moment will remain consistent. The biggest potential shift that might happen and is if we are successful in negotiations with the bus company.  I think that has potential impact in the short term.  In the long term, there will still likely be the same amount money but how it gets spread out will be potentially different which gives us time to plan and make shifts.  As we present that typically what happens is folks on the committee push both ways.  Some people think to get to this budget we are depriving students of opportunities and they encourage us to put more money in, and other people will think that the overall increase in assessment or particularly the increase in assessment to one town and this year more than ever it is exaggerated to the town of Great Barrington, is too much and then folks on the committee will say, “I can’t really live with this, what would happen if we cut something?”.  Then we share “if you want us to cut $100,000, this is what would happen; if you want us to cut $200,000 this is what would happen”.  Somebody might say, “what if you cut $500,000?”, then we show you that and everyone will freak out and will say “you can’t do that” and we come back to something in the middle.  That is where we are in terms of the process.  I think this year more than any other year, we find this particularly gut wrenching and difficult.  Some of this is within our control and some are circumstances that have conspired to make it more complicated.  The percent of students living in Great Barrington has increased which is a hard thing to undo.  We are stuck with that.  The minimum local contribution, the increased assessed value in Great Barrington on the one hand is great for Great Barrington and on the other hand it hurts us from a funding perspective.
  • Potter – May I ask a quick question? The $250,000 where does that leave for …..(inaudible).   S. Harrison – 730.  R. Dohoney – to be clear, and this goes for everything, the Finance Committee has been dealing with reimagination and dealing with certain aspects of what is going on, the transportation, the health insurance, etc. but unlike the past two years, we have done no line-by-line analysis critique on the budget.  This is purely the administration.  They did present this to us at our last meeting and on a motion and a vote, we expressed and decided not to make the decisions and let it come to the full committee first and then go back.  So what you are getting here is the full administration budget including that $250,000 number.  I’m not putting words in your mouth, that is …. P. Dillon – the thinking was quite different from the past that at this point the committee as a whole, can start to weigh in, not just today, but today and the next few meetings until you get to vote.
  • Bannon – Rich, do you want to make any opening comments? R. Dohoney – No, Sharon correctly said this is not a level-programming budget as we know it.  It is fairly close to that.  I will let them speak to what has been added or changed.  From a Finance Committee standpoint, we didn’t get into that at all.  I think there has to be a general sense of whether we are coming in at a number that everyone is comfortable with.  I don’t have an opinion right now on that, but if and when it happens, the Finance Committee is willing to do that analysis and look at it in conjunction with the administration.  The Great Barrington thing is a tough nut this year because their demographics are changing so rapidly and everybody is sympatric to the fact that they seem to be having a lion’s share of the increases but that foundation number is because Great Barrington got a lot richer this year, like they did last year.  It is kind of a Great Barrington issue not a school committee issue on some levels.  In past years we have either expressly or impliedly targeted an increase to Great Barrington or forced the budget into it.  I don’t know that we can do that this year or if that is appropriate anymore.  That is not a Finance Committee thing, it is my opinion.  The other troubling thing we have is the declining revenues.  I have been saying for years and years, that we need to focus on getting new sources of revenue and we had some success this year with the shared services with the superintendent and some other things, which is good.  We are seeing the choice and tuition money go down which really hurts.  I think there is some action we could take on the choice income that may impact us next year.  I don’t know if that is something you want to talk about now. P. Dillon – I was anticipating that you might want to make a motion about that.
  • Dohoney – my position is we are seeing an erosion of our choice students. It does fairly mirror the decrease in Southern Berkshire County but on the same token there is still an opportunity to increase our choice income.  Based on what I saw on the staffing situation from the discussions in reimagination, the idea that we can’t have capacity to add students at the high school is not even close to the mark.  We have tremendous capacity there.  We have capacity at both of the other schools to some degree.  I think we ought to take a proactive step to try to increase choice numbers for next year.  You see it done in a lot of other districts and I think we should try to do some sort of marketing campaign.  We have seats at the high school.  We just had not one but two kids get accepted to MIT this year.  Some products sell themselves.  I think with a little push, we could do that and have it impact the next budget.  I would suggest we appropriate out of the shared services budget or the shared services revolving fund $5,500 which is the cost of one school choice student to allow the administration to do some marketing to see if we could potentially….it won’t be enough to change our projection in this budget but to hopefully change the income for next year.
  • Bannon – is that a motion? R. Dohoney – Yes.  S. Bannon – we could do that now because it is out of a revolving fund.  R. Dohoney – Correct.  We could spend it this year for next year.  I am not married to the shared services, it just seemed the most appropriate.  I didn’t talk to Sharon about that at all.  S. Harrison – I am just wondering if you want to take it from Choice Revolving since it is for choice.  R. Dohoney – that’s fine.   S. Harrison – my query was if we want to take it from the Choice Revolving since it is targeting choice.  I don’t have a feeling either way.  I am just thinking that it makes sense.  R. Dohoney – I was just focused because that is new money.  I don’t like that money coming in and not going out.  I think you are right.  I will amend my motion to make it from the Choice Revolving Fund.  Seconded:  B. Fields   R. Dohoney – I don’t think we need to decide tonight what form that takes.  I think that is an administrative decision really.  It may not be formal advertising, it may be some other form or marketing.  S. Bannon – so I have a motion and a second.  Any other discussion on this?

Motion to appropriate funds in the amount of $5,500 from the Choice Revolving Fund to allow the administration to create marketing in order to increase choice student enrollment:  R. Dohoney     Seconded:  B. Fields    Approved:  Unanimous

• Bannon – so getting back, I’m as torn, as many times I am, it is easy to say and it is the truth that the increase to one town is totally not in our hands, but I think if we play a tape from last year’s town meeting, even though it wasn’t successful, the first vote we said, we won’t see a million dollar increase to Great Barrington again, we can’t continue this, so to come back now and say, we understood it but it is out of our hands, is probably a little disingenuous because we kind of made a commitment. I would at least like to look, I’m not saying I’m committed to one thing or another, I would like to look at how we could reduce the total spent.  A. Potter – do you mean a commitment as a committee or…?  S. Bannon – I believe maybe the administration made that commitment.  A. Potter – I just want to be clear as to who made the commitment.  S. Bannon – Maybe this year we need to make a better consensus, and I agreed with it and I don’t disagree at all.  I would have made it personally.  I didn’t but I would have.   A. Potter – it is important to be clear though.  R. Dohoney – Also to be clear, the commitment was made on the floor of a town meeting and then this committee instructed the administration in response to that to engage in this reimagination thing.  That is what drove it.  The problem is, all of us in the Finance Committee who were pushing to have some changes arise from the process in this year’s budget and it is just not feasible.  We could have a further discussion about that here but….it is a good process.  It is a going to bear some fruit but it just didn’t seem like it was going to be there for this budget.
• Dillon – I think part of it is that the conversations that needs to happen this year to set up processes and approaches for September to then set up one for a year from September and then in the second, third and maybe fourth year out, then those shifts are dramatic and while all of them have education merit they may also have some cost savings. A. Potter – As long as we are looking out a little bit, I had some questions I would like to put out there.  One is, with the RAC making its way through the Regional Agreement, will that have an impact if it is approved in the next two towns and will it have an impact on this budget in terms of how the allocation goes, capital vs….would that be the following year?   R. Dohoney – no, it never will.  Under the terms of the Regional Agreement, all borrowing….it is only new borrowing going forward.  P. Dillon – it would probably have an impact next year if we were to do a major capital project for next year.  A. Potter – so maintenance doesn’t qualify?  P. Dillon – No.  A. Potter – the second piece is, I am curious and I have concerns about the feasibility of the Title I funding.  P. Dillon – we all do.  A. Potter – and my question is, how much is Title I and where is it?  S. Harrison – Title I is not in the budget because it is a grant so we don’t put it in the operating budget.  It is income but it is under the grant section in the book.  A. Potter – so if it went away, we would have to make it up if we chose to maintain the resources that we were funding with the grant.  That would have to be made up under this budget, correct?  S. Bannon – Sharon, do you know how much Title I is roughly?  S. Harrison – I can look it up.  Title I for FY17?  Josh do you know?  J. Briggs – Title I for FY17 was around $280,000 I think.  S. Bannon – we won’t hold you to it but at least it gives us an idea.  A. Potter – so it would hurt.  P. Dillon – that is really highly speculative.  The first confirmation hearing has to happen and then if it does happen then…A. Potter – not the hearing but going to the floor.  P. Dillon – right, going to the floor.  First that has to happen and then what you do and how do they phase that in.  It is on everybody’s radar.
• Fields – Sharon, can I ask for Great Barrington, the student population went up from 69% to 72%. If it was to stay at 69% how would that move the 6.66% assessment?  P. Dillon – that is interesting.  R. Dohoney – so it would be the same allocation as last year, is that what you are saying?  B. Field – yeah, it would be the same.  S. Bannon – if that isn’t something you can answer tonight…B. Fields – what would the 6.66% go down to?  That is my first question.  S. Harrison – so, if every allocation were the same as last year, I just have to bring up the percentages from last year.  P. Dillon – ok, so while Sharon is doing that, it is a really interesting question.  B. Fields – my next question is, what was the percentage increase for the minimum local contribution?  R. Dohoney – 2%.  B. Fields and what determines that?  What are the factors that determine that?  S. Harrison – that goes into the foundation budget and the foundation budget consists of enrollment, foundation enrollment which includes your resident students in your schools as well as choice out students, the equalized valuation and property valuation of each town and the individual wealth.  R. Dohoney – which ironically, a big component of that is income tax received from that town, so Great Barrington allocation goes up because a lot of people there are making money but we are not allowed to charge an income tax to fund education so we get….S. Harrison – so if the percent allocation hadn’t changed, Great Barrington would be at 4.91%.  J. St. Peter – Do we know if more students came from Great Barrington than Stockbridge or West Stockbridge lost or Great Barrington increased more. Do we know the exact specs of the change?  S. Harrison – I can tell you.  I just have to look it up.  All of this will be in your budget book next week.  R. Dohoney – the good part is everyone’s state income tax is going down next year so it’s where everyone get screamed at all the time but for Great Barrington and everyone else even with the increase that will be incurred at the town level and at the school committee level, everyone in at least these three towns will effectively have a lower tax liability.  On average.  To continue my rant, state income tax is going down and what the state is giving us on a percentage basis isn’t keeping up either.  S. Harrison – Stockbridge last year had 150 students and this year has 143; West Stockbridge had 142 and this year has 128.  B. Fields – what does Great Barrington have?  S. Harrison – last year was 681, this year is 701.  R. Dohoney – so Great Barrington went up and the other two went down.  S. Harrison – so again, this will be in the book.  B. Fields – I like that people are moving in, yet on the other had…S. Bannon – we might have to give a stipend to get people to move out.  P. Dillon – or bus people to Stockbridge.  S. Bannon – there is a lot of building going on in Great Barrington so this is not a one-year look.  There is a lot of building going on in Great Barrington.  What we don’t know is if those are all families with children or not. We will find out.  I think it’s going to continue and that is a problem.  It’s a good problem for Great Barrington but it is a problem for our budget.
• Dillon – so this should give you some context. At our next meeting or even before our next meeting, you will get a big budget book, CD or you will look at it online…P. Dillon – Sharon do you want to ask people what they want?  I think we talked about this … S. Bannon are there any other questions or comments?  J. St. Peter – I have a question.  It might now be answerable now but at the next meeting at the least, so if this is not a level- service budget or level program, can you get into what the changes are now or is that something…S. Bannon – no that will be part of the presentation.  S. Harrison – actually some of that you will hear tonight because some of that is special education programing.  Actually a good deal of it is special education programming.  P. Dillon – we will go into the rest of it later.  In most cases, it’s trading one thing that we have for something else that we would like and the trade is cost neutral.  S. Bannon – other comments on this before we move ahead?  S. Bannon – ok, budget books.  S. Harrison – budget books.  We don’t do CDs anymore because we have it posted online.  You have a number of options, show and tell.  So when we create the budget, we have the small budget book, the big budget book and the online budget book.  The online budget book is the online and it has all the details.  The difference between the big book and the small book is the big book has detail sheets behind which you will see we have a line-item budget.  Every line item has one of these pages.  S. Bannon – that’s also online, right?  S. Harrison – that is online.  I know that last year most people or anyone that took a book, but most people looked online, but those that took a book, took a small one.  There is not a lot of detail in there.  Sometimes it might just say level funding because they are buying text books but they are not changing the amount.  Or we are buying text books and the second grade is getting all new text books for social studies. The professional services and fees might be changing for a reason so that is all in the big book.  The little book has a lot of the information that we just talked about, the detail on enrollments, the detail on this budget, the backup on the changes.  You will also see that we talk about the capital budget, we talk about trends in here, so that is the little budget book.  Everybody has the option to get it online, get a little budget book or get a big budget book.  It is important that I know that now because we do these in house.  B. Fields – I like the thick one.  J. St. Peter – little one; S. Stephen – little one; D. Singer – little one; K. Piasecki – online; S. Bannon – little one; R. Dohoney – big one; D. Weston – online; A. Potter – big one.  A. Hutchinson – little one.  P. Dillon – Eileen always likes one.  S. Harrison – I know, Eileen like a big one.  S. Bannon – anything else before we move ahead?  We will still continue with budget but move along to setting the date of the public hearing.

• Set Date for FY18 Budget Public Hearing – S. Bannon – Sharon, you are still recommending the date of March 2^nd? Harrison – yes.  S. Bannon – ok so we need a motion to set the public hearing at March 2^nd.

Motion to set the public hearing for March 2^nd:  S. Bannon      Seconded:  B. Fields      Approved:  Unanimous

• Dohoney – should we review our general schedule in terms of School Committee meeting and Finance Committee meetings? We have talked about it with the Finance Committee but…S. Bannon – we can do this rather quickly so why not.  Does the Finance Committee have any dates set?  R. Dohoney – yes, we are meeting next Tuesday.  P. Dillon – we don’t have one scheduled for next Tuesday.  R. Dohoney – this goes with our meeting.  I feel like we need for direction from the full committee.  D. Weston – I don’t know if we should meet if we don’t get a little more direction from the committee tonight.  S. Bannon – well, I have given you my direction and how I feel.  R. Dohoney – we are looking at the numbers for the first time.  Maybe we should have a full school committee next week?  S. Bannon – we could do it but it may be a little hard to get everyone together on the 7^th and we can’t do it on the 8^th or 9^th.  It’s a little of a surprise to pull.  I think we need some direction tonight.  Let’s go through the rest of the school committee schedule and follow with me to make sure I don’t miss anything because I have lots.  You and Peter make the budget presentation on the 16^th?  S. Harrison – yes.  S. Bannon – we then have a joint meeting with the Finance Committees and the Select Boards on the 28^th of February.  March 2^nd we have the public hearing.  March 7^th we have a tentative meeting set and March 9^th is when we propose to vote.  So those are our meetings.  We can add one in there if we need to.  R. Dohoney – and there is a full school committee meeting on the 16^th.  S. Bannon – yes, there is.  It is a full meeting but most of that is taken up with the budget presentation.  R. Dohoney – have had the budget books for several days, a week, then hearing the presentation, that will be our most productive discussion of the whole committee I would anticipate.  D. Weston – can we reserve the 21^st…that’s vacation week.  I’m in town.  S. Bannon – there’s a lot of meetings already scheduled.  I have no problem with the 21^st.  D. Weston – can we reserve the 21^st for a Finance Committee meeting if we need it?  S. Bannon – if Peter is willing to give up another day of his vacation.  P. Dillon – I’m just going to vacation in April or July.  R. Dohoney – clearly the Finance Committee is going to be meeting at least once that week.  We can work out the details of that.  S. Bannon – just so you know we have negotiations on Wednesday and Thursday that week already and President’s Day is Monday.  P. Dillon – I think if we did it, it would be Tuesday the 21^st.  R. Dohoney – so pencil that in as Finance Committee.  P. Dillon – do we want to set a time for that?  R. Dohoney – 5pm?  S. Bannon – Fine with me.  I will just say in Peter’s defense, this is the first time that over a school vacation that I had meetings every night for a school district so this is an extraordinary year.  E. Mooney – is the public hearing going to be at 7pm.  S. Bannon – the hearing will be at 7pm, yes.  It will be here, downstairs.

