Minutes – June 1, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington    Stockbridge   West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING – Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library – June 1, 2017 – 6:30 p.m.

Present:

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

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                           M. Berle, K. Burdsall, D. Long

Absent:                                   K. Piasecki, S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

Unit C Contract for 2017-2020; 2018 Athletic Director Proposal 2018; Assistant Athletic Director Job Description; BTCF Grant Letter
Department Dean Proposal 2017; June 1, 2017 Personnel Report; May 4, 2017 BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting
Tech Overview 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  2 hrs. 5 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately after completion of the 6:30pm Executive Session.

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.

EXECUTIVE SESSION:    Litigation 

Motion to adjourn to Executive Session pursuant to M.G.L. c. 30A, Section 21 (a) (3) to discuss strategy with regard to litigation of a current case filed at the Bureau of Special Education Appeals, and pursuant to M.G.L. c. 30A, Section 21 (a)(7) to comply with the confidentiality requirements contained in general law, specifically, the IDEA, FERPA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, M.G.L. c. 71B, et seq and 603 CMR sect. 23.00.    Following Executive Session, the School Committee will reconvene in open session by:  A. Potter                    Seconded:  D. Weston                     Accepted:  Unanimous

MINUTES:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated May 4, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:   R. Dohoney                Seconded:  B. Fields                  Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s) – Today at the high school was the annual awarding of the scholarships.  It is always touching and remarkable with stories, memorials, etc.  It was really quite moving and hard not to tear up when you are there.  A number that I wanted to share was a number that Marianne shared with Steve and myself this afternoon.  The total value of the scholarships awarded today was $253,820.  That is quite remarkable.  It is everything from $25 prizes to several thousand dollar prizes.  The Rotary Club had a large part of it with approximately $60,000 in scholarships across Monument and Mt. Everett.  I would like to thank the community and the people who had the forethought to set those aside.  Another one that was a new one this year that stuck out to me was a scholarship in the name of Jack Spencer and it was the Acts of Random Kindness award.  That was awarded to Emma Wilber and with the award presented by Paul Gibbons, he gave her a copy of the New York Times because Jack used to walk around everywhere with the New York Times.  I thought that was a really touching tribute.  Potter – I thought the Pittsfield Kiwanis should get points for enthusiasm.  That was an enthusiastic presentation.
• Dillon – The other thing I wanted to share, because we haven’t met since the town meeting in Stockbridge, it has been all over the news, and we have talked about it individually, but I wanted to acknowledge the vote to amend in the Regional Agreement which passed in Great Barrington and West Stockbridge, but also passed overwhelmingly in Stockbridge. That is quite remarkable.  Thanks to the citizens of Stockbridge.  We will be talking about the potential impact to that and what comes from that later in the year and the summer.
• Today, both Ben and Marianne are not joining us. Ben is in Washington, D.C. with the 8th graders and Marianne is overseeing her final prom.  We will work on better scheduling in the future so the prom does not fall on School Committee nights.  Bannon – as I said before, I know Thursday night is a sacred night but if the School Committee met once on a Wednesday because it was the only time the prom could be help was on our night, we could have moved it.  E. Hutchinson – is it at Hancock Shaker Village?  P. Dillon – yes, it is.  It is really cool.  The after-prom is at the Cove and the rules of the after-prom is once you check in your cannot check out to ensure students’ safety.  So we expect a big group of student at the Cove until the sun comes up.
• GOOD NEWS ITEM(S) – Muddy Brook Elementary School (MBE) – Berle, Principal:
  • We have lots of good news at Muddy Brook. It has been awhile since we talked about it but we had a wonderful Mud Day on May 20th.  We had hundreds of kids and families come as well as community partners from all over the county supporting conservation projects.  A real highlight was the De Movellan family; Pedro De Movellan is a sculptor.  He and his family along with Lizzie Tomich’s 2nd Grade class worked to collect 16oz. Bottles, 12 oz. aluminum cans and coat hangers and constructed a very beautiful sculpture with the help of everyone participating in Mud Day.  It is now hanging in our front foyer.  When you come in, please look up.  It is very beautiful and it is made out of everyday material that are recycled.  There are also messages that the kids wrote on pieces of detergent bottles that are inside of the water bottles.  It is hard to describe but if you look at it, you won’t recognize any of those parts, you will just see something neat and beautiful that will make you think in new ways.  A great thing about where it is hanging is if you are on the third floor looking out, you also get a vision that is fun.  We are very lucky to have a world-class sculptor in our parent body who wanted to do that with us and we couldn’t be more grateful.  Also in making our space reflect our values and landscape, the Kindergarten has made a beautiful mural about the life cycle of trees with an artist from IS183.  Our wonderful custodial team and Buildings & Grounds team put that up in the nicest way in the Kindergarten neighborhood in that last few weeks.  Tomorrow at the Kindergarten concert, parents are going to be invited to come down for the unveiling of that and the resident artist will be there; Brielle from IS183.
  • Our EK, PK & K concert is tomorrow at 12:30pm and our 1st and 2nd Grade concert is tomorrow at 2pm. We are very excited to welcome people to that.  Kindergarten had a wonderful field trip to the Berkshire Museum this week.  We had a Principal’s coffee today with great support from Christine and Cathy Finkle.  We had about a dozen parents come and talk and share their thoughts.  There was really good conversation.
  • We have a lot of wonderful project happening with kids and classrooms inviting parents in. Last week we had 3rd grade parents come in and look at dioramas the 3rd graders made in connection with non-fiction books.
  • Every single classroom teacher with support from our learning specialists has just finished doing 30-minute conversations with every student about the books that they are reading. That is to look at reading fluency, comprehension and also reading level.  Nan Thompson, our assistant principal, who had a very big part in scheduling this and I met with reading specialists and every classroom teacher to go over classroom data and think through where students are doing well, what trends are in the building and classrooms and how we can support overall reading efforts.  We have been working on that for a few years and I think we are finally getting to a place where it is really constructive and people feel supported.  We are seeing good results with the kids.  Last year we were able to note that we had a building-wide question about fluency and about whether kids were reading with comprehension being good but rate was a little bit slow; so we did some specific interventions with that.  We saw a good uptick.  We are also looking at writing with reading being a topic.  The other thing that has come up is that we have some questions about phonics.   I will probably be talking with you during the next year about purchased more specific phonics instruction to complement the guided reading we are already doing.
  • We are doing lots of work on next year’s schedule. A thing that we have had fun with and this has come straight out of reimagination, is a big goal to calm down kids’ days.  Right now it is very difficult to schedule the services the kids have and sometimes the day feels disrupted.  What we have done, is we have every grade band with a special that meets at the same time everyday and we are going to coordinate all of the services so when you in a reading block you don’t have people coming in and out during the whole block.  That seems very obvious but it is a big project to coordinate and we are excited about doing it.
• Annual Vote – School Choice (intent to participate in School Choice for 2017-2018) Dillon – every year, per the Department of Education, you have to vote to approve doing school choice.  Within that you give me guidance around where to accept and where not to accept kids.  In the future, I would like to have that vote be in October for the next year but I was reminded that we need to turn in a form this month saying that we had the vote.  I would like to ask you to vote to continue to have school choice in the district.  I think people will likely ask me some questions and I can talk to you about that a little bit.  Our school choice is always a moving target.  We do a lottery which is consistent with state law.  After we do the lottery, we offer students seats based on where we have availability.  We have been accepting kids in all grades except 7th and 8th grade and that goes back to a mistake that Garth Story and I made in my first year here where he didn’t count Early-K right so those two grades got over-enrolled and they are very large classes.  Since then we have gotten it right.  To date we have accepted this year and they have reciprocated and said they were going to come, 45 new choice students across all the grades except 7th and 8th grade.  We have another 10 offers out and we are awaiting what they want to do.  In the most choice students situation, we would have 55 new students.  Once students accept, there are a variety things that happen and there is a difference between the offers we make; those that accept, those that actually start school on the first day and those that stay with us until October 1st when we officially count it.  In total, and this continues to be a moving target because the moment I have Sharon run a report, we get three more students, so Sharon and I were working on this yesterday and since yesterday, six more parents have said that their kids are coming.  In simplest terms in total, it looks like we are going to have 19 more choice students this coming year than this past year.  There are some grades, like last year’s 12th grade, the graduating seniors, there are 33.  Next year’s seniors will be less but across all the grades it looks like we will have 19 more students than we had last year.  We still have room in many grades and sometimes people think because the lottery has passed and the deadline has passed, we are not accepting kids.  If parents, or if you have friends, and they want to reach out to us, there is a school choice form on our website or they can call me or Doreen and fill it out.  We will continue to accept choice students on a rolling basis.  R. Dohoney – with the plus 19, I know that is a rough estimate right now, is that plus or minus what we budgeted for?  P. Dillon – it is a little more than what we budgeted for but we like to be very conservative about it.  R. Dohoney – we had a long conversation about that at Finance Committee.  We had budgeted less this year than the year before, correct?  S. Harrison – right.  We budgeted less this year and we our revenue is going to be below that.  R. Dohoney – so the number we are budgeting right now, if all of these plus 19 for next year, we are going to be able what we budgeted for?  S. Harrison – yes.  R. Dohoney – that’s good.  P. Dillon – who knows, maybe tomorrow I will get 10 phone calls and everybody will have twins and there will be 10 more spots.

Motion to move that the Berkshire Hills Regional School District participate in school choice for the 2017-2018 school year.  R. Dohoney               Seconded:  B. Fields       Abstention:  D. Weston          Approved:  Unanimous

1. Dohoney – as we sit here on June 1st, we can still accept kids at all levels except 7th and 8th grade for next year. P. Dillon – correct.  R. Dohoney – all of those grades would be accepting them without any additional overhead or staff?  P. Dillon – that is a given.  I would only accept kids in a situation where we were not adding staff.  When accepting kids forced us to create another section, I wouldn’t do it unless we had the giant waitlist of kids and it made sense.  That doesn’t even happen.   That is like an extreme example.  If we want to have a class size in a particular grade of 16 and there are 15 kids in a class, I would accept three kids and I wouldn’t accept the fourth kids unless one of the original 15 moved and created space.  R. Dohoney – I know we appropriated money for it a month or so ago; should we be doing something to recruit those?  I know there was sentiment….at least publicize that there are spots available.  S. Bannon – we authorized money to be spent.  I don’t know that we should settle for plus 19 which is positive so why not see if we can recruit some more?  P. Dillon – if the committee sees fit and this is what we talked about previously, we can run some ads in the local papers and maybe somebody could write a well-placed letter to the editor.  R. Dohoney – I should know this but is there a prominent place on our website where people are looking to get information about it?  P. Dillon – I think we can make it more prominent.  S. Bannon – just so I understand this, the lottery…we didn’t turn anybody away unless they applied for 7th or 8th grade, correct?  P. Dillon – correct.  It is important to do the lottery because it complies with state law and I want to be fair and open.  R. Dohoney – you never know if you are going to have to cut people off so if you are you want to make sure that it is fair.  S. Bannon – I wasn’t questioning the authenticity.  I just wanted to make sure I understood.  P. Dillon – the applications come into the district office, we do the lottery at the district office, then Doreen sends the principals lists of kids in order that they can be accepted in; siblings by state law have preference over non-siblings.  So if you already have a kid in the district, then your second kids is an advantage.  After that everybody else.  R. Dohoney – can you actually do the application online?  P. Dillon – the application now is a paper application.  We could turn it into a writable PDF or we could do it in SurveyMonkey.

• Presentation: Chapter One – The Word Project  – We have two visiting friends/partners/guests, Lucy Prashker and Amy Taylor.  They are here from Chapter One which is the South County extension or project of the Berkshire United Way.  They have been doing a lot of great work around early literacy and collaborating with Mary Berle and also with kids and parents who are going to land in Muddy Brook.  They are going to do a brief presentation and respond to questions.
  • Prashker – Thank you Mr. Chairman for giving us some time to talk with you today about Chapter One. Chapter One is an initiative launched under the Berkshire United Way.  We launched it a little over a year ago.  I live in Alford and I have a daughter who graduated from Monument in 2015 who is finishing up her second year at Carlton College so thank you all for doing a fantastic job with Alice, who was a choice student in 5th grade.  Chapter One coalition includes community members from all sectors who are committed to closing the achievement gap for kids in South County by focusing resources on early-childhood literacy, early-childhood development.  We are so pleased that your superintendent, Peter Dillon, has been part of this effort from the very start.  He even participated in our branding effort.  Thank you Peter and thank you very much to Mary Berle, your elementary school principal, who has been very involved in this effort from the start as well and continues to be involved.  Thank you to the district for already giving us as much support as you have.  What do we mean when we talk at Chapter One about early-childhood literacy?  First, when we say early, we really mean early.  We are focused on age 0-5.  That is when the brains of our children are developing most rapidly.  That is when they are learning language.  That is when word and achievement gaps begin, so that is where we need to focus our collective resources.  Rich exposure to words early in life, whether through reading, story telling, singing, rhyming or just sustained or interactive conversation with an adult is critical to child development.  Without that, children arrive at kindergarten already behind and it is very tough to catch-up as your teachers at Muddy Brook are well aware.  Frank Bruni, a columnist for The New York Times put it this way:  the list of what a child needs in order to flourish is short, but non-negotiable: food, shelter, play, love, something else too and it’s weeded out in even less equal measure: words.  A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in; a child needs to be read to and a child needs to read.  Many kids in living in poverty are not getting enough words early in life.  Here is just a sampling of some chilling statistics:
    • By the age of 3, the vocabulary of a child from a low-income family is on average half that of a child from a high-income family.
    • By the age of 4, children from low-income families have heard on average 30 million fewer words that children from high-income families.

I think we would all agree, that is not the way it should be.  That is not just; that is not the promise of equal opportunity.  Here is the good news and it comes from a Nobel Prize winning economist out of the University of Chicago, James Heckman.  $8,000 invested in the early education of a young child produces nearly $800,000 of benefit during the next 65 years of that child’s life.  That is coming out of the University of Chicago; a conservative think tank.  That is a staggering return on investment.  That doesn’t even include the profound non-quantifiable benefits of a more literate community including lower crime rates, improved health, better informed citizenry and greater happiness.  Is this early-achievement gap really a problem here in South County?  I was skeptical when I was first solicited to join this initiative by Berkshire United Way because Berkshire County especially South County is such a wonderful place and we all look so well-tended for.  Unfortunately the answer is yes.  Many of our best school districts, yours among them, are showing reading proficiency of only about 50-60% by third grade and the vast majority estimated at 74% of children who are not reading proficiently by third grade are going to struggle in middle school, high school and beyond.  This is happening not because our schools are failing us once these kids get to kindergarten, it is happening because for many of these kids, kindergarten is already too late.  The word gap, the achievement to gap, is already too wide.  We have got to do better earlier and again the earlier the intervention, the greater the return on investment.  What does early-childhood literacy intervention from ages 0-5 actually mean?  It doesn’t mean pushing kids to recite the alphabet by age 3 or read by age 4; it doesn’t mean encouraging kids to master technology skills or play on our ipads or smartphones; it doesn’t mean teaching kids to sit quietly while adults talk.  What it does mean is encouraging kids to play and experiment with words, to interact with adults in conversation and storytelling, to sing, to rhyme, to play.  All of this is critical not just to language development but also brain development to actually help make our kids brains bigger; actually making our kids smarter.  I would like to turn the podium over to Amy Taylor who is our South County Berkshire United Way liaison to talk about the Word Project which is an initiative that Chapter One is about to launch as one of the strategies that we have for closing this achievement gap in our 0-5 age group and then I would like to briefly conclude after Amy speaks with our wishlist for the district.

Amy Taylor – I am the South County Liaison for United Way.  This coalition is cross sector of stakeholders working at this.  We are so grateful for your presence in your work, Mary and Kate as well, Christine as well and all of you who have been watching this work.  We are working on closing the achievement gap.  The people in the coalition are pediatricians, nurses, social workers, librarians, educators, business members, members of the faith-based community as well.  We have been so impressed with the experience and the creativity at that table.  At our very first meeting we were graced with Rebecca Honig who some of you may know, who is an expert in children’s media writing.  She said in the very first meeting, as children we learn words in context.  Language is learned in context.  What that really means is that the bucket of words that we learn when we go to the doctor’s office is really different from the bucket of words that we learn when we go fishing; which is very different from the bucket of words that we would learn at a museum or in a hardware store.  With that we all rolled up our sleeves and put together a star-studded cast:  The Berkshire Museum, Berkshire County Head Start, Montessori School, and a local children’s book author and illustrator and we created what we are calling The Word Project.  What we know is that this 30 million words that some four-year-olds have while others don’t comes from plenty of connection and play and conversation with people around them.  The Word Project will really enlist the whole community to intentionally interact with young children that builds language.  The first piece that we will be working on is training volunteers or ambassadors to Chapter One who will be wearing an image like this (a sticker) on our shirts around town and it says that you are a word coach.  Gradually over time, we know that young children will see these two characters, this little dog and cat, and will know that it is a place to connect, play and talk.  In order to really get this into our collective thought process, particularly children’s, we will be placing these graffiti stickers all over town.  For example, we will place some at the gas station in front of the pumps so when a child is waiting for her parents to pump the gas, she will look up and see these characters which will keep her engaged in these conversations and ideas.  Then we are going to bring the project to different contexts around the Town of Great Barrington (eventually we will roll out to other towns across the county), and each month we will have a new bucket of words.  Children will walk into a specific place where they will receive a game card to learn all about those words.  So the first word of the month is going to be “tools”.  The idea here is that there are many words and one word will lead to many words, like a web.  Where better to learn about tools than Carr Hardware on Main Street.  Children will come in.  This poster will be at the front desk.  They will be able to pick up a game card, which is both in English and Spanish, and it will prompt children to basically go on a scavenger hunt around the store where they will connect, play and talk about tools.  Once they have done that, they can come back to an employee on the floor which will have been quickly trained about basically switching their narrative from “hey buddy, how ya doing?”, to “tell me what tools you found today.”  We know that it will increase their vocabulary in the process.  When they have done that, they will be able to receive these stickers which each one is relevant to the category of words.  The next month, the game will move to another context.  The back side is another set of activities that children and their caregivers can take with them and play on their way home or at home.  They all follow through on this thought process.  The Triplex has been very gracious in offering us a big launch party there in August and we will be moving on to Ward’s Nursery, into the food pantries, the Co-op to learn all about produce.  It will move around the community with the goal of spreading through Central County within the year.  Over time, when we really have this solidified, we will be working to…actually, Mary had the incredible idea or working with the home visitors professionals that do the Parent/Child program, that they could bring it with them as well.  We will also use it as professional development for early-childhood education programs in the community.  We will also use the work to engage parents of young children in using the parent cafe model which actually builds protective factors for these families.  We will be able to really highlight early-childhood education at community events with this and of course there are additional components.  You will see activity pages for laundromats, restaurants, etc.  We invite you to become word coaches to wear these stickers and really encourage all of this work in the places where you find it happening.  Your leadership will be instrumental there.  L. Prashker – we have buy-in from all six school districts in South County which is great.  What is it that we are actually asking the districts to do?  First, we asking the districts to consider adopting a consistent kindergarten screening tool that will help us assess the size and extent of the problem because the more precisely we can identify that the better we can be at developing strategies to solve the problem.  Screenings will help us to measure if we are being successful; if we are improving.  The screening has to happen upon entry to kindergarten and pre-k.  Mary has some information on that.  For the last three years, we have done a consistent screening, a Brigance Screening.  I have been in contact with the other South County schools about screenings in the schools.  This is is one component of multiple projects that are really wonderful.  Taconic Foundation (inaudible; not at microphone)….The other piece that we are working on together is collective care which is with the physicians.  With those things plus with this coming, we have had three years, 33% of our screenings were not ready for kindergarten, last year was 40% of our kids.  So far we have screening 54 and we only had 5 of them at risk so the percentage has gone way down.  It is remarkable.  It think the early lit project and we have done a lot of work to identify people who might come in at risk, I feel like this is such promising work and we are so grateful for your vision and really enjoy collaborating with you in getting resources and support to places that make sense.  This is a very good trend that we hope will continue but it is too early to tell if it is a blip or if it the real thing.  Our sense is that our families are coming in knowing more about the resources that are out there.  L. Prashker – I am a lawyer in real life.  I just play early-childhood educator on TV.  What really got me interested in this initiative is I feel that really have such rich resources in South County and we have a relative small population of kids 0-5.  We should be able to fix this problem.  We have the resources in South County to fix this problem if we make is our shared priority and that is what inspires and motivates me.  This School Committee knows better than anyone else that when our children thrive, our community thrives.  We have to make this our shared priority.  We are asking the school district to continue to participate with the other districts in getting this kindergarten readiness screening tool and data out to us so we can look at it and help develop strategies to fix the problem.  We are asking all districts to consider including in their district or elementary school improvements plans a statement of support in collaboration with the South County Early-Childhood Literacy Development Effort, continue our partnership with the parent/child home program which has shown this remarkable success and finally let us know what you think we can do to better support you and your incoming class of pre-k and kindergarteners.  Chapter One, our towns, our kids, our future; let’s make it happen.  Thank you.  P. Dillon – I think this is exciting work and holds real promise.  This may be the new vocabulary version of Pokemon Go.  Kids will be tripping over each other, running into the hardware store to talk about what tools they like to use.  I really look forward to it.

• Black Rock Foundations Fund – Collaborative Care Muddy Brook Project – P. Dillon – in your packet there is a notification of a grant from the Black Rock Foundation. This is supportive work that Mary has been doing.  It is a pilot program around working with healthcare providers.  It is really neat and exciting and she will do a formal report on it going forward.  Every time somebody makes a donation I have to ask you for your permission to accept the donation.  The donation is in the amount of $5,000 from the Black Rock Foundation which is Robin and Elizabeth McGraw.  I am very appreciative of their support of it and I would like someone to make a motion to accept the gift.

Motion to accept the $5,000 gift from Black Rock Foundation:  A. Potter               Seconded:  B. Fields    Accepted:  Unanimous.

• Proposed Revisions and Approval – BHEA Unit C Contract – P. Dillon – I don’t often make mistakes but I think there was a mistake at the last meeting.  I had you vote on a version of the contract that didn’t include language that we agreed to at the table.  To correct that, I would like to bring it back to you and have your vote on the contract again.  It is the Unit C contract and the new language is on page 4 and page 5.  The section numbers changed but it should be pretty straight forward.  I can explain it further if anyone wants me to.

Motion to accept the Unit C Contract with changes:  R. Dohoney          B. Fields         Accepted:  Unanimous

• Proposed Pilot Program – Monument Mountain – Exhibit B: Dillon – I am doing this for Marianne.  In your packet are two changes connected to exhibit B stipended positions.  The first one is in the context of the athletic director.  The change we are recommending there, you will see it is cost neutral, the big change that I need your approval on is, this is a pilot program and I have talked to the teachers’ union about it, it is hard in our current structure for the Athletic Director and/or Assistant Athletic Director to be at every event.  We are recommending a $50 per event fee for site supervision so we can train a group of folks to be onsite for times when neither the Athletic Director nor the Assistant Athletic Director could be present.  That could happen in a couple of contexts.  There could be multiple events happening simultaneously and it would be impossible for them to be there.  This past year, we had an Assistant Athletic Director who was also the swim coach.  Obviously during swim season, she couldn’t fulfil those duties.  If somebody gets sick, this gives us additional coverage.  The request is to do this per event coverage.  Hopefully it will go well and since we did a one-year contract extension with the teachers, this is something that could potentially be something that would happen during the context of negotiations.  We would have maybe six months of practice at that point.  R. Dohoney – why is the Athletic Director’s position part of the teachers’ contract?  S. Bannon – there are a lot of things in Exhibit B that don’t pertain …. R. Dohoney – I question whether it is part of any of the agreements.  S. Bannon – there are a number of things in Unit A that could be pulled out but that is where it lies right now.

Motion to approve a one-year pilot program for the Athletic Department:  B. Fields       Seconded:  D. Weston     Accepted:  Unanimous

• Job Description Revision – Assistant Athletics Director –
• Department Dean – Out of the high school self-study, out of work around, shared leadership, the department chairs the project leaders and trying to move that work forward. What Marianne is proposing is a slightly different model called Department Deans which would get back to some of what we lost in the transition from Department Chairs to Project Leaders but still support the work in meaningful ways.  Importantly, these folks would still not be involved in evaluation as had folks multiple contracts ago.  The dollar recommendations are here.  She is also proposing this as a one-year pilot.  I think the thinking behind it is thoughtful and the presentation is thoughtful so it has my support.  Dohoney – is this something that has come out of the reimagination process?  P. Dillon – yes.  R. Dohoney – I thought we were going to go through a whole evaluation process….I was for putting in reforms as soon as they were ready to go.  We were never briefed on this; that we were going to have pilot programs in the next year born out the reimagination.  I fear the piecemeal approach is not a good thing.  P. Dillon – I think these two areas are tweaks to the schedules that are happenings but whether we label it reimagination or not, every year as a learning organization, we make changes.  This falls more under the reimagination work, but its roots are in 9C cuts in 2009 when I got here.  We made a set of decisions then that were extreme and they saved us a bunch of money and let us reorder people.  This came out of the self-study and also out of reimagination.  I don’t anticipate any more stand alone proposals after this.  R. Dohoney – if they are appropriate that’s fine.  My concern is that I don’t what the reimagination to be a haphazard thing.  P. Dillon – it is a point well taken and I think it is quite intentional.  This year a number of things could happen.  The educational team leader for Special Ed came out of that.  Some tweaks to the schedule and just the other day we sealed the deal with sharing the middle school chorus teacher with the elementary school in a way that lets the elementary school change its schedule but it is also good for the middle school.  There are a handful of other things that are directly connected to reimagination.  The big one, like the potential change in start time, that is a thing to study all next year and propose that in the context of the budget process.  The changes in how kids are grouped in leveling, I think that we will be talking about that through the summer and the fall and it will come up during the budget process.  D. Weston – this is more of a general stipend questions/comment; we have a lot of stipends.  What is the evaluation process for people who are stipended?  P. Dillon – that is a growth area and it is good that you are putting your finger on that.  All of the coaches are evaluated.  I think we can work with our Athletic Director and Principal to do an even better job of that.  The folks that get stipends for mentoring, they are carefully evaluated.  I think in some of the other areas, we have work to do.  I don’t think it has be to super complex or very complicated or parallel.  D. Weston – my gut feeling is that currently there is no evaluation for stipended positions.  P. Dillon – saying there is none is an overstatement.  It is not as consistent as it should be.  I think we can do more work.  B. Fields – Your problem with that is that your evaluation system for a coach would be different than…for example when I was teaching, I was a WISE coordinator and I was evaluated on the WISE program but it would be unfair for me to have the same evaluation system as a baseball coach would have.  S. Bannon – many years ago, we were not evaluating coaches but we came up with a checklist that was brought to us.  It was a simple evaluation that was not as in depth as a teacher would have but at least you got the flavor of how the person was doing.  D. Weston – I am not worried about coaches who received stipends being evaluated.  They have a really tough parent audience.  I think they are high evaluated.  There are a lot of stipends, you are a team leader for this, but where is the proof of the product; were you an effective team leader, all of these things should have a process.  P. Dillon – we have a simple evaluation and we will revisit that.  The other thing that I think is important is all of the stipended positions are year-to-year appointments so while in all cases we should have a quick evaluation checklist with a little bit of narrative; if somebody demonstrates that they are not successful in it, one of the things we can do is replace them.  It would better if we did that in the context of a more uniform evaluation.  S. Bannon – I have expressed this before, I would love to look at all the stipends and see if there are some that we could combine and others that we can do away with, etc.  I think it is a long term goal.  I think we might have gone overboard with stipends.  We have to evaluate it.

Motion to approve a one-year pilot for Department Dean:  A. Potter        Seconded: R. Dohoney        Accepted:  Unanimous

• Technology Overview – P. Dillon: David Long will give us an update.  He checked in with both Andy and I before this.  There is a nice overview that was in the packet and he will do a little presentation.  Long – (The recording did not capture all of the presentation) Changing the culture takes time and a clear vision and shared understanding.  Technology is difficult because it encompases everything.  We had to start understanding what it is we were talking about and what was needed.  The first year was basically trying to figure that out.  In talking to people and seeing what was there and by the end of the day the most important thing we did last year was look at all of the different constituents.  There are so many.  So it was difficult to figure out what that culture could be like.  We saved a lot of money and most of that was by getting rid of underused or underutilized licenses, almost complete elimination of …..; we also did things like focus on improving the quality and speed.  (See written report)   D. Long – what my sense is from talking to all of these folks is universal acceptance that discipline is good; technology is critical and the vocational program needs to go in that direction.  I think a lot of conversation in the reimagination process can back that up at least the bits that I have gotten.  You have to remember PowerSchool couldn’t even give you …. Depending on where you go you see people that are focused on who’s responsibility is that.  We have had some interesting things going on in the 6th grade.  There are a lot of teachers that are trying things on their own and sometimes with great effect.  I think next year really needs desperately to be a year where this becomes more public and more present and more discussed.  These past two years have really been about fixing stuff and keeping things running the best way you can.  D. Weston – next year we have to go to MCAS 2.0 online.  Will we be ready to do that?  D. Long – no problem.  We did the 8th grade here this year and only had tiny things happen.  Considering the guidance, it was overall good.  D. Weston – do we have enough machines in the elementary available?   D. Long – we are working on that.  Josh and Mary worked on critical steps for the first bit and we are going to have to pay attention on the refresh.  There is definitely capacity in the district and we are also trying to not just get hardware for the tests.  I think what they did was smart.  P. Dillon – we wanted to be careful about not, particularly in the middle and high school where people are using technology regularly as part of the curriculum, we didn’t want to capitalize all of those devices out for big blocks of testing and then leave the others in a hole.  I think we have a coherent plan to balance those two.  D. Weston – prior to your arrival I have been pushing for offsite backup and I still think we still need that.  D. Long – that was one of Joshua Shaw’s things.  I said I don’t know how I can do off site right now.  None of the districts are properly backing up their files in the way that you are talking about.  B. Fields – in regards to IT, I remember when I was first on this committee, Rich Bradway said we could share with other districts much better than we do.  So in regards to that, how are we doing?  Where do we stand in regards to other districts and where do you see shared services in regards to technology all being on one platform.  P. Dillon – one thing, you mentioned Joshua Shaw.  A year ago we got money around the largest community compact ever.  In part one of the things we were funding was shared services in South County to the six school districts in particularly around technology.  We brought in an outside person who went to the Lee schools and did an audit and a review there.  He has done a similar thing in the other South County districts including ours.  He’s going to present that internally to our superintendents and tech people in the next couple of weeks and the then suggest some corrections and tweaks then we will present that more broadly.  That is an inventory of what everybody is doing and there are points for collaboration.  It is an outside external objective view.  So there are not issues around turf and who gets to be the boss of me.  That is just some broader context.  D. Long – there are some huge economic benefits from the local districts working together.
• Updates:
• Vacancies & Hiring – P. Dillon – It is hiring season and we are getting great people in the district. If you look at the personnel report, you will also see that we are getting very cost effective.  We hired three special ed teachers and their salary ranges are great.  Each person that comes in is more exciting than the next.  I feel we are really developing this great reputation as a progressive forward looking place that works well in teams.  People are coming to us from all over.
• Regional Agreement and Town Meetings – Done
• Re-imagination – Postpone
• Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project (SBSSP) –

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee – None
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee – J. St. Peter – we met May 18th.  The subject was helping Steve Soule get ready for his presentation to the Finance Committee.  We look at a 3-5 year plan from a buildings and grounds perspective.  The capital asset plan update, custodial usage in the schools and looking ahead to FY19 needs as well.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee – Meeting schedule on the 14th in Richmond.
• Technology Sub Committee – None
• Finance Sub Committee – R. Dohoney – we met last Tuesday and basically reviewed the excellent work project of buildings and grounds committee. It was on track.   The next meeting on the 19th at 5:30pm.
• Regional Agreement Amendment Sub Committee – None
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee – None

Personnel Report:

• Certified Appointment(s)
• Non-Certified Appointment(s)
• Transfer(s)
• Retirement(s)
• Resignation(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

Public Comment:

Written Communication

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  R. Dohoney             Seconded:  D. Weston                   Accepted: Unanimous

The next school committee meeting will be held on June 15, 2017 – Meet & Confer – District Office – Stockbridge

Meeting Adjourned at 9:05pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary