Minutes – February 14, 2019

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                     Stockbridge                  West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Student Center

February 14, 2019 – 7pm

Present:

School Committee:                 S. Bannon, A. Hutchinson,  J. St. Peter, B. Fields, M. Thomas,
R. Dohoney,  A. Potter, S. Stephen

Administration:                       P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                             B. Doren, T. Lee,  K. Farina, K. Burdsall, D. Wine, Eileen Mooney, Paul Gibbons, Michelle Loubert, Heather Bellow

Absent:                                     D. Weston, D. Singer

List of Documents Distributed:

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 hour, 2 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

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

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

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

MINUTES:
Meeting of School Committee Meet and Confer dated January 31, 2019

MOTION TO APPROVE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF MEETING DATED JANUARY 31, 2019 – A. POTTER    SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER               ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s) – N/A
• Approval of Educational Alliance Program Grant from Exxon Mobil – We received a nice donation from Exxon Mobil through the Educational Alliance to support math and science programs at the high school. It is a $500 grant.  MOTION TO ACCEPT A $500 FROM EXXON MOBIL            SECONDED – A. POTTER        ACCEPTED – UNANIMOUS
• Approve: FY20 Proposed School Calendar – The school calendar is in your packet. I am going to have Doreen send a slight update.  Originally we had scheduled a half day on October 18th and in further conversations we are proposing moving that to the 25th.  All the rest remains the same.  Every once in awhile the holidays fall in such a way that we have the possibility of having a longer winter break.  I am proposing a calendar with a two week winter break which only happens every 8-9 years.  We are still starting a little early before Labor Day and tentatively ending on June 17th.  We will see where we are with Blizzard Bags, but even if we were to have typical snow days, we would still end well.  It is an interesting calendar and I am happy to respond to any questions.  MOTION TO ACCEPT THE 2019-2020 CALENDAR          POTTER             SECONDED – J. ST. PETER              ACCEPTED – UNANIMOUS
• Request: Move Cooperative Contract Secretarial Support Staff to BHEA-Unit C Contracts to begin 7/1/2019 – We have a note from the secretarial support staff who are currently part of the Cooperative Contract, requesting to move to the Unit C or Para Contract effective July 1st. My assumption in that request is  they would like to be in the new group July 1st but exist under the conditions they previously negotiated in the other group and when all those contracts are approved for renegotiation the language would be cleaned up at that time.   St. Peter – so we have a lawyer look into these?  P. Dillon – I reached out to our attorney about it and essentially we have two choices.  We can choose to accept their request or we could start a formal process to drag it out.  If we do the formal process we still might be obligated to accept the request anyway.  Speaking with our attorney it was recommended that we accept it and save the legal fees.  The complex part will be taking a separate group and integrating it into an existing contract or having two sections in an existing contract.  You are not voting on that now.  You are just voting to start the process.  That process would happen then we would come back to the school committee to vote.  R. Dohoney – why is this happening now?  P. Dillon – if there were somebody here from a secretary group in a formal leadership role they could speak to it.  I could speculate around it but I can’t speak to it.  One of those people should.  R. Dohoney – should the negotiating sub-committee meet with them and get the information and report back to us on it?  S. Bannon – from what I saw from our attorney, the reason why doesn’t matter as opposed to that they want to do it.  P. Dillon – I don’t think it disadvantages the district in anyway to let them do it.  It is more of a preference.  You can take action on it now or you could table it and ask me to ask a representative from that group to come before you vote to give you more information.  R. Dohoney – I don’t really understand the whole thing so I am a little reluctant to vote on it.  Generally these things are handled by the negotiating sub-committee rather than a full committee.  S. Bannon – if you approve it Rich, and I am not advocating one way or another, you are really turning it over to the sub-committee to handle from there. P. Dillon – maybe this will add some clarification.  Based on the conversation with the attorney, if they want to do this, we could potentially delay them in doing it but we really can’t stop them from doing it.  If we don’t do it, there might just be a bunch of meeting chewing up time.  R. Dohoney – when did the administration first become aware that this was the preference.  P. Dillon – they sent us an email, I would have to look at the date on it, and I reached out to our attorney and asked about the process.  It is not as big a deal for a non representative group becoming a represented group; it is a group moving from one umbrella to another.  A. Hutchinson – I just wondered if they go into that other contract, are there things in that contract that will now apply to them?  P. Dillon – they are going into the group but all those things would have to be negotiated.  Everything other than the representation would stay the same.  S. Bannon – the only difference we could see, and they say there is nothing at this point, is if a matter came up in two months, then then the new group would bring it to us not the old group.  We did ask if there was anything driving this that would come to us next and they said there was not.  B. Fields – it seems procedural to me.  I don’t see the big deal if they want to be part of Unit C, then let them.  It is not going to affect negotiations.  MOTION TO ALLOW SECRETARIAL SUPPORT STAFF TO MOVE TO UNIT C FROM COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT STARTING JULY 1, 2019        A. HUTCHINSON         SECONDED:  B. FIELDS              ACCEPTED – UNANIMOUS
• FY20 Proposed Budget Presentation – S. Bannon – this is our first meeting with the presentation.  The budget has been discussed since October with the finance sub-committee.  We have joint meeting with the finance sub-committee and select boards of the towns on the 26th of February in Stockbridge.  We then have another school committee meeting on the 28th of February.  We have a tentative school committee meeting which I don’t see us needing on March 5th and we are voting on March 7th.  What that means is after the presentation tonight, we will have, if needed, any discussion and any questions so we can start to formulate.  It is a short timeline but we have done that since we have had a finance sub-committee and it seems to work.  Let’s see how it goes this year.  Dillon – let’s jump into this.  (Slide Presentation was given by P. Dillon and Sharon Harrison – both read from slide presentation)  P. Dillon – I like to like our budget is a representation of our values.  It is taking that and translating that into dollar amounts.  Going into this year, we have a number of initiatives that we care a lot about.  J. St. Peter – for the workmen’s comp increase of 10%, is that based on increased claims for a normal increase?  S. Harrison – the 10% worker’s comp, general liability, property, that is what is projected by our insurance company but there is any increase in our workers’ comp cost before the 10% due to injuries over the past few years.  J. St. Peter – what is the Chapter 70 money; when did we find out about that?  S. Harrison – that is the House One; that is the Governor’s budget that came out the third Wednesday in January.  J. St. Peter – I think a letter to Senator Hines about our plight might be beneficial.  P. Dillon – there is a whole foundation review committee and what the Governor is doing in response to that.  At the same time, Senator Hines has been really outspoken in the rural sparsity aid.  So the $21,000 we have could potentially grow significantly.  So while we don’t do well in the foundation budget, we might do better in the rural sparsity aid.  J. St. Peter – I think it will help to send letters to both for Chapter 70.  R. Dohoney -if Chapter 70 was working more fairly you wouldn’t need the rural sparsity.  J. St. Peter – Line 448, the transportation has increased 24%, non-public and special needs 23%.  Is that just our routes or number of students?  Or is that the same amount of students?  S. Harrison – for the non-public, I didn’t increase it as much as it needed to be last year in the budget.  The special education is based on projected actuals.  It is not just the routes we have with our regular provider.  We have a number of students that go out of the district.  It is in anticipation of that increase as well.  R. Dohoney – so we are level funding for all three schools this year.  The prior two or maybe three budgets we spent more than we budgeted.  S. Harrison – when I looked at that, I believe it ends up averaging across all of the lines.  We also have long term sub lines and professional sub lines so when I look at all of the sub lines combined, we have enough so I didn’t increase for the regular day subs for that reason.  We are also doing the administration teams, the principals, Peter and I, are looking at the use of subs and how we may be able to shift some of that so we are not using as many subs.  R. Dohoney – I would like to see those reforms go into place and if that is reflected in the budget that is a good thing.  S. Harrison – It is a combination of across all the different types of sub and if we have enough and we are looking to do some of these changes.  I think the combination even if they are slow changes coming in, we do have enough to cover that.  S. Bannon – if you have any more question between now and the next meeting, email Sharon or Peter so they can be prepared and we will continue the conversation as necessary at the next meeting.  R. Dohoney – the next meeting is the public hearing.
• Updates:
  • Security & Safety – P. Dillon – We have a meeting coming up with the Great Barrington and State Police, Steve, the assistant principals and myself.
  • Diversity – The Eagle is putting together a nice forum where students are speaking and we have a couple of representatives from the high school speaking at that. The EDL training is continuing on at the middle school and they have state wide or New England wide conference that some folks will be going to.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee – N/A
• Buildings and Grounds Sub Committee – N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee N/A
• Technology Sub Committee N/A
• Finance Sub Committee – N/A
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub Committee – N/A
• Next Steps Sub Committee – N/A

Personnel Report:

• Certified Appointment(s)
• Non-Certified Appointment(s)
• Re-Assignment(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

 Business Operation:

• Revised E&D History Analysis – S. Harrison – I revised this so the E&D used, 5th column over from the left or 2nd from the right, shows what we are proposing to use in the proposed budget. This says 53 percent of the prior E&D but I wanted this to reflect the actual E&D balance that got certified which was the 1.5 million.  However, after we returned the $194,852, the money available to us is 1,263372 so the percentage of what we are using is higher, that is the 61.61%.  Without replenishing, it would leave us with a balance of $523,354.  We don’t know what the balance is until FY19 is closed out.  We are pretty confident that we have at least one month’s worth of health insurance return premium that will be going back in.  That is about $300,000.  It is premium holiday for active plans for both employees and retirees.  It is not a premium holiday for dental or medex.  Dillon – it is still really good.   S. Harrison – Jason had requested a look at where the students who were choicing out were from our resident students.  We put this together.  There are 70 from Great Barrington that are choicing out; 17 from Stockbridge and 20 from West Stockbridge.  It makes sense that the majority of the students are coming from Great Barrington because that is were the majority of the students are.  What we see often with that, and I didn’t look at street addresses, but for our younger students coming out of Great Barrington, they live on the southern border of Great Barrington, often for our very young ones, kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, they will go to Southern Berkshire because it is closer to home.  Then they will come back to the district after that.  P. Dillon – Some West Stockbridge kids go to Richmond for similar reasons.  J. St. Peter – thank you very much for doing that.  I would also in the future to get an exact percentage of what schools they are going to as well.  It doesn’t have to be broken down by town.  M. Thomas – could we add grades to that as well.  P. Dillon – would you like it by school so it is Undermountain v. New Marlborough?  J. St. Peter – The more data the better.  S. Harrison – it will say the grade and the district but if they have different elementary schools, it won’t be available.

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment
• Written Comment

MOTION TO ADJOURN – A. POTTER               SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                       ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

The next school committee meeting will be held on February 28, 2019 – Regular Meeting, Du Bois Regional Middle School,  7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 8:02pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary