Minutes – July 27, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington     Stockbridge   West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting – Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library – July 27, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                            D. Long, E. Mooney, reporters

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated June 15, 2017; School Choice Requests for 2017-2018 School Year
Berkshire County Education Task Force Planning Study dated July 18, 2017; Personnel Report dated July 27, 2017

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:  – hours  — hr. 42 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:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated June 15, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:   A. Potter                Seconded:  J. St. Peter                  Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:  N/A

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Dillon – Hello everybody. We are right in the middle of summer and doing a lot of work on the buildings.  The custodians are working hard, and there were some photographs on Facebook about all the work they are doing at the high school with the floors, etc.  It is going on in all the buildings, and we appreciate that.
• Project Connection’s summer program with the middle and elementary school is going along quite nicely. There has been great participation and we are excited about that.
• Lots of plans for the start of school. Today, tomorrow and two days next week, the administrative team is doing a retreat.  We spent today at Ramblewild in Lanesborough.  It was really fun.  The first part was around team building and problem solving and how to work together.  There were times we could communicate and there were times we were not allowed to talk to each other.  We had to get 10 of us across the drop field with a bunch of 2×4’s, etc.  In the afternoon, we were on the ropes course which was challenging.  We are super fired up now, because if we can get through that we can do a great job with the school year.  The person who was running it was Luke Blume, a former high school phys ed teacher, and Drew who is a Monument grad who went on to the Outdoor Leadership Program at Greenfield Community College.  That was his pathway to Ramblewild.  At one point people were talking about needing a team name to do this work, and Drew chimed in “you don’t need a team name; you are the Spartans!”
• There is a lot of end-of-year reporting that Sharon has been doing and the secretaries have been doing; updates on students, updates on staff, all the evaluations go to a system that gets uploaded to the state and that is pretty complicated. It went very smoothly this June.  She is closing out the budget from last year and we are placing orders for next year.  When we get to the Personnel Report, I’ll talk about some hiring.  We have had a lot of luck with summer interviews and filling positions.
• There is a lot of summer professional development going on. Teachers are working with outside organizations, they are working in small groups and teams around curriculum assessment.  There is a literacy project going on at the elementary school that we are really excited about.  There is a whole host of things going on.
• Requests:
  • FY18 Appointment of District Treasurer

Motion to approve FY18 Appointment of Dick Jette as District Treasurer:   J. St. Peter                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

•  FY18 Appointment of School Committee Recorder

Motion to approve FY18 Appointment of Christine Kelly as School Committee Recorder:   J. St. Peter                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

• Updates:
  • FY18 School Choice – This is new school choice for this year. In the far left column, request received, those were approved.  Those that are waitlisted are not approved.  There are a handful that we are still waiting to hear back from parents on.  There is a small number of folks who applied, and then for a variety of reasons decided not to take advantage of the seat(s) that we offered them.  Sometimes they thought they would need it but they had to move; sometimes they apply to another place to choice in, etc.  Bannon – how does this compare to other years?  P. Dillon – Sharon has another report and she could speak to it better.  I think it is flagged a little positive.  There is no negative trend that we should be worried about.  The numbers are good.  There is a lot of interest, and she can speak to what we budgeted for versus where we are at right now.  It will change a little bit.  Even yesterday, somebody called to see if they could choice in and Doreen asked “you mean for next year 18/19” and they still wanted to choice in for this year.  R. Dohoney – so we still have people on the waitlist?  P. Dillon – in some grades we do.  7th and 8th grades we see ourselves as full.  10th grade based on the last schedule that they ran at the high school and where students would be in which classes, we are thinking we are full.  As we adjust schedules and we will see if there is room.  R. Dohoney – the area between the request received and the approved is 70/59 so that is 21 so I don’t know.  The seven on the waitlist have taken their names off the list?  P. Dillon – yes.  S. Bannon – 59/70 is 11.  We will keep an eye on it and get back to you when I know more.
  • FY18 Budget – S. Harrison – It looks like Chapter 70 is up about $10,790 from our budget so we are right in line there. Chapter 71, the transportation budget is $31,000 higher than our budget.  However, on this latter number the amount depends on the FY17 end of year reports that go in; What the actual expenditures are compared to the pot of money.  We don’t normally know what the percentage is even though it looks like it is going to be higher by $31,000, it could be more, it could be less depending on the reports that go in.  Choice sending expense is about $48,000 higher than we have in our budget but this number changes depending on enrollment.  We will know more the end of November, beginning of December when we get the reports from across the county.  Our expense if $48,000 more.  Bannon – so that means roughly that there are more kids out or more spent.  S. Harrison – it could be either.  They projected off of the prior year’s number.  They projected off of 16 so it is actually two years behind.  Again, we won’t really know until we get our Oct 1 numbers.  We don’t get those numbers from other schools until they file their reports which usually come the end of November, beginning of December.  The percentage for the circuit breaker has not been finalized so we are waiting on that was well.
  • Berkshire County Education Task Force – you all received copies of the report from the task force. They are also on the table on available electronically.  This has been widely covered in all the media.  You have a sense of what came out in the Phase II report and they big bold recommendation is that the county should move to one school district.  Right now we have about 15,000 kids countywide and it is projected that in 10 years, we will have closer to 14,000.  That puts us around the size of the New Haven Public Schools from a numbers perspective.  If the recommendation were to happen…..the rub is a few more square miles.  When the Task Force looked at its work, there were a range of possibilities on a continuum and depending on one’s political perspective, I’m not going to say the left or right side, one side of the continuum would be to do nothing and the most aggressive thing that was discussed was having one big county-wide district.  There were also several other possibilities discussed that would be step within.  One step farther would be to go as far as a county-wide district and have three sub-regions within the county, perhaps the south, central and north.  There was a lot of debate about is northwest separate from northeast and what would that look like.  With 13 school districts in the county, everybody has a different of who fits in where or what makes sense.  Does Richmond go with South County, or Central; Becket is a big one.  If there were a north county district, that would be fairly obvious if there was a northeast and northwest…lots of debate there.  There was also a conversation about the possibility of not forming a county-wide district but forming a  county-wide school union to give existing districts a different umbrella to operate under and flexibility around doing things.  Ultimately, Steve was there and lots of people read the report, the recommendation of the group was if you are going to spend a lot of time doing a lot of work, the biggest return on your investment is to go really big and do the county-wide thing because it affords the potential for more flexibility and cost savings, etc.  I am speaking on behalf of the group; this is not my own thinking on this…if you formed a union or multiple unions it might create additional work with not as much benefit.  That is a quick summary of it.  The report has provoked all sorts of discussion, and I think there are people running around waving flags about it and there are people waving spears about it and everything in between.  On a personal level, I’m happy that the report is provoking conversation and the next step of this, the Phase III, which apparently Brian Fairbanks was able to secure private funding for entirely which is quite remarkable and he has done a very nice job already on that, is to go deeper to create a blueprint to do additional financial analysis and that is the point where the rubber hits the road.  As long as it is theoretical and abstract, it is not particularly threatening or provocative.  The more concrete it gets the more complicated it gets.   Bannon – a couple of things, the next day after I voted and I voted for this.; the only one that voted against it was Martha Wise, I was more than uncomfortable with my vote after I voted because my gut was telling me that there were a couple of problems with it.  My suggestion which was not one of the five ideas, we form three different districts and that forms under a modified school union so they all work together but it is a little more manageable for distance wise, etc.  That got shut down pretty quickly because it was not one of the ideas and they spent a lot of money on a representative and come in so why would I come up with an idea.  I voted for myself and I made that very clear.  I did not vote for the school committee because we hadn’t even talked about it.  I said that if we are going to vote on this, let’s go back to the school committee and get their endorsement.  That was also shot down.  We are not ready to do that.  Well if you are ready to vote, you should be ready to go back to the school committees.  To me, the next step would have been to address each school committee and get them to buy into this, or a majority to buy into this and that is not going to happen.  They are going to do Phase III first.  You do things and it is not the end of the world the way I voted but I am somewhat uncomfortable with it because in my feeling there are too many miles and how this would ever get past the voters unless we just get the state to impose this, how this gets by the votes with our history, we can’t get things through three towns, I can’t imagine if every town had to vote on this.  Their answer to that was, there may be holes in the district.  That is possible and that is ok.  I am not saying this is a terrible idea, I just think that politically a reasonable person would say that three districts is more manageable than the entire areas from Williamstown to Sheffield.  It is not the final vote.  It is the first vote, so we have a long way to go.  I do regret that they are not going to the school committees next.  They are going to put a lot of work into it.  What I have seen happen before is the work will be put into it, if some school committees go against it there will be hard feeling because we put all this work into it.  At some point, you have to go back to the school committees and get buy in.  They are the elected officials representing towns, cities, districts and they will eventually come back to us but a lot more money will be spent and a lot more will go into it.  I have my say there, and I voted as I did, and we will have more chances to vote.  We will have to vote as a group at some point and it will not be tonight.  I want to wait until we have nine or ten members anyway.  Rich, you might have something to say.  R. Dohoney – I do.   What my proposal is going to be is that at our first meeting in September, that we have a vote about whether we stay in the Task Force or not.  I won’t get into all of my concerns about this report because I have a lot of them but the reason that we need to make that move is the same reason I have brought up at every meeting since I have been here; I went through and pulled the minutes and I don’t have to repeat myself but I will.  Back in August of 2015, Mr. Dohoney stated that he believes too much focus is put on this task force.  He doesn’t believe the kind of necessary radical change that is necessary will be made.  He feels that wonderful conversations are happening but he does not want to see this task force distracted from the work that we are already doing.  That is the cliff that we are about to go off if we go on this total wild goose chase.  The proposal in this report has no chance of happening in the best climate with the best intentioned people driving it, it wouldn’t happen.  None of those things are present with what you have here.  We know that #1 from what Mr. Bannon just said.  They didn’t even want to come back to the districts with this.  Where they did go first is the Pittsfield corporate media machine to start selling this on people.  The email that was sent to this board said “a press release is in the works with DMG and BCETF Steering Committee.  Jonathan Butler has offered the marketing services of iBerkshires to help us in all of the important messaging going forward including helping draft this week’s press release.  John Bissell, Greylock Federal Credit Union, and Brenda Burdick, General Dynamics, have also pledged PR support.”  So, first move out of the gates is a corporate PR machine, not come talk to the school committee, not talk to one parent from this district, not talk to one teacher from this district, not talk to anyone in this building, they made this proposal for this broad reform that seems to me is being driven by one source, the business community.  The business community’s #1 priority is reducing taxes not in education.  This is so far off on the wrong foot that it could never succeed.  What we have heard at every turn, the August 20th meeting in 2015 when we voted on it, December 17th we  voted on it, when they came for money in October, well, let’s just go along, that’s what Steve and Peter said and they were right because they are open minded but this is going down a singular path and it is not in the best interest of our district.  The good intention behind all of this we trying to get some of these schools that had neither the guts nor the brains to close some of their schools to give them a political cover to do it.  This district closed three schools 15 years ago.  We have been ahead of the curve doing the right thing.  We just reformed our funding formula after a very painful process.  We pass our budgets; we work hard at our budgets; we work year-round on our budgets and we have very open conversations and this past year I think they passed almost universally in all three towns.  None of the problems that have been identified by this task force have nothing to do with this district.  I’m done going along with the flow because it is going to erode our ability to do what we need to do.  We have big issues that need to be decided with the high school, maybe in the next six months that we are not ready to do.  Having administrators and school committee people sitting up there with this crowd and all of these lengthy meetings producing these great big reports….I haven’t seen a great big report with what we are going to do with the high school yet; it is a misallocation of resources.  I think the whole thing is awful and the most troubling aspect of it is we have been working so hard to make headway toward shared services and regionalization down here and you feel like we are banging our head against the wall and now some select group of random people from some districts are suddenly voting to form this big wide ranging district.  If people want to talk about regionalizing, merger, etc., our door is always open.  The one good thing about this is I saw the representative from Southern Berkshire and the representative from Lee voted in favor of it too.  In addition to getting out of this task force in September, my proposal is going to be “no more shared services, let’s feel each other out”, I want to have a meeting with Southern Berkshire, a meeting with Lee with one agenda item and that is merger.  Merger, that is it.  Not sharing lawnmowers or any of this other stuff.  Merging.  If they want to merge with the district, talk to us about doing it.  I also think and it is already proven that we were warned by our advocates in Boston who really care about our chances with getting involved with this group because of what was going on in the Southern Berkshire collaboration.  That is already getting pushed aside.  We have to re-energize that.  If we are not going to meeting directly with Lee and Southern Berkshire about a merger, maybe that group should become a merger focus organization.  That is a better vehicle for it.  So another proposal that I am going to have in September is that reconvene that group, not at staff level but school committee level to get merger discussion going on in South County.  I think every ounce of time, effort, money and political capital that goes into this project is taken away from stuff that can work and really help out kids and our job is to help our kids.  This is not funny stuff this is serious and it is jeopardizing our district.  I really feel that.  S. Bannon – I will only say that the members of the task force are the superintendents from all around.  It really is a shame because it was the first time that I sat with all of the superintendents.  I had met most of them.  It is too bad that the direction it is going in because I think we could have worked together on educational focus not political.  R. Dohoney – it is made up of educators and members of the business community and school committee members but there is no educational proposals that came out of this.  The one that I thought was going to come out of it was some kind of way to deal with the state funding issue or some way to collaboratively deal with our tuition issues.  That is not anywhere in there.  We just skip right to this big broad political shuffling and there are no government people in here.  Matt Curwood is the only one.  S. Bannon – Matt doesn’t show up much.  Usually there is a governor’s representative at the meeting and iBerkshires which is why they offered their services.  Who could orchestrate and effectuate a widespread reform of a governmental agency?  No one there could; so they do.  Part of the problem with education is that educators are good at educating and not so good over the broad educational things.  S. Bannon – we will put this on September’s agenda.  The date is September 14th.  R. Dohoney – be ready for the media onslaught between now and then.  It’s coming.  E. Mooney – just to confirm, Peter was not at the meeting?  S. Bannon – no Peter was not at the meeting; I was.  Bronly Boyd, Michael Wise were there not representing our district but who live within the district.  R. Dohoney – and were at our town meeting when Bronly voted against the proposal to strip the regionalization authority from the school committee and give it to some ad hoc committee.  P. Dillon – on the other side of it the task force would say that their work is simply advisory in nature and they have no authority to do anything except to lay out a possible plan for the school committees and select boards to consider.  R. Dohoney – so why the PR campaign?  S. Bannon – I will be a little nicer.  Unfortunately my disagreement is the way you would lay out a way to get this to pass and to be accepted.  I would say that in order to do that you have to get broad support early on, not after you are all done and made all the decisions.  That is from years of experience and failure.  Make sure you are at the September 14th meeting.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: S. Bannon – we really need to set a policy date. St. Peter – I would like to see the valedictorian issue addressed.  S. Bannon – you are absolutely right.  R. Dohoney – you need to start now on that if you are thinking you are going to have something in place.  J. St. Peter – I am not married to rushing into this.  P. Dillon – I talked to Marianne about this a little while ago.  If we had some guidance from the high school on it and then I want to look at some other approaches that other districts have taken.  There is a great article in Education Week recently about it.
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee: N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee: N/A
• Technology Sub Committee: N/A
• Finance Sub Committee: Meeting set for August 10th 5:30 at District Office
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee: N/A

Personnel Report:

• Amy Rex, our new high school principal will be at our next meeting and Kristie Farina is stepping into the role of Director of Learning and Teaching.
• Certified Appointment(s): Roger Burr is a new half-time technology person at Muddy Brook. He comes with a very strong technology background.  Edward “Jed” Stamas is the new physics teacher who has a real interesting background and we will have him come to a future meeting.  Physics is a really hard position to fill.  We are lucky to have him.  Jennifer Annand did a one year leave replacement position and she is stepping into a full time position as a 2nd grade teacher at Muddy Brook.
• Re-assignments(s):
• Non-Certified Appointment(s):
• Retirement(s): Nancy King, a long-time science teacher at the high school, decided to retire after the school year ended.  She wrote a really nice note explaining why she waited until after the school year ended because he whole life has been caught up in the high school and she felt it would have been too hard.  I just wanted to recognize Nancy for her years of dedicated service.
• Resignation(s): Tammy Lockenwitz-Payer was a paraprofessional with us for several years and Jen K. is going to graduate school.  I would like to thank both of them for their service.
• Summer 2017 & Extra-Curricular Appointment(s) for 2017-2018 (Grounds, Maintenance, SPED, Project Connection, Fellowship, Coaches, Dept Deans, etc.): See Report

Business Operation:

• Approve FY18 RAN Borrowing – this is our typical annual vote for revenue anticipation notes and it is primarily for cashflow purposes.

Motion to approve that the District Treasurer be hereby authorized under the provisions of General Laws Chapter 71, Section 16, Subparagraph G as amended by Chapter 134 of the acts of 1972 to borrow money from time to time in anticipation of revenue and to issue a note or notes effective July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018:   R. Dohoney                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

Education News:

 Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment:
• Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  J. St. Peter             Seconded:  K. Piasecki                  Accepted: Unanimous

Meeting Adjourned at 7:42pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder                                       ______________________________

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________

School Committee Secretary