Minutes – July 26, 2018

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Monument Mountain Regional High School – Library

July 26, 2018 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:                      P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                           B. Doren, T. Lee, K. Farina, D. Wine, G. Chamberlin,

Absent:                                    J. St. Peter, D. Singer, A. Potter

List of Documents Distributed:

June 21, 2018 School Committee Meeting Minutes

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, 7 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:

June 21, 2018 School Committee Meeting Minutes

MOTION TO APPROVE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JUNE 21, 2018 – A. Potter                 Seconded:  B. Fields              Accepted:  Unanimous 

TREASURER’S REPORT: S. Harrison – We have the April Treasurer’s Financial Report.  Nothing unusual with it.  Pretty standard.  You will see though that we have made about $115,000 more on our interest investments and our misc.  On the Misc., that is primarily due to $132,000 from the Berkshire Health Group.  It was basically a refund of the retirement drug subsidy.  Each of the units got their percentage share.  That is the largest amount on that.  Our expenses are running as expected and on the instructional line, you will see that is over.  Some of that is due to additional paraprofessional needs and some of it is due to adjustments in salaries that I didn’t make earlier in the year.  The next page is the balance sheet which balances.  The surplus and deficit to date, that should say FY18 Surplus Deficit, is under 1.2 million; that is due to timing of revenue.  If we look at the revolving funds, looking at school lunch which is showing short 138.  I am happy to say, as of June 30, it was down to $63,000 which was below our budgeted amount of $90,000; however that was due to two people being out on sick leave for most of the year.  The other accounts you will see positive balances except for the custodial services overtime.  That is money that we paid to our custodians when they work for us and other organizations are paying.  We bill.  That zeroes out at the end of the year.  Our grants, you will see there are negative balances, however we are under a reimbursement system so we have to spend the money before we can request it.  Again, we are either at zero or ahead for those accounts that carry to the new year.  Questions on that?  The summer is about closing out the previous fiscal year and opening the next fiscal year, however, based on the additional funds we received from Berkshire Health Group and our insurance coming in under anticipated because we didn’t have as many new enrollments as we expected plus we had a serious number of people moving onto MedEx, we are projecting $1.5 million in our E&D at the end of the year.  S. Bannon – and the max we can have is?  S. Harrison – is about $1.5 million.  S. Bannon – I thought so.  R. Dohoney – does that incorporate…. S. Harrison – that is after we use what we have for the year.  R. Dohoney – including changes in the state funding or not?  S. Harrison – that comes into the next question, which I can go to if you like.  I am not sure if we are talking two different fiscal years because the state funding is for FY19 and our E&D is for last year.  However, I do have two points of interest on the FY18 budget, the supplemental budget that the governor has filed.  We do expect that the Chapter 71 will be coming in at 80% reimbursement and that will be about $150,000 over what we had budgeted.  That will go to the transportation revolving fund and what we do with that is we move money from the operative budget in to the that fund which is  very helpful because we don’t know from year to year what our SPED transportation will be as we have the needs of students coming in and out.  That will drop to that fund and then our circuit break should come in at 75%.  Earlier in the year, that was estimated at 60% but we expect 75%.  For FY 19 with the compromise budget, we are looking at the Chapter 70, Educational Funding for us to increase about $10,870 over what we budgeted.  That drops to E&D.  The Regional School Transportation, we are expecting about $65,000 more based on the compromise budget.  That would drop to the Regional Transportation Fund and we would use it in the subsequent year.  The intent if anyone was here when it wasn’t the Regional Transportation Fund wasn’t set up, the intent of that is to allow districts to deposit it into a revolving fund to balance out any of the ups and downs in the funding formula for Chapter 71 so that we don’t come up short based on what we budgeted.  S. Bannon – otherwise it would drop to E&D and would not be used for transportation.  S. Harrison – correct.  R. Dohoney – is there an option to do that?  S. Harrison – yes.  The problem is if our, and this has happened to us a number of years since I have been here, if we budget based on House 1 and it comes in below that, it has come in as low as 45%, then we have to cut our operating budget in order to cover that.  That is the problem with not using….R. Dohoney – because we can’t take money out of E&D mid-year but we can take money out of a revolving fund mid-year, which is why you would rather have it there?  S. Harrison – right.  R. Dohoney – once it goes into the transportation revolving fund, can we only use it for transportation purposes or how do we get money out of that?  S. Harrison – yes, we use it for … what I do is I transfer money from the regular transportation line, I transfer expenses into that, then that money becomes available in the operating budget should we want to use it.  R. Dohoney – how much is in that right now before all this money goes in?  S. Harrison – I don’t know off the top of my head.  Right now it is 157; actually right now it is zero because I used that moved $157,000 worth of expenses from FY18 into that.  R. Dohoney – do we do that every year?  S. Harrison – yes, you have to.  It is like the circuit breaker.  You have 18 months to spend that.  We do spend it every year.  We just use it in case that budget is cut mid-year.  They keep saying that 2017 was supposed to be a correction year and so I am waiting for that correction year to happen because we didn’t have it as expected last year.

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News (See Below) – P. Dillon – We are trying to be in the habit of formal written Good News but because we are in the summer and in transitions, I am just going to share a couple of things verbally.  In the packet for the next meeting, we will have written good news and we will highlight a couple of things.  The most obvious and best news of all is that Tim and Doug are here and working.  We welcome them both very much.  Tim, many of you have met him or know him, he is a familiar face and is the new principal at Muddy Brook.  We are super excited to have him.  He is getting things rolling and it is great.  Tim, do you want to add anything to our home audience.  Lee – It has been somewhat quiet around the school.  I wanted to say thanks to our custodial crew run by Jean Daigle.  He and the crew have been doing a great job getting the school ready for the start of the school year.  I also wanted to thank Christine Kelly, the front off secretary and Kortney Keefner, the principal’s secretary.  They have done a very gentle job of bringing me onboard and familiarizing me with the way things work at Muddy Brook.  I think you are going to talk about hires later but one of my only administrative acts at this point is that we led an interview process for the hire of a new Special Education teacher serving the elementary level and that was a vacancy created when Leanna Pegorari moved into another role called the Education Team Leader which I understand is a new role this year.  I am happy to report that we found a really qualified and positive young educator that is going to join us for the start of the new school year.  His name is Richard Montano.  He is currently working at a charter school in Long Island and he has a Masters in Special Education and a background working with all sorts of kids with different abilities and needs.  We are looking forward to having him join us.  I am happy to be here and I am settling in.  I hope to provide some more news and good news next month.  P. Dillon – Our other new principal is Doug Wine.  If you have ready Doug’s bio, Doug is doing an incredible job of running around and talking to people and if he hasn’t come to talk to you yet, he will soon.  I know this because he tells me and also because people he talks to regular email and text me and say, I see why you hired this guy.  He is great.  Welcome Doug.  We are excited to have you here.  D. Wine – I was going talk about the people I have met in town and their incredible desire to be involved with the school and help make the school greater.  It has been real exciting talking to people who want to partner with this school.  As someone explained to me a couple of days ago, schools here are a big deal and this (MMRHS) is the biggest deal.  They just want to be a part of it.  It is really clear that it more going to be picking how many things we can do as opposed to not having enough resources to help us which is great.
• Dillon – thank you Doug. During the summer we run our Project Connection program and summer program (Kristi will talk more about that) but we also provide special education and extended school year services.  They run from about July 9th to August 10th.  There are three specialized programs.  One for PK students, one for elementary students with significant disabilities and the life school program shared with Berkshire Hills, Southern Berkshire, Lee and Lenox.  We also have four language-based programs for kids K-7 and tutoring for some high school students.  All tolled, these programs served 80 of our students.  Kate and her team are doing a nice job of that.  Kristi?  K. Farina – I want to share a little bit about what has been going on with Project Connection this summer.  We are serving 115 students this summer in addition to the 80 that Peter just mentioned through the special education programming; all of them this year are functioning in Monument Valley as opposed to across the street at Muddy Brook.  That has been a transition and I want to echo Tim’s sentiments in terms of thanking the custodial staff because they have been doing a great job, both working across the street in the summer at Muddy Brook because we freed up that space for them to do some much needed work over there and the staff over here at Monument Valley have taken on an extra load because we have shifted the Project Connection program here.  I just wanted to acknowledge the added work they have been doing to support that programming.  We also have 30 volunteers who have joined us this summer from the Jewish Women’s Federation.  They have been supporting our Title I tutoring program that has been happening.  It is a remarkable thing to see the women come in and work with the young children on their reading.  That is Monday through Wednesday they are running that.  It is also the first time we have been providing free breakfast and lunch for all the students in the program.  I want to especially thank Sharon and Kathy and Jody Hall for the added work they have taken on to help make this happen for our community.  Every week we have also had 40 families that have been receiving weekly backpacks that have food donations.  Those donations have been coming in from Berkshire Mountain Bakery, Fairview Hospital, Gould Farm, Stockbridge Congregational Church; we have been getting product from Project Sprout and we have also had many other folks just bringing donations to contribute to those bags of food that are going home to families on a weekly basis.  It is an amazing program.  All of this is happening and we are also doing all of the programming for students.  There is remarkable work happening with the students in the Project Connection program.  I am just going to give a couple of examples.  Our 4th graders have been working on a service-learning project.  They have been going across the street to the the kids in Head Start to support the development for kindergarten readiness.  That is an amazing thing that the 4th graders are involved in.  We also, for the first time, have 5th and 6th graders involved in the robotics program and they took a trip to MIT.  They participated in the competition MIT sponsored in the zero robotics program.  There are multiple other programs with amazing community organizations like Berkshire Museum, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Greenagers, etc.   I just can’t thank Tom Kelly and Jack Cowles for the work they do in coordinating this program.  It is really remarkable work that they have been doing.  Thank you.
• Shifts in Instruction Connected to Enrollment – P. Dillon – This connects back to a discussion we had at our last meeting. One of things that came up, and I put together a little sheet that I will pass around, it is around what are our approaches to vocational ed career and career technical education.  We some opportunities to do some things differently.  If you look at the memo in front of you, the quick summaries are we have two approved Chapter 74 programs.  Those are in automotive and horticulture and we have programs in early childhood education, culinary arts, woodworking, technology and video production.  There are some additional programs as well.  We have an internship program.  One of the things we talked about and we rarely do this out of budget cycle, but do we want to leverage some of our existing resources to do something now to plan and do even deeper work in vocation or CVTE?  Part of this came out in Amy’s final report which was part of what our last meeting was about.  The opportunity is to rather than wait another whole budget cycle and wait until next year, do we want to do something now?  I am not recommending that we radically change our programing now, but what I am recommending is that we consider the possibility of bringing somebody on, and I’ll describe what “somebody” means in a second, to use this year as a planning year so that a year from now we have a radically improved range of vocational opportunities or portfolio of opportunities.  Some of those things could be, and we can have some dialogue about this, but let me just summarize,  We could hire a full or part time coordinator to support that.  We could hire a consultant or possibly both and the third possibility and the least dramatic would be so stipend some or multiple positions as part time coordinators.  The things that Doug and I would like to see happen are detailed in this section of potential tasks but a documented study with existing local programs, enrollment trends, impact on students and figure out what we are doing and where there are opportunities to do other things.  We would like to connect with the Berkshire Regional Planning Board and BCC to look at all of that to see if we are investing our resources in the right opportunities, and we may be, or are there other opportunities that we might want to invest in.  The classic example that comes up alot is there is a lot of health care stuff going in the Berkshire County; BCC has a very strong nursing program; we could have a pipeline to that nursing program that starts as a certified nursing assistant.  We had one at one point and it may make a lot of sense to do.  I am not necessarily requesting that.  In my heart I think it is a good idea but I think we really need to study and be deliberate about it.  We would like the person or people to visit and study exemplary programs; to not just look at BCC as a partner but to look at local businesses as partners.  Hudson Valley Community College in the context of our automotive program, a number of our students end up there anyway and we could have a better articulated pipeline to that program.  Look at career pathway programs, certificates, degrees, apprenticeships, etc. and really importantly, it is a state-mandated thing and it has sort of fallen on hard times but we might need to reactivate the business and community council.  Steve is actually the chair of that by state regs.  In terms of outcome, on the backside of this, recommend an appropriate portfolio of options, develop and enhance models to be implemented starting in August of next year, recommend future current and future facility needs; look at partnering across programs where there are some opportunities for maker space, virtual, are there are opportunities for our greenhouse and culinary programs to connect.  We might want to phase out some of our existing programs.  Again,  I don’t have a foregoing conclusion.   I just think if we are looking at expanding or growing in some areas, we might want to look at contracting in some others.  The last two are how can we enhance and expand feeder programs from the middle school to the high school.  Daniel Dell is doing some really interesting stuff around design thinking.  The same way we get kids excited about world languages, French and Spanish in the middle school then they continue that path in high school, we should build on some of Danny’s work and Katie Malone-Smith and some of the other interesting work in the middle school to more deliberately set up things in the high school.  Obviously and quite importantly we need to build and implement a very thoughtful evaluation model.  This is just an overview.  Thinking of this is by, even though it would be an off cycle or off budget investment in planning around vocational ed, we can accelerate opportunities for kids.  There is a nice tie-in to whatever potential building project we do.  There is a nice tie-in from high school to the community to the businesses and we think it is engaging and meaningful work for us to do and young people to do.  Bannon – comments?  What does CVTE stand for?  It is Career, Vocational and Technical Education.  It is a fancy 21st Century name for what used to be called vocational education without the preconceived baggage of just using the term vocational.  S. Bannon – I told Peter today that I am a little hypocritical to endorse this because Sharon gets upset when we go off cycle, but I think this is long overdue and I think this is needed in our district.  I am fully assuming we can find the funding.  I am in favor of hiring a coordinator for one year to really put this together.  It’s what people have asked for for years and we haven’t been able to do it or just haven’t done it for a variety of good reasons.  We should look at what is really needed in the Southern Berkshires and where kids can actually go out and get a job and start off really well when they graduate from Monument.  A. Potter –  I absolutely concur.  We have needed to get an inventory of programs and some rational thinking around the programs and what is needed because what we have is something that has been handed down over a number of years at this point.  From what I heard earlier, there is a lot of folks out there in the community that are ready to engage and if we put ourselves into a position for that engagement, I think it would be an excellent thing.  I certainly support a coordinator position.  B. Fields – I would support that also.  As Peter was talking, I was reading Amy’s analysis of the current program along with her recommendations and I am glad some of these need to be looked at.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is the direction we have to go as a district.  Our vocational program, I don’t think, from my own angle, has not been as robust as it could be.  I substituted in the greenhouse, greenhouse numbers are down, we know that is probably due to the facility itself but there are so many aspects to this that are good.  The tie-in with the community is the one I like because we are looking at agriculture, auto and this is the direction that we have to go if we want to continue to be a comprehensive high school.  It is getting to a point that we either need to embrace the comprehensive role that we have and we are going to fully back it or as I said to somebody right before the renovation vote, we could go academic and that person said to me, “well, what will be do with the kids that aren’t like that?”  I said well, that is a way to cut costs.  If you are going to do comprehensive then we should do it well.  I would certainly back a full-time coordinator who will look at the programs and come back and say, this is what we need to do and this is where we are going.  R. Dohoney – I don’t understand why this wasn’t proposed during the budget process or why it can’t be dealt with in the next budget process.  I agree with everything everybody said but I feel like we have this great budget process right before somebody has a great idea then it doesn’t matter anymore.  I am not going to cast a protest vote against it because of the process on it but I feel like, and I know you acknowledged it Steve, but we are creating a major programmatic shift in a July meeting.  If this is that important, do it.  That is the reason I would vote for it.  S. Bannon – I agree with you Rich.  What you are saying is what I agree too; it’s the end result that is important.  The process didn’t happen so it didn’t happen.  Some of it is school committee fault but we can also propose things we have proposed and sometimes the administration might not realize and sometimes the administration hasn’t gotten our backing on things and this might have been something we should have brought up ourselves.  P. Dillon – a couple of things in response; some of this came out in Amy’s report which we got at the end of June so that speaks partly to timing.  An interesting thing that is happening is most situations I tend to be pretty aggressive and bold and Steve reigns me in.  In this situation, and this is like the best sense of reciprocal leadership, Steve was particularly aggressive and bold and I tried to reign him in.  Ultimately, I failed in doing that, which is a fun position to be in.  I think because it is investing in planning as opposed to….we are not trying to build a new program for four weeks from now.  We are taking a year to address this in a really thoughtful way.  Even a year is going to be accelerated.  R. Dohoney – it’s not a year though because we are voting on a budget in six months.  P. Dillon – it is a year of planning to set something up from a kid’s perspective but it is six months of planning to impact next year’s budget.  There will be some shifts and reallocations.  We have a lot of work to do.  K. Farina – the only other one piece I want to add and Amy brought to this to your attention before she left, was the Innovative Pathways Grant that we are actually looking at.  Sean Flynn and I are starting to work on that this summer but it is a huge undertaking so having someone who could devote more time to that is part of the timing of this.  That grant didn’t come out until June and it is due in late fall then there is a second part of the application that we do in the winter.  That is just one piece of the puzzle that I wanted to remind you all about.  P. Dillon – I think the two things we are going to want to know are how much money are we talking about and the second thing is where would the money come from.  The way I am looking at it, the cost of a full time coordinator would be around $75,000 which is including benefits.  The second piece that is important is that we set aside $20-$25,000 also for work with some sort of consultant.  We don’t just want to hire somebody full time and have them sit in a room absent access to best practices.  We want to provide them with some support.  The total all in amount is $100,000 which is not a small amount of money.  Sharon will reluctantly speak to where we could free up that money from and obviously we are not pulling it from the operating budget and we do have a few revolving accounts in an appropriate use of money in a revolving account for a one time use expense while you get ready to budget it into a regular budget cycle.  Sharon, do you want to talk about how you would work your magic?  S. Harrison – I would recommend that even though our revenue from tuition in, not the choice tuition but the tuition in, is down about $20,000 this year.  We have been building that balance up so we can start budgeting what we have, not what we are projecting, so we do as you will see on this report, have about $500,000 in the tuition revolving account as of right now.  I would recommend that is where the funding goes.  D. Singer – is there anybody that is already part of the school district that could help with this?  P. Dillon – yes and we have to have a fair and open process.  If you approve it tonight, then I would write up a job description and post it internally first and if somebody within the school district were interested and met the qualifications, our preference would be so snatch them up to do it.  If there were not somebody from within the district, then we would open it up more broadly to the wider public.  S. Bannon – we could approve a job description at our next meeting which about a month away.  R. Dohoney – making sure you could get it done in time, I am going to support it for the same reason Steve is and make an exception here because it is that important but because it is that important, it has to be done right.  We cannot be here a year from now in the same position we have been in with other things happening where budgets were going to change and revolutions were going to happen and there was an under delivery.  You have to be careful.  I agree with what Bill said.  This is what people keep banging on from the community so this has got to work so we have to find the right person and make sure it is done correctly.  It will be a breach of the trust with the community if this is not delivered appropriately.  I don’t know if there would be a lot of second chances on it.  S. Bannon –  I would like to hire the right person in November than the wrong person in August.  P. Dillon – to Rich’s point about pulling this off, Doug and I and Kristi and the rest of the administrative team, will invest a tremendous amount of time in getting this right.  R. Dohoney – will that be a district-wide position or just allocated to the high school?  B. Fields – it has district-wide implications.  P. Dillon – correct; the work will primarily be at the high school but the work will also offer overlap with the middle school at least in the first year and potentially to some degree with the elementary school.  I don’t think we are going to start plugging PK kids into some magical CVTE track.  I think it is important that the person report to Doug but I think I will provide significant support and consultation.  R. Dohoney – I was asking more from a budgeting standpoint and how it is going to fit in to the process.  P. Dillon – we haven’t talked about that but I think the person should report to Doug primarily but I’ll be there too.  Some of the partnerships I will have a significant hand in.

MOTION TO HIRE A COORDINATOR AND/OR CONSULTANT TO PURSUE A SCHOOLWIDE VOCATIONAL PROGRAM AT THE HIGH SCHOOL WITH A TOTAL BUDGET OF $100,000:  A. POTTER                    SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY     ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

• Requested Votes:
  • Health Savings Account – S. Harrison – On May 3rd, I brought a memo where I informed the school committee that the Berkshire Health Group has two new new rate saver health insurance plans. They are health savings account qualified plans which means they are higher deductible plans.  The plans will be in place.  They are part of our offerings.  The BHG said that employers can contribute up to 50% of the cost of the deductible.  For individual plans, the cost of the deductible is $2,000 and for a family plan it is $4,000.  There are couple of things to know about these kinds of plans.  First of all, since I just talked about deductibles, there is not individual deductible imbedded in a family plan of the HSA plan.  What I mean by that is under our current plans, we have our individuals plans with a $250 deductible.  A family plan as a $250 individual deductible and a $750 family deductible.  Under the HSA family plan, there is only the $4,000 deductible.  Two reasons for this.  The first one is federal regulations say that deductibles on family plans have to be at least $2,700 so you couldn’t have an individual deductible at $2,000.  The second one is the cost savings is not there when you have the two level deductible on a family plan.  I apologize; the HAS instead of HSA is not my fault.  It is the computer.  It does not like HSA; it wants it to say HAS.  I tried to catch it everywhere but I just does that.  Unlike FSA, the flexible spending account, employees own the account whether they put money in or the employer puts money in.  That is a federal regulation.  Under the FSA if the money is not spent at the end of the year, the employee cannot receive that money back because it has been pre-taxed so it turned back to the district.  Under and HSA, the employee actually owns that account so they can take it with them, they can keep from year to year, they can spend it all down each year, they can add additional amounts or add more under deductions and also just do independent deposits to it.  The qualified plans we have are the HMO and the PPO plans.  We are not offering a POS plan because it is too similar to the PPO and there are no cost savings with that.  The other thing that people had a question on, we have people who are retirees that are coming to our information sessions.  Only employees, and I don’t understand why people use “active employees” because you are either an employee or retired.  You are either active or not active.   New HSA plans can only be set up for employees and only employee plans can have an employer contribution because once you retire you don’t have an employer so your previous employer cannot contribute.  This proposal would only be for employees.  I also included a current analysis of net savings.  If the district were to put in 50%, first you will see that the savings moving from the current plan to the HSA plan; the PPO, the district saves $1,400 and the employee saves about $548.  Under a family plan it is considerable savings for the district of $3,888 and the employee $888.  If the district were to put in 50% the part enrollee savings for the district is $444 and $1,888 for the family plan.  I did a similar analysis for the HMO with a net savings per enrollee for the district of $69 on an individual plan and $900 on a family plan.  If somebody were to look at this, it appears that the employee receives a greater benefit than the district.  However, what we have to remember is under a family plan, even though their benefit is $2,600, their cost is an additional $1,400.  The difference is they have an additional cost where the district realizes all of that benefit.  The analysis is if everybody went onto the plan, I am not suggesting that we force everybody to go on, I just wanted to make a clear example of what that savings would look like.  It was really interesting; we have six employees who are in interested in this plan, however they were not prepared to make a decision during open enrollment because they didn’t know if the district would be putting in money or not.  The other thing that I did forget to say is that unlike an FSA where any employee can spend the FSA money before it is in the account.  So if you decided you are going to put in $1,000 in the account, you can spend that $1,000 on day one then contribute after.  Under and HSA plan the money has to be in the account before you can spend it.  There were people who were interested but did not want to take the risk because they had a $4,000 liability with no money and no ability to spend that money because they can’t spend anything until they are on the account.  The recommendation or what I am asking the district to consider is to fund an employee’s HSA plan at the 50% rate for individuals and that the contribution be made the first day of the fiscal year, July 1, or on or about the first day of enrollment for employees that are hired after July 1 then they would get onto the fiscal plan.  You will see that the cost of that would come out the savings that the district would realize is for individuals moving to this plan.  Bannon – If we fund this on July 1st and the employee leaves on our about November 1st…..S. Harrison – they get to keep it.  It is the same thing if you were to fund it on January 1st and they left February 1st.  P. Dillon – even with the FSA, people could charge against….say, I get a lot of dental work done and I pay $1,000 and then two weeks into September I leave, the district still has that liability.  S. Harrison – there is no way to collect that.  There is no perfect system.  P. Dillon – this is complicated.  Sharon shared a ton of information.  OUr proposal is within the context of the BHG plan and the real wiggle room is about the district’s contribution and when we talked about it and looked at it, we thought in setting something up, it made particular sense to be fair and setting it at that level seems to be very fair.

MOTION THAT THE DISTRICT MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO AN EMPLOYEE’S HSA ANNUALLY IN THE AMOUNT OF 50% OF THE HSA QUALIFIED INSURANCE PLAN AND DEDUCTIBLE TO BE DEPOSITED JULY 1ST OR ON OR ABOUT THE ENROLLMENT DATE OF THE MID-YEAR HIRE.  A. POTTER                    SECONDED:  R. DOHONEY          ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

• BHEA Unit A Contract – P. Dillon – typically or historically in most cases, the school committee has waited for the various associations or units to vote on a contract first and then the school committee does it.  Because the negotiations ran very late in June and because of the timing of it, it was very hard for Unit A to have enough time for people to vote going into the summer.  This year we are proposing that the school committee actually now and that the Unit A members vote right when they get back at the beginning of the school year in late August.  It is a reverse of the order that we typically do it in.  We spent a lot of time talking to the school committee about the contract and the changes and you received a copy of it.  The negotiations were long and we spent a lot of time in negotiations.  I think it is fair to say that this is one that is born out of compromise.  I can speak to specific things in the contract if people have questions about that.  Harrion – I was just wondering if in reponse to Glen’s question about the splits, during negotiations, what was recommended and what is in the contract is that the split for the new plan, the HSA, HMO and PPO, be the same as the existing deductible plans.  I don’t what to say it wrong off the top of my head so is it 75/25?  Does that sound right Glen?  P. Dillon – The PPO is 72.5/27.5; the POS is 75/25 and the HMO is 82.5/17.5.  S. Harrison – so we are recommending the same splits on the PPO and HMO for this new plan.  P. Dillon – that is relatively easy because it is same for same.  There didn’t have to be a lot of debate around that.  B. Fields – the Supreme Court just made a ruling about agency fees.  Article 6 is now null and void?  P. Dillon – my understanding around that is the contract is subject to laws outside of the contract, so you can still vote on this contract and if that gets translated into other things, then that will impact this.  R. Dohoney – if somebody chooses not to pay their fee, then …. It wouldn’t nullify the rest of the contract.

MOTION TO APPROVE THE CONTRACT BETWEEN BHRSD AND BERKSHIRE HILLS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION UNIT A – A. POTTER                     SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                         ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

• Updates:
  • Summer Program – I talked about this in the good news.
  • Security & Safety – since the last round of national incidents, we have been talking about this at every meeting, I think the big news going into the end of the summer is Steve and his team continue to do all sorts of upgrades to the physical spaces in the buildings and in the first couple of staff days, a team of local Great Barrington police and local state troopers are going to come in and do some training, first for the whole district and then building by building during the second day of the all staff return.  We continue to work on that.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: N/A
• Building and Grounds Subcommittee: N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee: A meeting is scheduled for August 23rd; most people on the evaluation committee completed an evaluation on Survey Monkey.  That is all getting compiled now and we have a meeting in early August to try to wrap that up.
• Technology Subcommittee: N/A
• Finance Subcommittee: We met earlier today and basically put together the calendar for the upcoming budget season which we are going to meet in August.  We are going to do SPED technology first and then move into the schools.  We decided to break with tradition and start with the middle school first just because it is the only returning principal.  Target date of December 31st for the budget; we also reviewed capital items with Steve who gave us a pretty through update on that where we discussed the security issues as well.
• District Consolidation and Sharing Subcommittee: There is a meeting schedule for August 8th but that will be confirmed.
• Next Steps Sub-Committee: Dillon – I am proud to announce that last night at the Next Steps Committee meeting, the members voted to elect two co-chairs of that group.  One of the co-chairs is our very own Bill Fields and the and the other co-chair is Paul Gibbons.  Bill do you want to tell people what we did last night?  B. Fields  – we met and besides choosing an organizational structure, we toured the high school.  It was a good tour.  It was eye-opening to people from the community.  We have a good cross-section on the committee.  Some good questions were asked.  One of the questions was we are doing all this work at the high school and a member asked why can’t students be using this as an internship to learn skills in regards to wiring, construction, etc.  As I am listen tonight to what we did, I am saying here is a perfect opportunity to join vocation training with something and of course, he didn’t know the state law and Peter brought up the liability question but it was interesting that it was a question of the community person.  It was an eye opening experience for people who have never been here.  We had two former students, Dan and Michelle, and it was interesting listening to them about the changes that have occurred and also giving them what the problems are regarding educational delivery especially in the labs.  We are off to a good start.  I think the next meeting is in September.  S. Bannon – August 28th at 6pm at the high school.  P. Dillon – Steve and his team have been doing an incredible amount of work at the high school.  Next time you go into the main office, they gutted the main office, changed all the ceiling tiles, changed all the lights, painted it, put in a chair rail, etc.  It is much brighter and looks nice.  All the science labs have been taken apart and all the ceiling are down, lights are going in.  It is very exciting.  R. Dohoney – do you have any timeframe going forward?  B. Fields – we will talk about that at the next meeting.  Paul and I will get together and draw up an agenda.  I think that is important because we have to get going.  The big debate is going to be what do we do with the building and where do we get the money to do it.  Those are the two basic questions.

Personnel Report:

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

Business Operation:

FY18 4th Quarter Transfer Report & Overview – S. Harrison – As is normal, the 4th quarter is our largest report and has most of our transfers.  I moved money and balance accounts.  Budget balancing accounts, journal entries, 129, 149, 152, 157-160, 162-167 are larger.  I did it by school then by department so as you go through the list you will see what those are.  What I did this time, I identified by the number.  If you have the desire to go through the report you will see what is in there.  We had some out of district travel costs for professional development and typical mid-year, end of year moves at the schools for changing needs; tech, materials, activity advisors, pretty standard.  There is nothing unusual about the transfers that we did this quarter.  S. Bannon – I am impressed that you didn’t close out spending until the middle of June.  S. Harrison – we did well.  A couple of things helped that.  One was the state coming through with their funding then changing our receipt dates have made a big difference so we know the money is there and we don’t need to close it in anticipation of end of year paying until after we spent the budget.  We are working on having it come to the end of the year.

MOTION TO COMMIT THE FY18 4TH QUARTER TRANSFER REPORT – A. POTTER                SECONDED:  B. FIELDS                  ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS 

Education News: 

Old Business: 

New Business:

Public Comment

Written Communication

The next school committee meeting will be held on August 23, 2018 – Regular Meeting, Middle School, 7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 8:07pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary