Minutes – January 25, 2018

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library

January 25, 2018 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                S. Bannon, A. Potter, J. St. Peter, D. Singer, A. Hutchinson, R. Dohoney,

1. Piesecki, B. Fields. D. Weston

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

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

Absent:                                   S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

January 11, 2018  School Committee Minutes of Meeting
Reimagination Moving Forward Document
Finance Subcommittee Conversation Document Dated October 5, 2017
Good News from Muddy Brook Elementary, Monument Valley Middle and Monument Mountain High Schools
Personnel Report dated January 25, 2018
Draft Safe and Supportive Schools Document
2018-2019 Budget Explanation Document

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:    1 hr.  25 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:

January 11, 2018 BHRSD School Committee Minutes

MOTION TO APPROVE MINUTES OF MEETING FOR JANUARY 11, 2018:  A. Potter              Seconded:  B. Fields           Accepted:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News:
  • Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – Mary Berle, Principal: Hello. Lots of good news at Muddy Brook.  On Friday, we had a very strong professional development day with different teams working on specific projects.  Our 4th grade team with all of our special education teachers and speech teachers, spent significant time learning the new MCAS platform for 4th grade so that they can roll that out in a thoughtful way with students.  Second and third grade teachers received training in Front Row which is an adaptive technology program in math.  That means that it is online and students work at their own pace and get a lot of feedback about how they are doing as they go.  It is a nice addition to our math work.  First grade worked on their continued rollout of the phonics program this year, Fundations, and connected that with their whole reading program.  The Early Childhood team, and we haven’t talked about this much at the School Committee level, but a huge lift at Muddy Brook this year is the NAEYC accreditation.  We have site a visit in March and this is an enormous amount of work to prepare for that.  I am very proud of the teachers.  They have been working very hard on that.  Many families came to an Open House on Friday which was in 4th grade.  Students do an annual project creating beautiful sculptures of animals adapted to certain biomes and there was a great turnout for that.  In February we are holding an Open House on Fridays to observe our Unicycle Team.  8 – 8:30am on Fridays, students focus and they relax and do extraordinary things on unicycles.  We have taught over 200 kids in the last eight years to ride unicycles and it is really fun.  Fields:  You lead them, right?  M. Berle:  I do, yes.  The last thing for tonight is that the District Attorney’s office has done a really nice job visiting classrooms and doing their anti-bullying curriculum with classes.  We really appreciate that.  It is a great community partnership and we are thankful for it.  D. Weston:  Is the technology in place for 4th grade MCAS?  M. Berle:  It is.  We are working really hard on setting everything up in groupings.  D. Weston:  You have enough machines?  M. Berle:  Yes, thanks to you, the School Committee, we have one-to-one Chromebooks that are the right size in 4th grade.  It is aligned in our budget to repeat that for 3rd grade next year since 3rd grade this year is still paper based.  That level of support has been fabulous.  It means that every 4th grader and 3rd grader has a Chromebook.  I can’t say enough good things about Roger Burr who is our .5 Technology Specialist.  He has been working with kids in technology to learn tools then he has been supporting teachers in generalizing use of the tool with writing curriculum.  Something that came up in our faculty meeting is all 3rd graders know how to make slideshows.  Maegan Warner got up as said “great news, I am having so much fun supporting kids makings slide shows on topics of interest to them.”  It is very positive and it is the building blocks for some very creative work on the curriculum.
  • Du Bois Regional Middle School – Ben Doren, Principal: Good to see everybody.  I have been here now, this is my 6 ½ year and what is neat is that I have hired over half of our faculty.  That is kind of amazing.  I am looking forward to many more years.  The point of that is we had a faculty meeting on Tuesday where we went over what is the vision for Monument Valley for the next 5 years.  We rolled out a draft plan and are working mostly on articulating the things through reimagination and the many years I have been here.  It is important because I brought on a lot of faculty in the past almost seven years and it is time to really commit together to something.  It was really exciting to just kick it off and get people talking and reflecting.  I am really looking forward to the next several month where we are working together as a faculty, as a team and to really articulate where we want to go.   One of the pieces of that was one of the English teachers did a training on SRSD, you heard me talk about that, it is self-regulated strategy development, it is our writing program.  Leslie Laud from SRSD did the course, we had some folks from the 4th grade as well as some folks from the high school that Kristi arranged which was really great, just to see the program.  It makes a huge difference.  From the last weeks training of two days, starting to implement this week and the kids are really starting to take to it.  We had an IEP meeting today where we have a student really struggling with literary and has really started taking off.  His teacher Erica Bell was saying how well the kids are really taking to the organizational pieces across the board in all of her classes.  It is really a program that meets the needs of some of our struggling writers and meets the needs of some of our high writers to push them and launch them into writing.  The 8th grade girls two Fridays ago, went to a math and finance day at Miss Hall’s School.  It was a lot of fun.  Every year, we send a group of 10-15 girls and they meet a lot of girls from around the county and they learn about not only financial literacy but also careers in finance.  We had parent teacher conferences last Friday on the half day as well as Thursday evening.  I love parent teacher conferences because it is a time for parents to come and sit down with teachers and talk.  I like the format that we do.  Sometimes folks are in pairs, sometime singles, sometimes it is the whole team.  Parents really do have the time, we do it a little later in the school year.  I love the way my faculty reaches out to parents when there are concerns.  They respond to parent concerns and push things like PowerSchool and classroom and other websites to push out information on the curriculum and how kids are doing.  I do get feedback that parents feel they really do have information on their kids which means we don’t have all the parents coming on parent teacher conferences because they feel obligated but because they want to hear about the kids and they have the time to do so.  It is a very enjoyable experience for both the faculty and the parents.
  • Monument Mountain Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal (Being presented by Peter Dillon): Everybody knows about the Poetry Out Loud competition which is a pretty big deal and happens in all the classes and it builds up.  We are the Boston Red Sox of Poetry Out Loud so we keep sending people to the state finals and had one person go.  This year Katherine Humes is the winner and Claudia Marino and Wilson Sprague tied as runners up so Katherine will be performing in the Massachusetts Semi-Finals in Springfield on March 4th and hopefully in the finals in Boston a week later on March 11th.  We will provide you updates on that.   We have a longstanding residency with Jacob’s Pillow.  They are about to start next week and that is a two-week residency at the high school.  They will work with six participating classrooms to work on dance and movement and a whole host of things; then those classrooms will come together after having worked with a number of artists to present Pause in Process.  I went earlier in the winter right before the winter break and saw a really neat group of students from any art class, an automotive class and one other class; so people who might not typically doing dance together.  It is fun and transformative and awkward, graceful and wonderful.
• New Job Description: Safe & Supportive Schools – Grant Building   Dillon:  We shared the awarding of the grant with you before and like any new position, even a grant-funded position, we are obligated and want to bring it before you.  The performance responsibilities are identified here.  It is fairly straightforward.  If you have questions about the grant or how we plan to use it, Kristi is happy to respond to those.  If you have questions about the job description, we can do that together.  It is a stipended position.

MOTION TO APPROVE JOB DESCRIPTION FOR SAFE & SUPPORTIVE SCHOOLS – GRANT BUILDING:  B. FIELDS                      SECONDED:  D. WESTON                           ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

• Continued Discussion & Review – FY19 Draft Preliminary Operational Budget – P. Dillon: Tonight we are going to dig a little bit deeper into three areas and we will do that first then in between each of those we can respond to questions.  Then Sharon and I can tell you about what happened with the Governor’s House One budget and what the implications are to that.  I would rather start with this level of detail first then go to the other one.   Soule – I don’t think there is a lot of significant change in the budget I presented this year as compared to the last several with the exception of we did carry the one line item for the high school projects improvements line that we had carried for several years in a row.  The line has $116,000 in it.  We just had a buildings and grounds committee meeting to determine what we might do with that money if it remains in the budget.  J. St. Peter:  This has been a desire of ours for years and we should really get going on improving the science labs; they are way below grade compared to an average high school.  Our science kids can’t do what they need to to maximize their potential compared to other science labs.  There are four science labs, two biology, chemistry and a physics.  We would like to set aside $50,000 to start getting going on at least one of the those labs if not more depending on how much we can do with an emphasis on not just infrastructure changes but also materials for the classroom and stuff that could be moved in there is any changes in the buildings and look toward the future spend that wisely and not have it built into the wall itself.  The other thing is we really need to start making the building more handicapped accessible.  We really need a bathroom that is accessible.  $25,000 would be set aside to bring one of the bathrooms up to code in the school.  Another $25,000, winter has really showed us some of the low points in the some of the HVAC systems especially the back of the F wing has been hard to get heat down there.  Some of the classrooms are very cold.  Late this spring or summer Steve is going to do a complete audit of the HVAS systems, not just in the high schools but in the other schools as well.  Specifically for the high school, we figure there is at last going to be $25,000 in upgrades just to make it acceptable next year for heating purposes.  The last thing is the $16,000 is the windows.  They are all single paned and 50 years old.  Some of them are really bad and as far as safety access through from the ground up so they are easily able to be walked through and also from a heating standpoint.  We will try to isolate some of the really bad windows and start replacing those from a cost effectiveness for heating as well as a safety factor.  A. Potter – how much for the windows?  J. St. Peter:  To do them all would be half a million but we are going to take our remaining $16,000 and try to isolate some of the worst ones and if we can get 10 or 20 done and go from there.  A. Potter:  In terms of the science classrooms, is there a shovel ready plan for what a science classroom looks like?  A template?  Or is it just put the money there and come up with a plan later to fit the money.  S. Soule:  No, I would start creating that plan now.  I have a basic plan based on when we did go through the high school renovation project we did go visit three brand newly constructed high schools.  We were able to tour the labs so I have a pretty good ideas as to what they look like but as Jason was saying the intent of that $50,000 is to upgrade the room itself but not spend a lot of money on the room but rather the equipment and maybe the furniture.  Things that can travel in the event that we do, in two years, five years, ten years, come across a renovation project or brand new high school, we can take the equipment with us.  J. St. Peter:  When we did initially propose this three years ago, we had that master plan.  We did have the science teachers come meet with buildings and grounds so they had their input.  The big thing was movable desks so they could put the desks together that would travel with the gas and the air and water.  It would be a lot better learning environment not to have them stationary.  There was a specific plan.  It has been three years now.  S. Soule:  I would definitely call more meetings with the current science faculty just to make sure everybody has some input.  R. Dohoney – where is our next meeting?  S. Bannon:  Usually we do all budget meeting here.  P. Dillon:  Did you want to do a walk through?  R. Dohoney – I think it would be good to do that.  S. Soule:  Sure.  P. Dillon:  Our next meeting is scheduled on the 8th and it is scheduled for here but we could move it to the high school.  R. Dohoney:  We could do a quick site visit before the meeting.  S. Bannon – just remember that has to be posted.  R. Dohoney:  We could post tour of science room at 6:45 and meeting at 7.  S. Soule:  Could we allow a little bit longer.  I would like to invite the science teachers to stay in their classrooms, so maybe 6:30 to 7 to point out some of the shortcomings they experience when they are trying to teach.  S. Bannon:  Great. Thanks Steve.
  • Farina: The document that you received in your packet was to give an update on the reimagination process that we began last year.  This document I actually put together earlier in the fall so I am going to add to it a bit.  Last year, you know we were engaged in the reimagination process which involves putting together a district-wide team with representatives from each building.  We were thinking about how we can shift resources to better meet students’ needs.  There was much that came out of that process including the new leadership structure which Amy is still working on building up this year at the high school.  At the middle school, they are piloting looping in 7th and 8th grade which the plan for next year is to fully move to looping in the 7th and 8th grade teams and academic advisory that Ben already mentioned when he was up here giving some of his good news.  At Muddy Brook there were changes to the schedule as a result of the reimagination process to allow for the students to be engaged in the new FitBursts that were introduced.  Students are spending a little longer in specials which is allowing team time and the team time for teachers is specifically being used to help improve the push-in model for services for students at the elementary school.  Those are some of the things that came out of last year’s process.  This year, we have continued to have a district-wide team that is meeting although we are not referring to is as the reimagination team.  We are referring to it as the district PD planning team.  This team is engaged in action planning specifically around professional development needs for staff and how shifts that we might make in practice might require that we require specific training to staff to support those changes.  What we are thinking about this reimagination process is that it is really an inquiry action research cycle and this is something that should continue moving forward.  While you might not always hear us using that phrase, that is the process that we are engaging in.  I do want to specifically point out that does directly tie to the reallocation of resource grant that we received.  The work in that particular grant is specifically to identify shifts in practice so we are just engaging in that process again this year.  Part of that work that we have to do is identify specific measurable outcomes that we hope to achieve in making these shifts then do analysis so we can determine if there is actually a measurable impact where we wanted on students and also in terms of budget spending.  D. Weston:  My definition of looping and I just want to make sure I am on the same page, if I am teaching 7th grade English this year, next year I am teaching 8th grade English to the same kids?  K. Farina:  Correct.  D. Weston:  If I am teaching 8th grade math, I’m going to be teaching 7th grade math next year?  K. Farina:  What is going to be happening is that each of the 7th and 8th grade teachers are going to be teaching sections of both 7th and 8th grade but they will stay with the student groups for the two years.  P. Dillon:  We will go into this in more detail.  Ben, let’s wait until next week for you to go into more detail.  R. Dohoney:  That is definitely going into effect next year for all core subjects for 7th and 8th grade?  P. Dillon:  Only a lawyer would ask a question like that.  We will talk more about it in two weeks.
  • Burdsall: Good Evening.  I am just reviewing the overview that I had included in the packet and I will just touch on a couple of things.  I don’t have anything additional to what I already presented.  The first thing we are thinking about for next year was possible splitting out the autism and the developmental skill project at the middle school.  Ben and I and the lead teacher have looked into that.  We don’t need to do that split for next year.  We are going to keep it as one program moving forward for next year.  We will continually look at that as things move along but right now we are okay with one program.  We are hopefully moving ahead with this special education evaluation team leader shift where we will go 7-12 next year and then bring in PK-6 so pending budget approval we will move forward with that which is exciting.  The only other two things I would say about this is you look at this and just note that we have certainly reduced our contracted services; we have made a great effort to do that over the years.  We will continue to try to do that and hopefully someday have none.  We will try.  We are obviously still looking at our kids that are out-of-district placements and bring them back into programs that we have inhouse.  Likewise looking at those programs that we have inhouse and being able to work with neighboring districts if they have students that our potentially tuition in and be educated with us.  We are looking at those thing.  B. Fields:  The director of Occupational Therapy works under you correct?  K. Burdsall:  Yes.  B. Fields:  Ok so how many students are being served by the Occupational Therapist this year.  K. Burdsall:  We have an Occupational Therapist who is .8 and a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant who is full time and I don’t have that data in front of me right now but I can get it for you.  P. Dillon:  The best answer won’t be the number of students but the number of hours served because some students get services multiple times a week.  B. Fields:  My question was, it was slated for elimination last year but it is not up for elimination this year.  What is the change?  Last year we had a presentation, we did what we shouldn’t have done maybe, we overrode the recommendation and we voted for the occupational therapist to be kept.  As happens sometimes in budgets, the same thing gets presented again and again.  Can you give a reason why this year it is not.  Was there an increase in services as a result of some of our questions?  K. Burdsall:  I think bringing our program back to the middle school, there was a little of an increase there and I think we are still looking at that data and trying to figure out what the best model is and what that looks like.  It is the OT who is .8 and the assistant is full time.  It think we have some things to look at there.  I don’t think we are ready to come back with a different type of proposal this year.
  • Berle: You have a document that I wrote in October which also feels old at this point.  For the brief overview, significant investments in the last couple of years; this year we rolled out a high-needs early childhood program with an addition of another special education teacher in the building.  The therapeutic program was another huge investment which included hiring a clinician two years ago.  Those investment are really paying off.  There has been significant curriculum investments over the last few years with Fundations, Investigations and social thinking curriculum.  The other big one from last year is the Chromebooks for 4th grade.  I think your document might say 3rd and 4th grade. This year we purchased for 4th grade and the plan is to purchase for 3rd going into next year.  In terms of ongoing needs, the primary focus for Muddy Brook is to do the 3rd grade Chromebooks one-to-one.  We requested an increase in the professional development line.  As you hear about all the things I described in professional development on Friday, we have many discrete lifts that are building blocks to a whole.  As we land this things like the NAEYC and transition to the computer based MCAS and the technology that goes with that and the instructional shifts that go with that, as we start to implement the personalized learning things, there is going to be a great moment this spring as we develop the three-year improvement plan.  There is a real opportunity to align it with Ben and to make a commitment to align with K-8, K-12 that includes professional development.  We are just beginning to look at things like the expeditionary learning model that is outward bound and Harvard graduation model.  I think Ben will introduce that idea and will tell you more about it.  That is something that could be a model for Muddy Brook.  In terms of other ongoing needs, I am requesting to make the computer position which is now .5 into a full-time position.  I think to support innovation and really make technology a thoughtful part of supporting a rich curriculum, I really think that would be a good move.  It is a high recommendation.  We want to build on that momentum.  The other lifts for Muddy Brook are figuring out how to make the extended day program work and be available to all.  I know Rich is this something you brought up consistently.  We really don’t want to let go of that.  The last thing and I think this is a bigger conversation that we are going to have to stay in through the spring is maintaining is being right sized.  We do have some preliminary numbers on what class grouping look like.  At the moment unless we have an influx of Great Barrington residents who have been school choicing to some of the hilltowns which does happen at times, it looks like three second grades could be enough where we currently have four.  I am not sure you have this data but our projected enrollment for PK based on census is 38 students and EK is 72.  One of the questions that I have and I think it has been extremely positive to invest in a second EK in the building this year, my recommendation would be to as we think about right sizing and possibly drop if the numbers don’t call for four second grades, really think about investing in expanding the EK by another class.  I think for long term for the community that would be for the student, family and the community that is something to think about.  S. Bannon – I have a couple of questions.  Is the .5 increase in technology is that in there.  Yesterday at the finance subcommittee we asked what increases in positions and we neglected that one.  M. Berle:  I have been very consistent on that.  S. Bannon:  Ok, I just wanted to make sure that was in there.  My other question is, let’s talk PK first.  You saw PK last year as…M. Berle:  This is tricky and I can’t tell you right now yet whether PK or EK makes sense and there is a real difference in the two programs.  The straight numbers based on census that are out there on PK is 38 students that that is our three years olds.  There is a lot of work that Kate and I need to do together as to how many of those students are students with IEPs.  It may be in our interest to have two integrated preschools so that we can get the students in who need services.  I know that our current needs in the PK, we have a significant number of high-needs students.  The number says 12 right now under PK but that is actually, we had two students move out of state and we have a waiting list of folks coming in.  Two of them have committed to enroll who are very high needs and we are just working out the details of finishing their IEPS so they can come in the way the need to with all the services in place.  We are actually fully enrolled.  The EK program is four year olds so that gives us flexibility to have a combination.  S. Bannon:  So what you are saying about the EK is there is a potential for 72 but it doesn’t mean that they are all coming.  M. Berle:  Correct.  The EK would be a straight lottery.  The PK would be privileged students with IEPS for seven slots and the remaining would be a lottery.  One of the things that we have done as a district is once you are into the PK we are able to guarantee that you have started your Muddy Brook journey and you can stay with it so that is a way we can get kids into the four year old program but there is some thinking about lottery versus guaranteed spots and who we are serving.  We really want to make that choice based on numbers and needs.  D. Weston:  If you add another EK, you have classroom, materials, furniture, etc. that is appropriate for that already or do you have to add that?  M. Berle:  We can absorb that with the materials, yes.  R. Dohoney:  I am confused.  You have the two EK classes right now.  M. Berle:  Correct.  R. Dohoney:  And you are looking for three EK classes for next year.  M. Berle:  What I am saying is we have just published all of our screening information and people are signing up and I think once we see who walks in the door, who is screening and what the needs are, there may be a conversation about an additional PK or EK but that story is unfolding.  All I can tell you right now is we have on paper it looks like there are real numbers, very high needs in the three year old population that could Kate feeling is there is a second integrated PK out there.  She is a little closer to those numbers than I am as she is working directly with PVC but we have a commitment to talk that thorough in the coming weeks.  R. Dohoney:  So right now we have two EKs and one PK running at Muddy Brook right now.  M. Berle:  That is correct.  R. Dohoney:  You are contemplating a fourth class of some kind.  M. Berle:  A fourth early childhood class that would really serve our district.  One of the things that we learned about the second EK is we drew a significant number of students who would have been at home so getting those kids into school.  The other thing that has been a part of our date the last three years; Christine Kelly has been doing a beautiful job on this, and she has done a great job as we are getting our screening data tracking it and find that 30-40% of our incoming KDG’s who are not meeting our ready for kindergarten benchmark.  That has spurred a lot of collaboration with United Way, Austin Riggs and other partners to be very thoughtful about Meeting Your Baby Project at Fairview Hospital to the Literacy Project that CHP is doing about what is that 0-5 experience that we need to be supporting and developing in this community so that when kids are coming into KDG they are ready.  This idea that 30 or 40% are not is very hard to overcome.  Statistically the best investment we could make …. R. Dohoney:  You don’t have to sell me at all on the kindergarten stuff.  I agree, I agree.  So what is the max on class size we have for EK?  M. Berle:  The EK enrollment, our goal is 15-16.  One of the things that these numbers represent is we had some really high needs students coming in from PK that then go over.  R. Dohoney:  That isn’t subject to the contract as the the max class size can be?  M. Berle:  Not for EK.  It think it is under 20 is what it says?  P. Dillon:  Part of it is driven by common sense.  Imagine having 20 three year olds or four year olds at your house for a birthday party.  And not just for one day but for 180 days.  R. Dohoney:  I agree.  As much as I am for EK, it is not a compulsory program.  So, I’m comfortable with bigger classes there because the alternative is home.  While I am not for pushing up the class sizes on some of the other classes, I would be more liberal on the EK level.  I thought it was 23 at one point.  It think there was a 23 EK class at one time before you were principal.  M. Berle:  We had 19 last year in EK and that was a lot.  R. Dohoney:  There are 31 kids in the program now as we speak.  M. Berle:  Correct.  The other thing is PK is mandated 15; max 15.  Seven students with IEPs and eight peer partners.  K. Burdsall:  Those numbers are tight every year.  We are always having conversations about how can we service these kids so that we meet their needs so I think looking at a second PK, I think we have the numbers to support that.  D. Weston:  Kate, just to clarify that.  If you fill up your PK with seven kids with IEPs and three more showed up in the district, you are obligated to meet their educational needs correct?  M. Berle:  With drive-in services.  K. Burdsall:  we are obligated to meet their needs and we have to be creative on how we do that.  D. Weston:  But you have to do it somehow?  K. Burdsall:  Correct.  D. Weston:  One way would be to have another classroom but there are other ways to do it to.  K. Burdsall:  One way would be to have another classroom, one way would be a half day program, there are lots of options.  M. Berle:  One of the options people do talk about is doing a half day program or doing a T, Th or M, W, F program.  When I look at the demographics of our PK, I really think that would not be a good idea.  I think these families are depending on a routine and long term for the whole community … my strong recommendation would be to keep the EK program a full day program and expand it and if we start chopping that up, I think we will not be getting the results we want for those kids.  R. Dohoney:  The PK has always been a full day program.  M. Berle:  It has been but Kate is correct, there are other districts that do offer Tuesday Thursday and they try to get all the services in on those days or half day, then you have staff that is two shifts, a morning and an afternoon with two different groups and there are staff that burn out from what I see.  R. Dohoney:  So it looks like we will definitely have 15 kids for our PK program.  At least 15.  R. Dohoney: or enough to generate a whole other class?  M. Berle:  Possibly.  I think at the very least we want to maintain what we have and I think we want to be open to adding one class.  R. Dohoney:  Here is an idea.  We add another PK and we go back down to one EK at 20 or 21 but that second PK will open up slots also for kids who might not make the cut to the EK.  M. Berle:  That would be an option.  That is something that could be considered.  I think there are a couple of things to think about.  When you look at our census date right now, the big bubble is 72 kids who are in that four year old band which is not part of the data you received.  That is a big bubble.  The other thing to think about is we are guaranteeing currently that once you are in our PK program you have an EK slot so looking two years ahead, if we have two PKs and one EK then we have a challenge to include all of those kids.  There is a long range piece that we need to consider there and you’re not inviting any other four year olds at that point because you have over committed to what you have provided.  There is a possibility to be flexible over years and keeps shifting it up but that is just something to think about.  I would say from a public relations standpoint to inviting a three year old in for a year then saying your don’t have a spot next year then you can come back for kindergarten, that is a lot of….R. Dohoney:  Why can’t they stay in PK for another year?  M. Berle:  Not if they are a high needs student and we have a lot of other high needs students in the wings.  One of the advantages for us for bringing three year olds into the PK program is then we have them acclimated to school, we are supporting them well and we can move them to the EK which has a more typical staff arrangement but they have the support.  What we are currently doing is taking the PK three year olds, we are giving them a great experience then we are giving them another great experience in EK and we are making room for the next PK cohort.  D. Weston:  I have a question for Sharon.  Every student in EK we get Chapter 70 money for correct?  S. Harrison:  I will have to look.  D. Weston:  And students in PK if they are peer partners, we get none but if they have IEPs we get some sort of funding from the state.  You will check?  S. Harrison:  Christine can tell us.  Our EK gets reported with kindergarten so it is not recorded as EK.  D. Weston:  I was in the group that created the EK concept like 22 years ago.  As Mary was saying, Tom Consolati was the superintendent down at Southern Berkshire at the time.  He said I do not want those kids at home another year and that is where the concept came from.  M. Berle:  He was right.  J. St. Peter:  So this year we had 31 kids in the EK and we took everybody that applied?  Is that correct:  M. Berle:  We ended up, and Christine may be able to help me on this, I think we took everybody in the original lottery and we created the extra class through your generosity and at that point, when we took everybody, the numbers were actually a little bigger than this and then as time went on there is now a waiting list which we made once the classes were formed and we were rolling along.  I made a decision not to add to it.  The one thing I would say is that numbers and needs are two different things.  We have two really good classes that are rolling along and feel about right.  J. St. Peter: So next year, we have 72 kids in district that would be eligible for EK.  M. Berle:  Correct.  J. St. Peter:  Do you know how many kids were eligible this year?  M. Berle:  Was it 67, Christine?  C. Kelly:  It was a bit lower than that.  The 72 was the highest I have seen in the past 6 years.  P. Dillon:  Just because there are 72 eligible doesn’t mean that some of them won’t select to go to some another place.  J. St. Peter:  That is what she is saying.  If 67 were eligible last year and only 31 came….it is hard to project.  M. Berle:  What we learned and this might change over time, we did not have an impact on enrollment at St. Paul’s, Berkshire South or the high school by opening this up.  That was one of my fears.  Our goal was not to hurt thoughtful, strong programs in our community and it appears from the data and talking with families, what we were able to do with that second class is capture the folks that wouldn’t have had a place to go.  J. St. Peter:  So it is not a population increase, it is kids that would not be going to a different type of preschool.  M. Berle:  I think it is really going to fun in the screening process this year to look at what our readiness for kindergarten rate is and if we put a dent in that by offering this program in terms of life outcome for the whole cohort, we really made a difference.  J. St. Peter:  I know this is the first year we have had two EKs and going forward there might be more, I would really like to keep track and make sure that these kids stay in district through KDG, 1st, 2nd, etc. and make sure we are not being used as a free preschool then they are going into another district after that.  M. Berle:  I think that is a good point.  The early childhood team is a very loving team.  The feedback that I am getting from parents is they are very happy and I anticipate at this moment they are going to make a commitment and the numbers will go up.  C. Kelly:  You mentioned students choicing after EK, but what has been interesting is I have taken calls from three parents just this week asking about choicing into our EK program even though we do not offer  choice for PK or EK.  R. Dohoney:  Maybe look into tuition…S. Bannon:  What is the deadline for this?  M. Berle:  We just published and played around with the dates this year.  February 13th is the PK/EK Screening and classes will be announced on March 15th.  To apply you need to come in for the screening and that gives us the data to track.  S. Bannon:  You will keep us updated.  M. Berle:  We will.  We will have an Open House for all early childhood programs in March.  D. Weston:  What is the outreach?  M. Berle:  We have posted on Facebook, Muddy Brook website, all doctor’s offices, CHP, community centers, libraries, Shopper’s Guide.  If you haven’t seen it this week….A. Hutchinson: Is there still Head Start? M. Berle:  There are two Head Start classrooms in our building.  If we add a classroom, there is going to be a good conversation.  We will figure it out.  Based on what I see now, if we add another early childhood classroom, we have the space in the building to do that and keep the two Head Start.  Families are choosing Head Start because sometimes it is less of a day and sometimes it is even longer 7-5 which we don’t offer.  They also have students from other towns.  One of the nice things about having Head Start in the building for us is those kids that we are not servicing through the PK or EK and they have speech or other needs, we are able to give them their IEP services within the course of their Head Start day.  One of the other trends we are seeing, at time there are in district student who are in Head Start who haven’t been identified that have very significant needs and in a couple of cases now we have been able to identify them, collaborate with the Head Start staff and put the services in place with will make a big difference for the long term.  A. Hutchinson:  So a bulk of the Head Start kids will be coming into kindergarten?  M. Berle:  Correct.  P. Dillon:  Having kids in Head Start from out of district might actually help school choice.  R. Dohoney:  One more, can we have one combined program that is a PK/EK combined?  D. Weston:  Different curriculums.  R. Dohoney: How different?  M. Berle:  our current PK is, actually Jill Topham and I have been talking about this.  Currently we are enrolling three and four year olds in the PK.  One of my questions as I look at the needs of the kids coming in is whether we want to focus harder on three year olds for the PK and be more specific about three to four.  As Kate said, there are some kids who really benefit from two years in PK.  I think what is really important is we stay in tune to what the community needs and adapt and embrace what is there and the story will unfold in the next few months with the screening data and with who comes in the door.  R. Dohoney:  I am sure there are curriculum challenges to it but there are no regulatory challenges to it?  K. Burdsall:  There are regulatory challenges to it.  The integrated PK is set at 15 students.  We are at our max that is the sweet spot.  Then the staff ratio … that is most you can go.  If you are lower than that, there are all sorts of implications on staffing.  We are right where we want to be with that and your really can’t change that program based on regulations.  Potentially, given the number of students out there that are turning three that had early intervention services from PVC and other agencies, potentially we need more than seven slots in here.  M. Berle:  that is what is overwhelming us is how many kids are coming in who have high needs.    There is a nuance on the regulatory side that is important.  The PK Unit A staff member has to be dual certified and that is a certification in both special education and early childhood.  The EK Unit A staff member does not have that regulatory piece and that person can be early childhood certified.  That does have implications.  In what direction we go and I think this needs to be driven by the needs but that does have implications on how we look at staffing.  R. Dohoney:  So, we are going to have three units of second grade next year?  M. Berle:  Right now it appears that way.  Last year, and this is another thing Christine and I are working on, last year we had an influx of kids from some of the hill towns that were Great Barrington residents so it was not a school choice situation so we had to guarantee their spots so the conditions and what our surrounding districts are doing in terms of their little schools or not their little schools, end up being a factor as two who walks in the door.  We just have to be cognizant to that.  There is still quite a bit of flux.  R. Dohoney:  Third grade classes have 61 in them right now.  M. Berle:  Correct.  Every year we talk about this one.  R. Dohoney:  We could do 20, 20 and 21 if we needed to.  M. Berle:  Yes.
  • Dillon: Ok, I know people have had some time to look at the budget book so we could go into other questions about other things folks are wondering about or Sharon and I could share a little bit about the Governor’s House One Budget and those implications.  I think once we go down that path, we are going to go down that path for awhile so if people just had hanging questions that they wanted to ask about other things, maybe it makes sense to so those first.  If not, we could go into that.  Okay, let’s jump into House One, to give a little context and Sharon can talk to it as well, every year around this time, the third Wednesday in January, the Governor releases the House One budget and that becomes a starting point.  What is important to us from a variable perspective is as we get information about the ever complex minimum local contribution and then we can take all the information we have including the number of kids in each town that drives the percentage, plug that in with our budget and the minimum local contribution then we get to the impact on the budget as a whole and the impact on each of the three towns.  This is the time of the year that people freak out.  It is too early to freak out.  This is where we are starting and where we are now isn’t where we are going to end but is is where we are starting.  The other big variable that will be resolved presumably on Monday, is where we are with health insurance and Berkshire Health Group.  Sharon shared some information and I will let her go into detail about it with the finance subcommittee last night around that.  So House One, the minimal contribution is a variable, where we land with the BHG and the potential increase or lack of increase to insurance is another variable…S. Harrison:  As Peter said, House One came out yesterday and they also put out the net school spending foundation numbers.  We received those yesterday, and despite what you might read in the paper about most Chapter 70 funding, right now, House One just projects for us an additional $20 per student so it is not significant.  We are looking at an increase of about $32,000.  It is not significant to $2,892,218.  Our Chapter 71, the percentages haven’t come out yet but because we are in a new year with a new contract that increase significantly I am expecting even at 68% that will increase.  The net assessment to member towns is 7.56%, however, as you know, with the minimum local contribution that comes out of the foundation budget, that is based on the relative wealth of a community and the increase to Great Barrington from minimum local contribution is $250,000.  So any change in our budget at all, if we had a 0% increase, that would increase contribution requirement for Great Barrington on the budget we have now over 2.15%.  2% of any change we are going to see this year is due to minimum local contributions.  What that does right now with the budget is puts Great Barrington at 9.85%, Stockbridge actually goes down because their minimum local went down.  They go down about half a percent and West Stockbridge goes up about 4%.  However, as Peter said, we are going to having the health rates voted on next Monday and as of right now there is a projection that it could be as low as 0% increase.  There are some people, I just received an email today, some people are talking about have a 1% so at least we don’t get off track.  We don’t want to get back to where we were a few years ago where we didn’t have any increases and we used the fund to underwrite claims, then we had a 14% increase in one year.  We don’t want to get back to that.  The difference this year, whether it is a 0 or 1%, is that it is claims based.  We are not subsidizing the claims by using our reserves.  That is based on the claims over the last two and a half years have more heavily weighted with the new year.  It is looking pretty good.  What that means is we will be able to take right off the top $500,000 out of what we projected for the operating budget.  That is very good news.  That moves Great Barrington down to just over 7%.  The capital budget is pretty much set because it is debt so it is a steady debt.  That is where we are with Chapter 70, Governor’s budget.  As we know it can change by the time we have the full state budget but this is all we have in order to build our budget.  That is what every district does, is builds off of House One so that they can get their budgets in shape.  The other thing with the health group is they will be also including a high deductible plan this year.  Those will be 50% lower than the deductible plan we have now.  P. Dillon:  Nobody is obligated to go there.  It is just another option.  Some people find that attractive because they are also a health savings account which is a vehicle both for saving for health costs but it can also be, unlike a flexible spending account, and this is really nuance, that you can only use year to year and you use it or lose it, a health savings account can accumulate over time and it can be used for a range of different things having to do with medical expenses.  R. Dohoney:  On the capital budget, two things, one Steve and raise last meeting the stabilization, that would be a capital budget item right?  S. Harrison:  I am actually trying to find the CMR that said which budget we put that in whether it is operating or capital.  My recommendation would be to offset that by funds from E&D because it would be a discrete one time offset.  I want to find the exact vehicle to do that.  R. Dohoney:  Similarly, what Jason and Steve talked about earlier, I am not sure that some of that shouldn’t be in the capital budget.  The $116,000.  We can talk about that later but…S. Harrison:  Yes, it could be.  B. Fields:  It is currently now in contingency right?  S. Harrison:  No there is a line for extraordinary maintenance.  It is in the operating budget.  S. Bannon:  I think the decision, even though it could be in capital, is it worth putting it in capital?  Because all you are doing is pushing it down the road.  You will have to pay it eventually.  R. Dohoney:  No, I am just saying borrowing it so that is another discussion I would like to have.  Borrowing is questions two.  P. Dillon:  The nice thing will be, the next time we meet and the next time the finance committee meets, we will know where we are with the health insurance.  That will be one thing checked off.  We will come back to you with slightly percentages and then we will continue the conversation from there.
• Updates:
  • Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project – P. Dillon: This is the group that is largely the superintendents.  They have an offshoot group of technology directors and they met the other day.  They are talking about technology stuff south county wide so that is exciting.  The other group that met, the broader, the group with the school committee members and superintendents from the four south county district and some other folks had a very good meeting.  Dohoney:  We all met last week.  A lot of good take aways.  One was in the paper that we are closer to the consensus on appropriating some money and hiring a facilitator with help with the whole process which I know everyone on our committee is very much in favor of.  It is a good group.  Really productive.  Really good conversations but clearly we need some organization and pulling together.  Steve has advocated for it a lot so I think we are a step closer to that.  It is an achieved item by the group.  The proposal came from one of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District members of exploring not opposing and he is going to report back at the next meeting about a regional school planning committee which I don’t know 100% about but it is quasi formal group.  I think like our RAC committee that is charged with actual regionalization which I thought was a very appropriate proposal and a good step forward.  The Southern Berkshire crew will report back at the next meeting.  Lee and Lenox are still in the group and great participants.  Everyone is very honest and upfront on opinions and goals on different issues and I think the group is going a good job hanging together despite different opinions and goals.  S. Bannon:  The group is a good group but I think it needs some more structure to it eventually and by these two suggestions one being a facilitator and one forming the regional committee allows us to be more…I think it will get us farther faster.  I also think that what this does as it was explained to me is that it doesn’t mean we are committing to anything it just gets us down the path to figure out if we are really interested or not.  P. Dillon: One of the things that was neat and at that meeting I got volunteered for a lot of things then later people realized they didn’t get volunteered for things so they took some stuff on but each district had written a small one page about things they hoped to accomplish and those got aggregated and initially I got volunteered to put them into a spreadsheet and then Jake E. separately volunteered and took that on so we have now a very thoughtful draft document with all those ideas got aggregated and ranked and checked off so we will bring that to the whole group and that will be the beginning of us building consensus in a formal way around what we might want to work on.  There was a lot of similarity in what each district initially identified and probably things that just didn’t come to mind.  Everybody wants to see vocational education in south county.  I think that is a good start.  The superintendents are kicking around draft calendars.  We are looking at aligning professional development days.  The next meeting is at Lee High School on February 28th at 4:30pm.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: N/A
• Building and Grounds Subcommittee: Steve gave a brief update on the pipe break at the elementary school.  It is 95% complete and should be 100% by Monday.  He will be doing a complete audit of all three buildings on the HVAC systems during the spring and get back to us on needs.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee: N/A
• Technology Subcommittee: N/A
• Finance Subcommittee: N/A
• District Consolidation & Sharing Subcommittee: N/A

Personnel Report:

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

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment
• Written Communication  

MOTION TO ADJOURN:   A. Potter             Seconded:  J. St. Peter                 Accepted: Unanimous 

The next school committee meeting will be held on February 8, 2018 – Regular Meeting – Monument Mountain Regional High School, 7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 8:25 pm

Submitted by:  Christine M. Kelly, Recorder