• Special Education Proposed Shifts
  • Dillon – Kate put together a bunch of thoughtful, discreet memos. I think everybody has had them for a week.  Kate, I think you can summarize them and answer and questions people have.  K. Burdsall – I will just walk you through, I gave you five documents.  The first document is a 21-page programmatic overview for Special Education.  This is the document I presented a year ago in January at the School Committee in West Stockbridge and what I have done is, as we update our data with SIMS every few months, I have been updating this document along with that.  I gave it to you again in your packet particularly for the new members so you can become familiar with what special education looks like for K-12 in Berkshire Hills and also for everybody just to look at the numbers because what the numbers are in January is different in June and different in November so I just want you to see that there are some fluidity and change there.  The other four are memos about proposed changes that we would like to look at for next year.  The first one, is a combined autism and developmental skills program.  The next is the additional Special Education Teacher Position at MBE, then we will talk about the board Certified Behavior Analyst Position and Programmatic Overview Update and we will end with the Education Team Leader.
  • The first one I want to talk about is the Combined Autism and Developmental Skills Program. All four of these kind of go together.  With the long-term planning that we have been doing and thinking about K-12 and where are our needs, how are we serving those needs, where are the needs that are not being met in our schools, are we sending kids to other public schools for services or are we sending kids to other private schools for services; basically what are we doing.  Do we have kids here that may not have exactly what they need?  So looking at that, we have a need at the middle school to create a program focusing on kinds on the spectrum and also a program for developmental skills which is for kids that have more signification disabilities who maybe are not mobile, maybe are unable to communicate, etc.  As we are looking at all of this and trying to look at the kids that we currently have in district, kids who may be in other places.  The proposal would be to do a combined program.  Normally you wouldn’t necessarily combine those two subsets of groups, but we thought that we could run a program combined for one year, next year which is FY18 projected costs then separate it out the year after that and have two distinct programs that really suits those needs better.  What we are looking to do, is to attempt to make this net neutral.  You can see that we are about $15,000 over for FY18 projected.  We still have other things that we are looking at to try to mitigate that cost and get that closer to zero.  Obviously, you can see that by the time we get to FY19, if things go potentially as we are projecting them to go, there is quite a substantial savings there.  The other piece of that which I think we will see, and I will take you back to last year when we developed a therapeutic classroom at the elementary school and a therapeutic classroom at the middle school, I think we are just about at a point with those programs where we can accept kids from other districts, which will generate revenue for us.  We actually have one instance of that right now which is great.  I am not necessarily certain that if we created this combined program for next year at the middle school that we could take more kids next year but I think the year after, just seeing how these two programs are going, I think these programs need a year to get their feet on the ground and really get things humming and I think by that second year we would definitely be able to bring in students which would help us.
  • Dillon – questions on that?  D. Weston – this has a potential financial impact on my employer, so for the remainder of the discussion I have to declare a conflict and leave the table.  S. Bannon – ok, any questions on that?  Ok, move ahead.
  • Hutchinson – may I ask a question? S. Bannon – yes, go ahead.  A. Hutchinson – so starting with student A in the classroom…(inaudible)…and in FY18 it is going to be $30,000, is it then less expensive to take that student?  K. Burdsall – likely because that student is not receiving services in our district.  A. Hutchinson – ok, so you can’t tell from this which people are in the district?  K. Burdsall – right and I tried to do that to be able to maintain confidentiality which is why I am hesitating answering.  I actually know exactly the answer to your question but I am hesitant to put that out there because I don’t want to identify any students.  A. Hutchinson – ok, I understand.  So in general when we see the cost go down it means a child who is now being education out of district is going to be brought back into the district because we can provide the program needed?  K. Burdsall – yes, that is the thinking.  S. Bannon – any other questions on that?  J. St. Peter – I just have a question.  Have you had an opportunity to poll the parents of the students involved?  Are they aware of this idea yet?  K. Burdsall – we have talked about it very loosely.  For example, there are parents of kids at Muddy Brook right now who have been asking “what’s going to happen to my child when the get to Monument Valley?  What are we doing for that?”  So those parents are in the beginning stages of this loop.  We have some other parents whose kids are in other places that we are starting to have those conversations with.  We are just at the beginning.  I really haven’t been able to get into too much detail with those parents until we know whether we are doing it or not.  It is hard to talk about something that may or may not happen.  I have wanted to get it going but I have been cautious about doing that until we know for sure if we are going forward with this or not.  B. Fields – Kate, could they contest anything that was done?  K. Burdsall – it is a team decision from that perspective but yes, for the most part, I think the initial projections on folks that could come back, I think that wouldn’t be an issue.  I think there may be a couple of cases that could be more challenging in bringing some folks back but if we can get a program together and show the strengths and all of the things that we are able to do, I think we will be able to get some others.  P. Dillon – I think a general statement  is all things being equal if we provide a high-quality program, people would rather be in their own district than in somebody else’s or in a private school with lots of transportation connected to it.  A. Hutchinson – is there currently the physical space to place these kids?  K. Burdsall – there is.  P. Dillon – did want to go to the next one?  K. Burdsall – sure.
  • Burdsall – The next one is a shift that Mary and I have talked about. You are aware in FY16 Muddy Brook had four Kindergarten teachers and then the data indicated that the enrollment would warrant going to three classes and those three class at this point have 15, 16 and 17 students in them.  Mary’s recommendation is to keep the progression of that going through with three and then with the current data and some unmet needs of students with moderate disabilities, the proposal would be to take that teacher who would have been the fourth cohort and turn that into a special education teacher to be able to provide more direct academic instruction to students with moderate disabilities.  M. Berle – the one thing that I would add to that is it is not just based on the data but … (inaudible; not at microphone).  R. Dohoney – I have a comment on that.  I had a conversation with the Finance Committee.  If we have a need to increase our special needs budget then we should identify the need and do it but horse trading between classroom teachers and special needs teachers is apples and oranges.  It has nothing to do with this as far as I see it.  If we have a decrease in students, we less classroom teachers.  If we have more students, we should have more.  I am more than willing to increase the special education budget if our needs warrant it but I am going to do because we have extra money because we have a decrease in students.  M. Berle – That’s fair.  I think the only reason we would frame it that way (inaudible, not at microphone).  The reality is here is the last kindergarten teachers have more sped students and it a responsible thing to have an extra sped teacher and irresponsible to not have a sped teacher (inaudible).  R. Dohoney – I agree it is responsible but they are mutually exclusive the way I see it.  S. Bannon – I would just ask in another way.  If we had four kindergarten classes, would you still propose this because of a need?  M. Berle – yes.  D. Weston – I am concerned that we are seeing a need that is growing and I am concerned that we are not being more proactive to prevent a need from occurring.  In a lot of cases, I thing special education services are the last resort, and I’m not convinced we are meeting those needs early on in their education to prevent them from ending up in a special education system.  M.  Berle – so the need that we are seeing is kids coming into the school on IEPs.  It is not that we are putting more kids on IEPs later.  There was a little bit of catch-up with the 4^th grade last year, but we are planning for kids in PK, EK and Kindergarten programs.  I think what I hear you saying is “are you not doing things educationally?” which means people need to catch and that is not what the data is suggesting.  K. Burdsall – we are closing those gaps.  I think there is a strong RTI model at the elementary school and there are far less now than in my first year and far less students who are staying in that intervention and then being referred for special education.  There are kids who are making solid progress with those interventions and are not getting referred for special education.  I think we are closing gaps there and the ones who are being referred for special education really need different specially designed instruction in order to make progress.  M. Berle – on the progress side and another way to look at the data, since I started we have been doing the Brigance screening and putting it on a spreadsheet and looking at what the entering Kindergarten cohort looks like.  My first two years, we were at about 30% of our kids being at high risk before coming in.  This year’s cohort was 40%.  On the proactive side we have seen with our wrap-around health care work, we are working with CHP, Taconic and the early literacy projects, we are identifying kids who are under three, I think we are only going to expand that work.  That is where I think we are going to make the biggest difference going forward.  D. Weston – I guess I am not seeing the whole picture.  These are kids that are identified from PK for special needs entering our school.  M. Berle – they are coming in from PDC.  K. Burdall – you are talking about the PDC kids.  M. Berle – well the 40% is not just PDC kids; that is our screening.  K.  Burdall – the number of three year olds coming in are increasing.  D. Weston – but if they are coming from PDC, is that moderate needs?  K. Burdall – some.  D. Weston – or are some of them more significant?  K. Burdsall/M. Berle – yes, correct, both.  D. Weston – so we are looking at a moderate needs teacher and would have them doing what? English, language arts, math?  K. Burdsall – reading, writing, math.  M. Berle – with a full case load for our severe person two.  We have one person in the building with a severe disability.  P. Dillon – and they would be working across grade levels?  K. Burdsall – probably K-4.  M. Berle – we can bring the data.  D. Weston – I know you collect a lot of data because the kids are assessed a lot.  I really resisted all the years I’ve been on school committee in trying to impose my teaching philosophy on the schools up here but we people ask me how certain subjects are taught in the early grades, I can’t full illustrate it and I feel like I should.  I’ve said that these meeting a lot that my kids went through.  I am really worried that the approach we are taking is not decreasing the number of students in the classroom but the Tier 1, Tier 2.  I am worried that we will end up with more and more students in Tier III level and I am really thinking that we are putting the money or the efforts, or maybe we don’t even need to put money, maybe it’s an approach that we change, but I am still convinced that it is an issue.  M. Berle – that is a good question.  I think that the data trend lines don’t show that the increases are not coming in the later years with the exception of the 4^th grade class last year.  I think we mitigated that.  In this scenario, the numbers are given by young kids and are already identified, but we are happy to look at that further.  P. Dillon – I think it is worth talking about more.  S. Bannon – any other questions on this memo?  B. Fields – it says that the teacher is going to be turned into a special ed teacher.  Would they be licensed for special ed?  K. Burdsall – yes.  B. Fields – so it’s not the same teacher.  S. Bannon – we should be talking position not teacher.  B. Fields – ok, it’s going to be a different position; meaning different credentials?  K. Burdsall – yes.  P. Dillon – we can clean up that language.  R. Dohoney – we should have a job description or something on that.  A. Hutchinson – it looks like you are taking one person and switching them.  K. Burdsall – sorry about that.  P. Dillon – we will do that Kate.  We will do a separate job description for that role.  K. Burdsall – there are no job descriptions to go with any of these.  P. Dillon – that’s fine.  K. Burdsall – shall I go to the next?  S. Bannon – yes, please.
  • Burdsall – The next one is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst position. A Board Certified Behavior Analyst is something that we have been doing since a year or two before me or for about the last five years.  We have been contracting for that position.  Particularly, last year, I have the data for last year and this year, and just to show the number of students who have been impacted by this and the costs of that.  You can also see in the overview, the contact for services for last year and this year.  The increase in the days, etc.  When you look at the number of students in the chart under Muddy Brook, it says 9+Mah.  That is the therapeutic learning center.  They are not only working with nine kids, but they are also supporting that program as a whole.  It is the same thing at Monument Valley.  There are two kids that are identified but they are working with the TLC as a whole.  You can see how the numbers have grown.  Really the goal is to have that be a Unit A position and we have really worked hard over the past three years to try to decrease our number of contract service providers.  I think we have done a decent job of doing, and this is really the next step.  Most districts at this point have their own BCBA if not more than one BCBA.  This is our effort to stop contracting with Tate Behavior.  They have been absolutely phenomenal and have done great work, but it is now time for us to have this as something of our own.  You will see the shift on the back and how that would work compared to where we are right now and how we are going to spend with Tate Behavioral this year and potentially what the costs would be.  With the first memo on the combined program, Sharon and I are looking at a couple of other things, and ultimately there is about an $8,700 difference depending on who we would higher, but we think we have some other ways of finding some money and hopefully offsetting that so hopefully it is not that much.  Zero if we can get there.  R. Dohoney – How are we charged by Tate Behavioral?  Do they bill us hourly?  K. Burdsall – it is an hourly.  There are three people that work for us from them and they charge us an hourly rate and if I am not mistaken, two of them have the same hourly rate and the other is not a full-time BCBA yet.  She doesn’t have her full credentials yet, so I believe her hourly rate is $20 less or $25 less.  P. Dillon – Kate, if our population shifts and we have more kids that we are using this approach with, is there room for a full-time person to take on a slightly larger case load or are they maxed out.  K. Burdsall – no, I think they could take on a slightly larger case load.  The thinking at this point would be that this individual would do two days at Muddy Brook, two days at Monument Valley and one day at the high school.  I think that is sustainable.  P. Dillon – right, ok.  R. Dohoney – so why did we go up $50,000 in one year?  K. Burdsall – based on the needs between last year and this year?  R. Dohoney – yes.  K. Burdsall – it was just based on student need.  We didn’t know when we went in because we brought Tate to the table last year.  We created a schedule and created a contract that we thought would meet the needs based on what we had done the year before.  What we found over the course of last year was that the need grew and grew, so we were actually able to create a schedule and a contract this year that really met the needs of the kids.  It grew tremendously and the development of those two programs also was a shift in that because of the needs of that person being able to be in there and work those programs.  R. Dohoney – that chart in there where you are showing at the bottom the potential cost are the actually from last year or this year.  K. Burdsall – yes, and the thinking and really the minimum of $71,300 for this year, an FBA is a functional Behavior Analysist and they completed 10 of those last year at $750 each and it is half way through the school year, and we have already completed 10 this year.  So, $71,300 for this year is a minimum.  If we continue in that direction, we could double that.  We could be to 20 by the end of June.  R. Dohoney – I think Peter just asked this; the capacity of the person you are going to hire at approximately 80 in total cost will be able to handle how many of those?  20, 30 a year?  K. Burdsall – 20, maybe 25.  R. Dohoney – so if we keep on this trend, we could hire this person and still have to be contracting for additional?  K. Burdsall – no, we shouldn’t need to do that.  R. Dohoney – ok.  K. Burdsall – the trick is really in scheduling the person’s day and making sure they are meeting the needs of IEP service delivery grids and if they are on a grid to meet with kids for a certain amount of time, they have to be able to do that.  They also have to be able to balance their time and protect some time so they can go do observations and collect data for FBAs.  It is a balance of these direct services working with kids that you have to do but you also have this indirect time that you have protect your schedule so you can do all of those things.  D. Weston – If I read this right, essentially from our contract services are the equivalent of 3.5 days a week that they are coming in right now; so we are having a pretty big gain here in terms of what we get.  From 3.5 days to a full paid position.  So at this point we are getting 1.5 days a week for $8,700 and you are thinking we might be able to reduce that.  K. Burdsall – right.  I am thinking that at the high school level, I think Marianne would say that one day a week is quite sufficient and I think that with what we have right now both Ben and Mary, they are the ones that are in battle with we need them more in my building or I need them more in the middle school.  So to go from where we are now, Dan….D. Weston – I know, but I am looking at it like you are getting more.  What are the odds, and this may be inappropriate to ask, but what are the odds that you are able to get somebody that you know and like to do this position?  K. Burdsall – assuming that the position is approved and posted, anyone can apply.  S. Bannon – that was a leading question, I think.  P. Dillon – I liked your response, Kate.  S. Bannon – Any other questions on this memo?  Moving to the next memo.
  • Burdsall – the last one is an Education Team Leader position. Really it could say Special Education Team Leader position, so just a little perspective on that.  The collaborative in Northampton right now is doing a Special Education Team Leader Institute and when they got 77 applicants at the end of the summer/beginning of the fall.  I am assuming Northampton you are probably less than half way so it is certainly not representative of the entire state, but out of 77 applications 43 of those were education team leaders.  So if 43 were from the western side of the state, expand that out to the eastern side of the state.  Most districts at this point have an Education Team Leader.  This is not an administrative position, it is a Unit A teaching position, and what this would allow us to do, for example, is to do a shift which is coming from the reimagination process as well as the sub-study at the high school and shift one of the high school special education teaching positions to this Education Team Leader position.  So special education teachers are responsible for lessons plans and grading and meeting with parents, etc. but they are also responsible for all sorts of case management pieces.  They have to test students and write up the test results and they have to run team meeting, they have to write IEP and progress reports.  They do all of this work.  If we shifted to pilot this, we are thinking that we could shift one high school position and create a pilot for a 7-12 ETL.  What that would do for those teachers involved in those grades is it would take the case management responsibilities off of their plate allowing them to solely focus on the academic instruction and progress monitoring of those kids.  They would still teach all of the special education students, they would still attend the meeting but they wouldn’t be running the meetings, they wouldn’t be writing the IEPs and doing all of those types of things.  This person would be doing that.  P. Dillon – one of the real upsides to that is that a full-time teacher who is using 20% of their day to do that, gets pulled out in other instructional responsibilities constantly to make time to meet with parents and do those meetings so by letting some folks focus on teaching and somebody else focus on meetings, it makes it easier to schedule meetings, and it is less impactful to kids in classes where teachers would be.  K. Burdsall – it really allows for best practice and instruction and as a whole allows our department to really maintain compliance with all of the regulations.  The proposal at this point would be to pilot this next year doing 7-12.  The reason for picking 7-12 is that the transition process for students with disabilities starts at age 14 which could be grade 8 or grade 7 so there is specific work that needs to happen by the time kids are in 7^th and 8^th grade so that is why we are looking at 7-12 and assuming that the pilot goes well, it is something that we want to figure out for the year after for K-6.  We think we can do 7-12 having it cost neutral and then if we look at the following year, K-6, we would have to figure out how to budget for that.  S. Bannon – any other questions or comments.  B. Fields – I have to say when I read this, NPR about four weeks ago had a program, a little snippet about a teacher in Colorado who was a public school special education teacher and she quit her job.  She was very young and quit her job because of this exact reason.  She said that 35-30% of her time was spent filling out state regs, spending so much time doing paperwork that she hates.  She quit.  She went to a charter school, which guaranteed that she would not do any of that because they had a person who liked doing that and who oversaw the special education program.  They interviewed her and she said that she is so happy doing what she is certified to do which is teaching the kids and not doing all of this paperwork.  So when I read this, this is what I see.  You will obviously have somebody to do that.  God bless them if they like to do paperwork that is find.  Let them do that paperwork and let the teachers that we pay to teach, teach.  I think this is wonderful.  P. Dillon – and importantly, the paperwork can be overwhelming but it is more than paperwork.  It is meetings, parents, connecting with teachers and there may be opportunities to team teach and model things.  I think it could be a really neat role.  B.  Field – if you have somebody at the high school, when you are working with a kid and suddenly the period ends and you haven’t finished working, now you have to go to a meeting and the kid is sitting there.  Ok, now who comes in?  Then you have somebody else but they don’t know where you were and the kid has to adjust.  After that little snippet and then this, it just struck gold with me.  K. Burdsall – is the vein that you get through 35-40 minute period and the meeting is not over you are not there to go back to your class which is an issue as well.  D. Weston – I heard the same segment on NPR and it sounded pretty good and then I read all the comments about it.  There were a lot of people that had the same questions I do.  To plan for next year, how many special education teachers are there at Monument?  Just so I understand the whole scope.  K. Burdsall – six.  D. Weston – So one of them would not work with students anymore?  I don’t want to diminish it but they are doing the clerical part of the job for a lack of a better term.  K. Burdsall – they are also meeting with parents and families.  D. Weston – but as a parent, and I have had kids on IEPs, if I go to a meeting, I want to talk to the person who works with my kid.  K. Burdsall – you would.  That person will be there.  They just won’t be running the meeting and be responsible for all of the particulars.  D. Weston – so then that person is still going to be out of class.  What you said is going to be so great, isn’t actually going to happen in this proposal.  S. Bannon – he also seems to be promoting charter schools so…B. Fields – no, no, no.  K. Burdsall – there is an efficiency that will come with one person who is running meetings and I would suspect that with on person running meetings that go very long, I would just gather that over time things would be shortened.  There will still be some meeting that go long due to the needs of the child and other factors but I think that one person running things would have a flow and a system that when you go to different meetings with different people, it would be easier.   So the classroom, the position is basically for a subject matter expect in that model.  If you are bringing your subject matter expertise and then you have somebody….D. Weston – so when is the ELT going to meet with the instructors providing the instruction to go over goals and create the IEP.  You can’t write an IEP, it’s have to write an IEP if you don’t work with the kid.  That is a big complaint among teachers.  Some models have if you have a kid receiving speech services or SLP have such a big case load that others are writing the IEP and then you have to sit with the SLP and write the goals and there are two people now working with kids at that moment.  I am having a hard time see the efficiencies in it.  I really am having a hard time following because I think there is going to be a lot of time between the ELT and the other teacher having to meet.  That is what I am concerned about.  K. Burdsall – I think what happens in the first year or first two years, that could be the case but I think once the ELT has gotten in there and has gotten to know kids, as Peter said there is an opportunity with this ELT position that the ELT would have time during the day to be able to do scheduled time with the teachers to be potentially co-teaching with them and doing other thing with the students and getting to know the students better.  The vision of not doing an ELT for K-12, K-12 you never get to see the kids and you would never be able to see the teachers, you would just be in meetings all the time.  I think by splitting it K-6 and 7-12 we have built in time that allows that ETL to get into the classroom to work with teacher, to work with kids and get to know them.  D. Weston – I don’t read that into the description that they would be working with students.  K. Burdsall – it is still in development.  We haven’t created the job description yet but I think the intent would be that they are covering all of these things and if the can do all of this based on the numbers we have, we are hopeful that there is additional time that they can do other things.  S. Stephen – what would the case load be?  You have six teachers at Monument.  You are talking 7-12.  K. Burdsall – We are 70 at the middle school and about 80 at the high school which is 150 but it would be 7th through 8th so many half of that so maybe 120, 130ish.  S. Stephen – so this one person would be handling a 120 cases.  K. Burdsall – yes.  P. Dillon – Kate, could you talk about the difference of annual and tri-annual reviews, who would be in the pipeline at any one time.  K. Burdsall – I can get you more hard data from the institute that the collaborative is running in Northampton, I don’t have that on me right now.  I have the data from those 77 applicants and the people that they accepted.  I have the data of what their caseloads are.  There were quite a few that have 100-150 and quite a few that were 150-200 and there were quite a few that were over 200.  There are different meetings each year.  S. Stephen – so you have your annuals and your triennials, initials, 504s.  K. Burdsall – an annual meeting is much shorter than the initial or a triennial because during those you have to go over all of the testing that happened then you determine eligibility and you develop and IEP.  Those are the longer meetings.  At the annual review meeting, you are really just reviewing the IEP that was in place’ are the goals met, and then you are proposing things for the next year.  Generally speaking, we are speaking in thirds so there are about a third of our kids on IEPs who are in that triennial loop so every year we cycle through.  It is sort of a constant with that.  The initials are hard to predict.  S. Stephen – it sounds like we are getting more initials every year.  That’s not going away.  It just seems if you have 120 kids, 180 school days, it is going to mean an awful lot of meetings and the amount of time and that amount of meetings and trying to keep up with that case load and being able to write the IEP and just write IEP and meeting with parents, it seems an awful lot for one person.  K. Burdsall – It is a big job, and I am happy to get other numbers.  I think our numbers are really in the middle of what other people are doing right now.  I feel comfortable with giving it a shot.  That is what we would want to pilot it to see.  It could be that 7-12 is too much and it needs to be PK-4, 5-8 and 9-12.  We truly want to pilot and see what works best.  We are thinking that it could work well to do 7-12 and PK-6 but we may try 7-12 and find that is not good.  I guess we could between now and whatever that end date is we could refine this and find we don’t want to do 7-12, we want to do 9-12.  P. Dillon – I want to look at that really carefully.  Part of why I like the 7-12 is it forces our supports work across the buildings so I think it would have all sorts of other possible impact.  R. Dohoney – so I understand that the meetings are a big component of this job.  We think that there is going to be some student interaction, we hope more, and the writing an reviewing database IEPs, how would you break out an percentage how much it is going to be, the paperwork of the job and the meetings of the job?  What percentage of time would that be?  K. Burdsall – That is certainly the majority.  R. Dohoney – the majority is the paperwork?  K. Burdsall – yes.  Being in the meeting, running the meeting and then turning an IEP around in three days to get to the principal, that’s….R. Dohoney – I know nothing about the educational industry other than what I have learned from being here, but it seems to me that there could be a lot of efficiencies realized in the paperwork end.  K. Burdsall – I think so.  R. Dohoney – Comparing it to my business, the way we always try to find efficiencies is not having five different lawyers doing five different things.  Having five different lawyers only doing two things and the efficiencies are billed with that.  Particularly in the written product is better.  My concern on the other side is if you swing too far that way and you get into the cut and paste job as opposed to the individualized thing, and I don’t ever want to see our program get to that point.  K. Burdsall – agreed.  R. Dohoney – that is a danger to this model, I think.  K. Burdsall – yeah.  D. Weston – is this person going be able to allocate resources?  K. Burdsall – we have not determined that part yet.  D. Weston – refresh my memory….K. Burdsall – I am able to allocate resources as the principals are able to allocate resources and we can deem the liaisons able to do that as well.  D.  Weston – but at present it is just the four of you?  K. Burdsall – we try to do it the most that we can.  D. Weston – I am just trying to remember the process.  At each meeting there has to be somebody present that can allocate resources or the parent can sign a waiver not having been there.  K. Burdsall – correct.  S. Bannon – any other questions or comments?  Thank you Kate.
• Updates:
  • Regional Agreement and Special Town Meetings – P. Dillon – Just a quick update. It passed unanimously in Great Barrington which was no surprise.  The next one is West Stockbridge on the 27^th of February and as a mentioned before, Stockbridge will part of the regular town meeting.  We will be reaching out to folks about some potential sessions or outreach in Stockbridge so we can share with people what it actually means.
  • Re-imagination – P. Dillon – that group is meeting again in two weeks or a week or so from next Monday or Tuesday. We haven’t set a date yet.  That work has influenced a lot of what you heard from Kate tonight and also some of the things that will be in the budget book.
  • Southern  Shared Services Project (SBSSP)   – P. Dillon – I spoke with Joshua Shaw who is the Technology Consultant who did work in the Lee to help them redo their approach to technology and saved the quite a bit of money.  He is scheduling time to come out in a couple of weeks and he is going to schedule the five other schools in the Southern Berkshire Shared Project (us, Richmond, Lee, he already did, Lenox, Farmington River and Southern Berkshire) to work with their technology folks to make recommendations about things they can possibly do moving forward.  Bannon – any questions?  Moving ahead.

GOOD NEWS ITEM(S)

Muddy Brook Elementary School (MBE) – M. Berle, Principal

Lots of great things to report at Muddy Brook.  Jerry Pinkney made a beautiful drawing of a coyote that I told you about last time.  The Norman Rockwell Museum beautifully framed it for us.  Our 2^nd grade is studying heroes so Ron Getchell showed up today.  He is one of our Muddy Brook heroes, and he is going to hang this beautiful painting in the front hall.  Ron is one of our custodial team members and a master carpenter.  He is really excited to help us out.  Also connected to Ron helping us out, we are looking forward to a mural in the Kindergarten neighborhood in the next few months.  It is a colloboration funded by the Berkshire Fund for Excellence along with IS183 and the Kindergarten teachers and students.  They will make a mural using donated wallpaper from a local business that is very beautiful and hand printed with kids’ art on top of it to reflect the students’ study of trees.  What is really neat is that we are going to have another nice mural that kids made, and Ron in going to hang it for us.  We are very excited about it.

Our PTA has committed to supporting a tubing trip to Butternut on the day before vacation and we are going to have a Muddy Brook mountain day where we are going to cancel specials and services and all hands will be on deck.  We are going to get kids to Butternut to have a great time.  In connection with staff, we are really grateful to the PTA for that but also to Butternut.  They have been great partners and it should be a great day for everybody.

A couple of other things coming around, we have done a lot of work since this committee asked us to look at homework at Muddy Brook last spring.  We suspended homework in a large part this fall while we did some surveys with parents, met with school council, the leadership team has really be thinking about the meaning of homework and tomorrow I will be sending a note to families that we are committing to kids supporting reading at home and the idea there is that staff will be organizing with kids just to read good  fit books and also each grade level will have a reading log and talking with parents about reading to self and reading with adults.  Then, rather and sending home homework that may not be meaningful, each grade level team is outlining that these are the skills and priorities at the grade level and here are many different ways to approach them and we will support you in developing a plan for your family and then giving families and students a lot of choice around what is going to be meaningful.  For example, in fourth grade we really what kids to learn their times tables.  There are lots of different ways to go about that.  There is using an app on your phone or flash cards or worksheets, whatever works for you, so we are making those things available and letting people know what the bar is and then we will be working from both the homework angle but also afterschool tutoring and within school to support those things happening.  I know a couple of members of this committee were excited about no homework.  In October, every teacher talked with every parent who came in for conference with is over 95% and what we found when we looked at the whole population, there is certainly a cohort of parents, and Rich Dohoney is one of them, who just think homework is completely unnecessary (R. Dohoney – I wouldn’t go that far), but maybe I’m overstepping…I understand you have a great family and it isn’t something you are looking forward to every night.  We did have a significant group of parents that really wanted some structure and support and probably everything in between.  I think between taking all of those thoughts into consideration and thinking about the different ways we can support families with tutoring, I think we have come up with some pretty good plans.  We will put them out there and get more feedback and probably make changes as we go but I think it has been a good process and very good for staff to work collaboratively to figure out the intent of anything that we send home and how can we better partner with parents.  We are pretty excited about that.

On Friday, we had a very good professional development day which was split between talking about reimagination and new structures for delivering services that will best support students and families and that is continuing.  I think Peter will probably have more to say about that as we go but the main thing there is that teachers are really digging in and are excited about being innovative and that is thrilling to see.

The other piece that has been really positive at Muddy Brook is that we are talking a lot about social/emotional health and really getting to a place now where we are thinking about offering tiers of support.  This fall, we committed to Responsive Classroom along with our Positive Behavior Support System.  We also had a group of five teachers attend some conferences on Social Thinking which they have been experimenting really successfully with a group of kids who need a little more support and now we have more than 10 teacher with Josh Briggs’ support getting significant training in more complex and more sophisticated and supportive tools.  A neat thing that is immerging from that is our whole Kindergarten team is part of that, our clinical team is part of that; we have SPED teachers, paraprofessionals and other teachers involved and the conversation has been really good.  One of the commitments that is coming out of the group is that we focus really thoughtfully on our early childhood programs on giving kids that social/emotional foundation and I think we are going to see great results on that.  Additionally, we are having very good success connecting with the larger community on structures for having the whole continuum work.  Dr. Deb Buccino and I submitted to United Way and Peter Taylor and Berkshire Health System a proposal that I hope will help all of the elementary schools in South County.

Du Bois Regional Middle School (DBM) – Ben Doren, Principal

Good Evening.  Last time I was here, I talked a little about some of the observations I had made in the past couple of weeks, and I want to continue with that because it is really neat getting into classrooms and just seeing instruction and spending the time being a principal and running the building, the part of my day is just stepping into a classroom and actually having to not talk and to look; which a really good thing.  So, last week I was in two ELA classrooms for some of our highest needs kids in 5^th grade and 7^th grade who struggle with reading, writing and need to build some skills.  What I love about our school and what I appreciate about our faculty is how much we do is called a guaranteed and viable curriculum that every student in 5^th grade or 7^th grade or any of the grades gets the same curriculum regardless of their needs or what they are working on.  So 5^th grade was great to jump into a classroom that is working on the same engagement with literature, the same themes and the like and to see the work that both the teacher and the paraprofessional were doing.  It was a small group of kids, about 8 or so in the classroom, but they were so engaged with literature and reading, sentence building, but also the individual work they are doing with the teacher.  It was great to see just a humming classroom where kids are hunkered down and reading; there was a kid who was reading a book and I went over and took a look and there was the kid who was reading with the teacher doing some work and the same book was sitting next to him and it was a choice piece of literature.  Asked “why are you reading this book?” and this student said “my friend said it was a good book so I just decided to read it.”  The fact that this was a reluctant reader who was just very much into reading and was doing it independently.  Just that kind of passion that happens in a classroom when there is really good teaching and really good support with the paraprofessional.

7^th grade, very similar situation but it is a much more complex because it is a few years on.  Really the work of many years of elementary through the early middle school where kids are trying to give a love of books so one of the books they are reading is this unit on memoirs and it’s Boy by Roald Dahl.  I thought I had read every single book by Roald Dahl in my entire life and never heard of Boy but it is actually a non-fiction book.  It is actually his reflections on his life which is the inspiration for all the other novels that you have ever read, James and the Giant Peach, Danny the Champion of the World and all of his different books.  So the great conversation in this classroom, just an information conversation about that they had just started reading it.  They talked about that this kid can tie his shoe with one hand but it because a very interesting conversation; he broke his arm, one kid said he broke his arm and got really terrible surgery, why didn’t he just sue the doctor?  The reason is it was over a hundred years ago and you didn’t sue at that time but now we do.  Again, it was a great conversation around the book context but it is leading up to which is neat in the 7^th grade they are doing literature circles which is an informal way of talking about literature.  So here are these kids starting a novel, very into it, having a really neat conversation and are about to jump into a difficult and formal structure for other students who don’t have difficulty reading which can be a very easy and fun activity.  I was really appreciative of the teachers being able to build that passion around literature.

Another thing that we have dived into, actually with the help of David Long and our Tech Team, is our design program which is a real shift.  In Tech Ed, we used to do computer instruction and we really moved that to design.  We have this great lab that is computer and hands on with the wood lab.  We have this new machine called the wood DNC machine.  You have heard of 3D printers, this is kind of the opposite of a 3D printer which adds things to objects that print in 3D.  This actually removes material from a larger piece of material so you can get a large piece of wood and work it down so you create amazing things.  It has been hard to implement with the design program because we have such a focus grade to grade.  We just took this big jump into the makers space with a group of 7^th graders during our performance music and study hall time with students who have an executive function class; they don’t take band, chorus or orchestra but they also have time during the day to have a guided focus study hall, focused on executive skills so they have this period where they can be doing something really interesting.  We have finally collected all of them and created this makers space.  So it is a very open lab time where kids can work on computers and build 3D models, they can work in the wood shop and do hands-on work in the wood shop using paper mache and wood.  They are also jumping into this big thing which is creating 3D models and actually 3D printing and getting kids involved in making things they want to make.  It has been a pretty big collaboration over the past couple years.  It is really neat to see it starting to happen.

Therapeutic Learning Center – our high needs program for emotional and behavior disabilities.  Really big success a lot of support from Kate Burdsall and the district in organizing the program so they move up from level 2 to level 3 to level 4 across many different aspects of really spending all their time in the program or be fully included but super success we have students moving up; we’ve had these parties basically for three kids so far that have ready level 4.  It is a major, major accomplishment, it means kids that have a very hard time self-regulating who are finding the success regulating themselves and stepping into situations, taking responsibilities for their own behavior, their own academics.  These are students that we have struggled with for many years, all the way since elementary school who are finally feeling like a student in school which is a big thing but what is neat about it is the support we have gotten from the district level, resources to be able to make these kids actually be able to function and feel like typical students.

Another big development is reading math assessment.  We work with the MCAS and the PARCC; we also do our performance assessments and our curriculum based measures which is great.  We started really taking a que from the elementary school and again with Kate and also Vickie Shufton, our school phycologist, support with AIMSWeb getting real nationally normed reading and math data which we have always used with our highest needs students but now we screen and benchmark all of our 5^th and 6^th graders as well as our high needs 7^th and 8^th graders.  We now have two sessions, basically a fall and winter benchmark to work on.  We are really starting to infuse discussions around grade teams and student support.  It is really great to talk about intervention for all kids and starting to chart their growth.  It is a mature process but again, I really have to thank this kind of K-6 process for that.

James and the Giant Peach, I mentioned Roald Dahl which is actually James and the Giant Peach, Jr. is our musical that is happening coming up this spring.  It is getting into full swing.  We have chosen all the parts and how all the directors and assistant directors and all the people involved and the kids are getting really jazzed about getting ready.  Afterschool is really a buzz four nights a week with rehearsals.

Lastly, as Mary said, we had a PD day on Friday afternoon.  The big focus the faculty asked for this year was working on differentiation for students around the social/emotional learning.  So really getting deep into how do you work with kids who really need much more than just “the curriculum” but also need the kind of organization, the kind of care, the kind of deep and detailed work that gets engagement for all students.  We had two workshops.  One was with Vickie Shufton our school psychologist who I mentioned and also Jen Rogan from Tate Behavioral who is a specialist in behavior as well as autism.  Split the faculty up into two groups, massively excellent rave reviews.  Thank you so much.  We needed this; we need more.  One of the other big things that came out of the PDs with Vickie Shufton was this idea of self-care for teachers.  Things have been changing for teachers over the past five to ten years.  What is asked of teachers and what they can do has been a lot, to ask to be patient, to be thoughtful, to respond to behaviors and the new needs that come.  The idea that you also need to take care of yourself was a big theme that came out of Friday and teachers were very appreciative of what we had organized for them based on their needs but also on what we are giving back to them in terms of being effective and take care of themselves was a great theme to come out of it.  Trying to take care of teachers to take care of kids….

Monument Mountain Regional High School (MMRHS) – M. Young, Principal

Friday afternoon at Monument was a positive day too and one of the highlights was out of our shared leadership groups the group focused on instruction and meeting the needs of all students facilitated by small group conversations with all teachers so that they could talk about the successes they had this first semester.  What stood out to them, what worked, what didn’t work and what were the ingredients that they observed that made a particular unit or lesson successfully.   I want to give you just a couple of statistics:  there are 69 internships and 12 Links.  Links is a program where students are able to get a job and work especially in their senior year.  Get a job and be working while they are still at Monument and still finishing their senior year.  The other is that we have 85 independent studies – so 85 students are working with 32 teachers in independent study initiatives.   A new independent student that I don’t recall I have ever done at Monument is one student who is working, her name is Lucy Burnett, she is working with Brian Lesley who is our Psychology/Sociology teacher and she has reached out to teachers in the school and said during the 6^th period independent study she would come in and sit in the class and observe.  When is observed students being really engaged, really participating or whatever was happening in the class, she would note that for the teacher.  When she observed students not engaged or when something was missing she would also provide that feedback for teachers.  It’s the first time we had a student who is actually going to work with some teachers and really give them objective feedback on what is happening in their classrooms.  I was really excited about it and I am really proud of the teachers that have stepped up.  I think she is going to be working with five or six teachers this semester who have said “sure, come in and give me your feedback.”

We are meeting tomorrow with members of the Student of Color Association, the Gay Straight Alliance, the Student Senate and the Peer Mentors with the ADL and what we are going to be doing is building from all of the work that has gone on this first semester, addressing racism and bring these different group together to talk about they can maintain their own individuals groups and come together on a regular basis to lead Monument and to lead the conversation around races, around prejudice, around bigotry in our school.  Miss Hall’s students presented their version of this diversity coalition to us back in October.  The groups have been meeting since and said we are coming back together again to see what our next steps are.  That work continues.  We have five students who are working in the independent project this year.  We didn’t run the Independent Project last year because the faculty had really reviewed the whole program, made some adjustments to it and by the time everything go rolling, it was a little bit late.  There are five students that have stepped up to work in that this year.  If you are interested in learning about the Independent Project, Susan Bangel and Sam Levin have written a book called A School of Our Own which tells the story of the Independent Project at Monument and there is also a film called Beyond Measure and you can see the trailer online if you want to just Google that; Beyond Measure film.  There is also a book there and Monument’s Independent Project if featured among four or five other schools who have really floated and tried initiatives that flip the classroom that focuses on student directed learning and inquiry.  So those are a few things you might want to check out.

Next Thursday night we have our parent conferences.  On February 10^th, next Friday, we are celebrating athletes.  We have the Hall of Fame Friday night at the basketball game and during the day, we have not done this in my tenure but maybe we did it years ago and maybe some of you that graduated from Monument may remember this, but we are going to be recognizing the seniors who have either already committed to a school and are participating in a certain sport at that college or who are still waiting to make their final decision but are being either recruited or supported by a college or university to participate in a sport there.  We will be doing that during the day and we are going to invite the Berkshire Eagle and the Berkshire Record and the Berkshire Edge to meet these young people who are in touch with coaches at different schools.  Some of them have already made a decision and are on their way and others have not made their decision yet but have several options.  We will be recognizing them.

Our wrestling team won the Berkshire County Championship the other night and they sealed the deal last night at Mt. Greylock and tonight while we are here the boys’ basketball team is engaged in a game with Mt. Greylock and the winner of that game tonight will be the Berkshire County #1 and #2.  There is a lot of energy up in the gym right now at Monument.

SUB-COMMITTEE REPORTS

• Policy Sub Committee – have not met
• Building and Grounds – have not met
• Superintendent’s Evaluation – needs to be scheduled
• Technology –
• Long – Peter wanted me to share some of the things discussed in the meeting. S. Bannon – are we talking a half an hour discussion?  D. Long – it’s not ten minutes.  It will probably be at least 20 minutes.  S. Bannon – go ahead.  I think that is fine.  It is late.  So you don’t mind if we move it?  What is the Boards’ pleasure?  It is 9 o’clock.  P. Dillon – I think it needs more attention.  S. Bannon – Dave, you are okay with moving it to another meeting?  D. Long – sure.  S. Bannon – I feel bad because I made you stay for this whole meeting.  A. Potter – I think it needs more time.  S. Bannon – I will defer to Andy on that.  Andy apologizes for making you stay this whole time.  Thank you David.
• Finance – we have another meeting tentative set.
• Regional Agreement Amendment – on hold.
• District Consolidation & Sharing – meeting scheduled in Richmond but cancelled due to weather; need to reschedule asap. Doreen will work on that. 

PERSONNEL REPORT

• Non-Certified Appointments
• Retirements – Dillon – the big one that I want to recognize is Cliff Dean who has worked at the high school for a number of years, has announced his retirement. It is in August and we will celebrate him another time but whenever someone has worked for us for a long time and announcements retirement, I like to recognize them.
• Extra-Curricular Appointments

               Name                                                            Position                                                 Fund                  Salary/Stipend

                                                                                                                                                        Source                Effective Date:

BUSINESS OPERATION-None

EDUCATION NEWS- None

OLD BUSINESS- None

NEW BUSINESS- None

PUBLIC COMMENT- None

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION-None

Motion to Adjourn:  S. Bannon     Seconded R. Dohoney            Approved:  Unanimous

Meeting Adjourned at 8:55pm

The next meeting is scheduled for February 16, 2017 – Regular Meeting –Monument Valley Middle School

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary