Minutes – October 5, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – Library

October 5, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                J. St. Peter, D. Singer, A. Hutchinson, B. Fields, R. Dohoney, D. Weston,

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                            B. Doren, M. Berle, A. Rex, K. Burdsall, K. Farina

Absent:                                   A. Potter, K. Piasecki

List of Documents Distributed:

June 2017 Revolving Funds and Grants
October 5, 2017 Personnel Report
Email requesting all Executive Minutes for 2016-2017
Email requesting minutes of all meetings for 2016-2017 BHRS Committee’s Superintendent’s Advisory Evaluation Committee
Email requesting a response with ten (10) days
BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated September 14, 2017
Upcoming Meeting List

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:    — hr. 50 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 September 14, 2017

MOTION TO APPROVE MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 14, 2017:   R. Dohoney                Seconded:  B. Fields                  Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:

• June 30, 2017 – Revolving & Grant Funds (abbreviated report) – S. Harrison – I wanted to share with you our June 30 unaudited ending balances for our revolving accounts and grants. School lunch fund; that is the inventory.  Athletic Revolving Fund is $28,000.  The Employee FSA Fund, that is a trust fund and that is employee contributions to their FSA.  We take the contribution, spend it out, as you can see there is more deposited than used but there was some used over the summer.  The FFA Capital Trust Fund at $375,000 is earmarked for the work at the greenhouse.  You will see the $15,965 we received, we have money transferred from the student activity account at the high school that comes out of the plant sale in the spring.  The three rental accounts, small accounts, gifts and donations the bulk of that $23,000 is from the charity buzz from the donations that happened on behalf of the middle school.  Custodial overtime is a pass through account.  The charges there are for rental fees that include custodial overtime and then we change for it and we get that back.  The Collaborative Programming Fund includes the shared superintendent.  Thirty of that will be used this year.  That was part of the budget we approved.  The shared superintendent, the shared psychologist, summer program, virtual high school, we act as the fiscal agent for a number of those things.  The summer program we also host here.  Circuit breaker is reimbursement from the state for high cost students.  What you will see is the opening balance of $295,464 was spent last year.  We only keep that for one year so the revenue we get in one year, we spend the next year.  The $364,952 we will be spending in FY18.  Two things we typically spend out of that are the autism salaries for the two autism teachers at the high school and the balance we use for tuition.  Erate is reimbursement on our telecommunications.  The money from erate comes from a school and library tax that we all have on our telecommunication; telephone, cell phone, cable, internet services that is earmarked for school and libraries at the federal level.  We get that reimbursement rate based on a percentage that is based on our poverty level.  Dohoney – Does that end up in the general fund?  Where does that go?  S. Harrison – No, we deposit it there and we reallocate technology costs to it.  This was $30,000 of our internet fee cost that goes in so that is $30,000 that drops to E&D.  R. Dohoney – so we budget x amount for our interest expense and then rather than using the amount we budgeted for, we basically switch it in and that amount drops to E&D?  S. Harrison – this would automatically drop to E&D if we didn’t use it but that specifically is what is is there for so we show the expense.  R. Dohoney – as long as it gets there that fine.  S. Harrison – our Wellness Fund, actually our Wellness Coordinator is here, Christine Kelly, got us this wonderful Working on Wellness Grant at that is what the majority of that $11,000 is.  That will be for wellness programs for our employees.  Our TPA Services and Fees is for the FSA and TPA (third party administrator 403B) we do get charged for participate for both the FSA and our 403Bs.  However, what we have been doing and I hope for the next time, we take the money left in the FSA which by IRS regulations we cannot give back to employees, we take that amount and put it into this fund.  Basically, we are using that money from employees on behalf of the employees.  It is no cost to the district to absorb that cost.  Our Regional Transportation Fund is money in excess of what we budget.  Like the Circuit Breaker, we have to use it in the following year.  The $70,000 would be received in excess from FY16, we used it and again transferred transportation costs into this revolving fund and then that $70,000 will drop to E&D.  The Transportation Fund was established to help districts smooth out the changes in the reimbursement.  It can go from 40 to 75% in any year on the Chapter 71 reimbursement so this allows districts to budget and have some money in reserve if the percentage doesn’t come up to the budget amount.  I tend to be a little more conservative there because of what the state has done so we often have a healthy balance.  We will be using that 157 for this year.  Our choice came in lower than we projected because of fewer students but our tuition in higher so we had an offset there but we are still in a good position.  Ideally, what I would love, is that we build those two up so that we are using the balance in it for the next year that way we are never short.  As you can see we would have a ways to go to do that but if we could incrementally do it, we would be good.  Questions on the revolving funds?  A. Hutchinson – you didn’t mention the art program.  S. Harrison – I’m sorry!  Those are donations specifically earmarked for the high school art program.  Typically, there isn’t money coming in.  It is a balance that they use.  The grant funds – the four balances there are for grants that roll into the new year.  The Perkins has to be spent by and the SPED Enhancement grant have to be spent by August 31st.  The Title grants and the more than basic are two year grants.  Grants from the state, you will see the shared services grant the $75,000 we received and we spent a little over $5,200 so we have a balance.  That is basically a revolving grant.  We keep that until it’s expended.  P. Dillon – I think we are under an obligation to spend it by the end of this fiscal year and we have a number of things, professional work with the other districts, technology work, that next time we look at one of these most of that money will be gone.  S. Harrison – Prior grants are annual grants.  Most of those are spent.  Then you have the fiduciary fund.  The difference with a fiduciary fund is that those are funds that we hold and really the FSA could move down here, we hold on behalf of even though it is part of the school scholarship funds, we hold that on behalf of scholarships.  We couldn’t spend it on anything else.  Same on the activity funds.  Those are monies raised by and to be used on behalf of students.  The district cannot spend it in anyway except for that purpose.  Questions on this?  With great joy and trepidation, I can tell you that as of right now our unaudited E&D balance stands are $1,300,000.  P. Dillon – explain what that means.  It is a really big deal and we should be quite happy about it.  S. Harrison – it is approximately – we can have a maximum of 5% in our E&D balance total of next year’s budget.  The FY17 E&D we could have up to 5% of the total budget for FY18 and we are right now unaudited at 4.57%.  I have a couple of recommendations – one that I will make is to level fund the E&D for the operating budget and to start funding the stabilization fund.  I think this is the time to start doing that and to use some of E&D for that.  Both because we talk about in case of high cost needs but also if we are going to continue down the path with another stigma of interest at some point over the next year or two with MSBA and we are looking at potentially going into another feasibility study, we will have to pick up that cost for the A&E, the architectural and engineering, primilimary cost and feasibility study so we need to start putting money aside for that.

MOTION TO APPROVE REVOLVING & GRANT FUNDS REPORT:  R. Dohoney               Seconded:  J. St. Peter       Approved:  Unanimous

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s): See below
• Updates:
  • Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project – P. Dillon – Just a reminder that it includes Southern Berkshire, Berkshire Hills, Lee, Lenox, Richmond and Farmington River. We have been focusing our energy on three things.  A large part of it is in collaboration with the superintendent’s roundtable.  There is a big professional development day coming up on election day in particular Tim Lee the Lenox Superintendent supported a lot of this work and they issued a giant course catalog with 70 plus offerings, sort of like signing up for college classes.  We gave people a week’s notice and said be ready at 7am on Monday.  Within an hours, 600 people had signed up across the county and people starting emailing me, “I really wanted to do this but I got boxed out of it.” We think it is a really neat range of offerings and is a nice moment of collaboration.  A number of people from our district and other districts are presenting their work and sharing it with their peers.  It will be interesting for people to participate and it will also be interesting for people to lead some of those workshops.  I am really excited about that.  We contracted with a guy, Joshua Shaw, who is a graduate of Lee High School then moved out to the west coast and has had a whole career in technology to do a  technology report.  He is putting the finishing touches on that.  He met with all the tech directors and the superintendents.  He got a lot of good information from the business managers who were responsive; a couple weren’t, but I think he has enough to move ahead.  We will be getting that shortly.  It is around context for how we can share new technology better both internally and across districts.  One of the things we wanted to do was have an outside person look at all our work.  Are we on the right track?  Are there opportunities for us to work more effectively with our neighbors?  That should be interesting.  The last thing we articulated in that initial grant was that we wanted to invest some time in grant writing.  In the transition from Joshua leaving to being replaced with Kristie, we have a nice list of potential places we can submit grants to and Kristie and I are doing lots of other grant writing, but I am working with somebody on some of these specialized grants to get a bunch out on behalf of the six districts.  Soon we will get them written and in the mail.  Hopefully in weeks or months I will come back and say we have this one or that one.  That is exciting work.  There are lots of superintendent changes and we are looping them into that work.

Good News:

 Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School –  Mary Berle,  Principal:   The Paul Taylor Dance Committee with the support of the Mahaiwe Theatre came and worked with half our our third grand for 50 minutes today.  We do a lot of great field trips to the Mahaiwe and this is the first time they have come to us with somebody that is performing over the weekend.  It was a nice beginning on what we hope will be a great relationship.  We had a great assembly – Pinwheels for Peace – last week in celebration of International Peace Day.  It was the 2nd Annual Assembly and Jennifer Annand made that happen.  It was very wonderful.  Finally, Dr. Deb Buccino who has worked very hard on developing a collaborative care model for wraparound services between health care community and school, presented the model that we developed with her at the rural health network meeting last week.  We are really hoping that Adrienne Conklin who is the nurse care coordinator we worked directly with gets funding through Berkshire Health Systems and other creative way.  It was very exciting that she was presenting to this larger group and that the work is cutting edge and appreciated across the county.  Lastly, Spanish Club at Muddy Brook starts on Tuesday thanks to Carla Rodriguez who is a wonderful parent.  She is bilingual and will be running in this library every Tuesday morning from 8 – 8:30am for anybody who is interested a Spanish Club with a focus on Mexican culture, the Spanish language for Spanish and non-Spanish speaking students getting together around the Spanish language.  Campfire night is October 20th and conferences are October 26th and 27th.

1. Dohoney – let’s be clear; this is the first time in my tenure on the committee that both the Red Sox and the Patriots are playing, so…..

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Ben Doren, Principal:   We had a great Parent/Teacher night. You know it’s great when at the end and it’s time for me and Miles to speak and nobody shows up because they already got what they wanted.  The teachers did a great job.  The 6th grade went on their annual hike to Monument Mountain and now the 7th grade is starting a thing where they will go to Monument Mountain with a historical guide to learn all about the native american and other historical places.  8th grade is going to Stockbridge tomorrow to do historical tours as well as going off to the stone stage to share their poetry.  8th grade mentors had a training a few weeks ago and our mentor program is going to get started.  On our PD day we had our departments doing vertical alignment, 5-8, talking about performance assessments and rubrics which is really important.  The teams are looking at gaps of growth and opportunity for the kids so they are really starting to use the performance assessments as a way to understand how kids are growing.  That is very much aligned because of our PD planning teams with stipend money; teacher leaders coming together and fully collaborating planning professional development for teachers by teachers which is wonderful.  Project Connection is up and running which is fabulous.  We are bursting at capacity for the first time at the middle school.  We are doing great work with partners and district staff.  It is really part of the five-year vision, getting the elementary and really investing a lot of our resources and our staffing and a lot of our enrollment in the elementary many years ago and now those kids that started in kindergarten or third grade are now coming in.  It is a great vision for the school.  I am very impressed.  Talk About It are high school students coming down and creating an opportunity for our middle school students of color to talk about their experiences and what it is like to be a student of color in a school.  They noticed that many of the experiences they had in high school and wanting to talk about it happens are earlier grades.  Composting – Mary Stuckland our science teacher is really pushing the vision.  Gordie Soule at the high school and Jack Curletti at the elementary really starting to push this K – 12.  Steve Soule is really behind it.  He would really love to be composting all the time.  Kathy Sullivan from food service is on board.  We are really excited because we are going to choose a day soon and compost all the stuff that comes out of the food stream at lunch and if it works we will start doing it once a week or hopefully get up to capacity and start zero waste.  R. Dohoney – do you have a compost bid?  B. Doren – we have a bin at the triangle down by Project Sprout, it is all in place; we just need to train the kids and keep it sanitary.

Monument Mount Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal:  Good Evening.  A couple of quick things – we had our open house last Thursday evening which was also well attended and received some outstanding positive feedback from parents just really appreciating the opportunity to walk in the shoes of their child, a day-in-the-life experience.  They really appreciated the time and energy of the teachers there.  A couple of arts updates:  the Shakespeare Fall Festival has begun.  That is up and running and students are very enthusiastic about that.  They will be performing Hamlet this year.  We have five 9th grade classes and two 10th grade classes that are collective going to take a field trip to see Gaslight, which is part of the Berkshire Theatre Company.  The themes in that performance are around bullying and manipulation.  Then there will be follow-up both after the show for students to meet the actors and have dialogue but also there is going to be some cross curriculum connections that will be brought into the classroom as part of that performance.  The English department is very excited about that.  Last, we have two students who are going to participate in a county-wide experience.  It is call Rhyme and Rhythm and that will cullminate in a performance at the theater here in Great Barrington,  It is around music and poetry.  We also have three of our students who will perform at the next Du Bois Lecture Series that will be at Monument Mountain on October 24th which is also inclusive of music and poetry.  Lots of exciting things going on in the arts.  Last, People and the Environment course had their three-day trip this week.  They had beautiful weather; warm sunny days, cold full moon evenings and they came back pretty excited and extremely tired.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: Next meeting 10/19/2017 at 5pm in Stockbridge.   We will share and articulate and agenda for that work.  The MASC, the school committee group, is constantly reviewing and revising policies so we have some stuff from them.  We also the discussion that David Adler got going and has been an ongoing conversation around the high school about the valedictorian/salutatorian thing.  There will be a little check in on that.
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee: N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee: N/A
• Technology Sub Committee: N/A
• Finance Sub Committee: Dohoney –  We met today and got caught up.  Addressed the evaluation of the elementary school including enrollment trends.  I think it was one of the best finance committee meetings in a long time.  We really broke down all the elements of the elementary school; looked at enrollment numbers and enrollment trends.  There were some areas that were identified as potential opportunities and areas of concern.  There was a lot of discussion about the technology situation and how that may impact the incoming budget.  Special needs played a big role in the discussions.  I think I can speak for the whole committee that we are satisfied with the whole process thus far.  We will be doing middle school next and then the high school.  Our next meeting will  be on the 11th.  Things may get a little more complicated at the middle school and high school level because the organization is a little more complicated.  Sharon put together a lot of good information and I encourage committee members who want copies of it to reach out to Sharon.  P. Dillon – we are going to be putting together the information.  Some of you are binder people, some are electronic people but we will meet whatever needs you have.  We will do binder and online.  You can have it as a reference piece and every time there is a change we will add it into the binder, etc.  The hope is that we can be very proactive and give you tons of information so when we get to the challenging part of the process you will have context.  We took very careful minutes of the meeting, so we will include the minutes.
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee: D. Weston removed himself due to conflict of interest. Dohoney – everyone knows the vote that we took last week to send the letters to Lee and Mount Everett.  I will let Peter summarize where we are at.  P. Dillon – on behalf of the school committee, Steve Bannon and I sent a letter to the Lee School Committee and the Southern Berkshire School Committee.  The timing was such that the Southern Berkshire School Committee had a meeting after we had sent the letter and the voted unanimously which is quite exciting that they want to meet with us to discuss the possibility of merger.  My recommendation and I’ll let Rich talk about this more is, we should do it; they formed a subcommittee; we have an existing subcommittee and I would think at least our two subcommittees could have a conversation and talk about process.  A some point potentially bring in both full committees to move work forward.  R. Dohoney – I think the only decision we have to make today is…we weren’t specific as to how we wanted to go forward.  They formed a subcommittee specifically for this purpose so my thought was we do it at a subcommittee level; it is a public meeting, anybody can come.  Steve also wanted to go that direction.  If anybody has any objections to that, probably now is the time to speak up.  Understand that anybody can come to the meeting but it will be subcommittee as opposed to a full school committee meeting.  We will keep everybody in the loop as to when the meeting is.  B. Fields – you won’t be feeling outnumbered will you?  They have six on theirs and you have only three.  It’s me, Steve, Shaun and I think Anne.  I missed the last two meetings but I am not going to miss this one.

Personnel Report:  P. Dillon – I feel it is pretty self-explanatory.  R. Dohoney – I have a few questions.  I see volunteer coaches on the personnel report.  Is that a new thing of them being on the personnel report?  Is there a process to that?  P. Dillon – we have always done it and I think part of the reason we do it is it is a public document and acknowledged their formal roll.  When people become volunteers, they go through a process because they are spending time with kids, we do a formal CORI check plus the fingerprinting so putting them here it says to the school community that this person is safe and approved to be here which potentially is different from just somebody just showing up because they think they can help.  It is a formality.

• Long-Term Substitute Appointment(s):
• Non-Certified Appointment(s)
• Leave of Absence
• Re-Assignment(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)
• Volunteer(s)

Business Operation:

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment
• Written Communication
  • Information Requests Received – per Open Meeting Law – Dillon – we received three open meeting requests from Eileen Mooney.  One for copies of my self evaluations for the last four years.  One for all minutes of all meetings of the superintendent’s evaluation and advisory subcommittee and the last one for executive sessions held in negotiations.  On behalf of the district, I am responding affirmatively to the first two and the last one on the advice of counsel, I am not responding or my response is I am not sharing them because it has the potential to compromise our negotiating position going forward.  I thought Eileen was going to be here so I would have given them to her but now I am just going to have her pick them up or mail them.  It is a big stack.

For our next meeting, I alluded that we would talk about the district improvement plan which we sometimes do every year and sometimes we do for two or three years at a time.  If there are other things that folks are interested in talking about and/or things that bubble up from subcommittees, share that with Steve or me and we will put it on the agenda.  B. Fields – at some point before the new year, going to have a complete meeting devoted to the high school in regards to what Sharon alluded to before whether we want to go to the SLI route according to the discussion we had two and a half years ago in which we devoted it to the renovation issue?  I am not sure if we want it at the Meet and Confer this time.  R. Dohoney – I thought that was going to be at the Meet and Confer this time?  B. Fields – it does align itself with the district goal.  P. Dillon – I will check in with Steve.  I think there is the opportunity to do both or just one then we will structure something and come back to the group.  That is a conversation certainly worth having.  A couple of meeting ago, and this is a really nice thing and sometimes we get it just right, Rich referenced the three point plan that we did several years ago.  If you go back and look at that plan carefully, we can collectively check off a whole bunch of things that we would do.  I think we are in a very strong place to have that conversation.  R. Dohoney – I noticed that the school building study hasn’t published their 2018 calendar yet.  P. Dillon – typically the window for SOI’s is January to March or sometime like that.  We have time and the other thing with the SOI’s, the SOI’s is largely a statement of fact about the condition of the building; it is not a statement of what do you want to do with the building.  Rewriting and SOI is not a particularly complicated task.  You mention what you fixed or improved since the last one and you mention what is degraded or gotten terribly worse since the last one.  We can certainly bring the last SOI as a conversation point.  B. Fields – my interest is do we …. Is that a point of discussion.  Do we want to go that route?  D. Weston – let’s have Peter and Steve talk about if it should go onto the Meet and Confer agenda.  P. Dillon – the classic tension is all of our meetings are televised and a typical meeting maybe gets more attention than a Meet and Confer or we can structure it differently.

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  R. Dohoney             Seconded:  B.Fields                 Accepted: Unanimous

The next school committee meeting will be held on October 19, 2017 – Meet & Confer – District Office, Stockbridge

Meeting Adjourned at 7:45pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary