[Speaker 2] (0:22 - 0:42)
All right, and we're on. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the regular session of the Swanson School Committee.

Today is Thursday, October 13th. It's a couple of minutes past seven o'clock, and if you are able, I will start the meeting. First of all, we call to order, and if we could just stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

[Speaker 8] (0:47 - 0:58)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 2] (1:01 - 1:20)
Again, welcome, everybody. School Committee is in front of you on the dais, as well as our student representatives, and Superintendent of Schools Pam Angelakis is off-site this evening and joining us via technology. Good evening, Ms. Angelakis.

[Speaker 5] (1:21 - 1:22)
Good evening, thank you.

[Speaker 2] (1:22 - 1:49)
You're welcome. So, before we get started, if anyone in the room has any public comment, there's a yellow sheet of paper to my right, your left. Feel free to sign up if you'd like to speak this evening.

With that, let's start with committee announcements. All the way to my right, would you like to start? Anything you'd like to add?

[Speaker 11] (1:49 - 1:50)
No, I don't have anything.

[Speaker 14] (1:51 - 2:02)
All right. Well, in our LCs, we're doing a school-wide kickball competition. All right.

In the LCs, and it's really fun for the high school.

[Speaker 11] (2:02 - 2:14)
Oh, we do actually have something very, very good. We have a strikeout inter-game next week in October. Okay.

So, come and support all proceeds that address the competition.

[Speaker 16] (2:15 - 2:16)
All right, cool.

[Speaker 2] (2:16 - 2:19)
Fantastic. Who is participating in this event?

[Speaker 11] (2:21 - 2:24)
We are. The rest of the program.

[Speaker 8] (2:25 - 2:27)
Oh, that's great. So, it's the team, or is it any student?

[Speaker 11] (2:27 - 2:33)
It's a program thing. So, it should be varsity, JV, and freshmen, but I got a JV brown.

[Speaker 6] (2:33 - 2:34)
Who are you playing that day?

[Speaker 11] (2:38 - 2:40)
It's either summer or summer.

[Speaker 2] (2:41 - 2:50)
That's awesome. All right, that's great. It's so much fun.

Thank you, Joe. All right. Ms. O'Connor, enlighten us with what you have to tell us.

[Speaker 4] (2:50 - 2:51)
I got nothing.

[Speaker 2] (2:53 - 2:54)
Suzanne.

[Speaker 6] (2:55 - 2:58)
Myself. I don't have anything either.

[Speaker 8] (2:58 - 2:59)
Nope. Last one.

[Speaker 2] (3:00 - 3:07)
I don't have anything either. So, we will jump right into the superintendent's report. Superintendent, the ball is yours.

[Speaker 5] (3:07 - 3:20)
Thank you so much. Thank you. With the permission of the chair, I would like to table the Academic Excellence Award to the next meeting on October 27th, if that's okay with you.

[Speaker 2] (3:20 - 3:20)
Perfectly fine.

[Speaker 5] (3:21 - 5:43)
Great. We'll move on to the next item. And I apologize for not being there in person, and we will certainly be getting gifts to the people that we are recognizing tonight.

And tonight, we'd like to recognize this year's Educator of the Year, nominated by her peers. And it goes to, this is Susan Comberato, a little history of Sue Comberato. Sue was hired in August of 1996 as a business teacher and instructional technologist for the high school.

Her first three years were spent helping teachers implement more technology into their curriculum and building a network of computers at the high school. She then moved to a full-time teaching position a few years later. Over the past 27 years, she has taught many different courses, including web design, multimedia, word processing, computer applications, computer repair, business math, accounting, business law, social media marketing, and her true passion, financial literacy.

Since the district has adopted financial literacy as a graduation requirement, Sue has had the pleasure of teaching over 400 Swanscot students how to manage their money and set themselves up for a successful financial future. From what I understand, Swanscot High School is the only public high school in the Commonwealth to require financial literacy of all graduates. She has earned 13, now finishing 14 certifications in various areas of finance and completed over 250 hours of professional development in related areas.

In addition to teaching, she has served as the advisor to the National Honor Society for 13 years and the advisor to the yearbook for 24 years and is currently serving as co-advisor to the newly formed National Business Honor Society. No one more deserving than Ms. Sue Camperotto for the Educator of the Year, the 2022-2023. Congratulations, Sue.

Hey, awesome. I'm not sure if Susan would like to say anything. Is that a no?

[Speaker 2] (5:44 - 5:44)
No, she's coming.

[Speaker 5] (5:45 - 5:46)
Okay, good, good, good.

[Speaker 10] (5:50 - 6:31)
Woohoo. I'm not very good at talking about myself, but I do have a couple students here that are also students of mine right now. So I'm happy that they're here to see this and I know Mr. Cohut is online as well, so I thank him for taking time out of his schedule. I'm very proud of a lot of the things that I've accomplished, but I'm most proud of the relationships that I've formed with students and my peers. And I love when my students come back and tell me what they're doing. I love to hear from Russell Pastor.

I love to hear from the Wrights. I love to hear from the Marshals. So thank you very much, and I thank my peers for the honor for this award.

Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (6:32 - 6:32)
Congratulations.

[Speaker 6] (6:33 - 6:37)
Wait, wait, should we take a picture? Can we take a picture of Pam and Sue on the computer?

[Speaker 5] (6:38 - 6:45)
No. We couldn't do it. No, we'll do that in person.

All right. We'll do it in person. We'll do it in person when I give her her present.

[Speaker 4] (6:45 - 6:45)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (6:45 - 6:46)
Go, Annie.

[Speaker 4] (6:46 - 6:47)
Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (6:47 - 6:47)
Hold on, Pam.

[Speaker 4] (6:48 - 6:50)
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you.

[Speaker 2] (6:50 - 6:51)
No, go.

[Speaker 4] (6:51 - 7:48)
I just wanted to say, Ms. Comparado, how much I appreciate having come to work with you in the last few years, that you represent the teachers so well in your role in the negotiation and bargaining committee, and I think particularly with the new format that we engaged in this year really gave the school committee an opportunity to see you in a very different light, and the way that you not only advocate for your peers, but also really taught all of us a lot about what you all do all day, every day, was really important to our role here, the school committee, so I just want to say, it's my favorite part of the year is this convocation, and I love seeing who the teacher of the year is, the educator of the year is, and I was thrilled to hear that it was you this year, so congratulations.

[Speaker 2] (7:49 - 8:58)
If I could just add to, and you mentioned one of my kids, Russell, and when Russell first took your accounting class, he was just unsure what his just being was going to be, and today Russell is a senior in college getting ready to hopefully go to graduate school next year, and his goal of being a forensic accountant, he's on his third internship, the first, which was started here at the Beverly YMCA, which you helped set up for him, and that, first of all, thank you for that, but please never lose sight of how important that actually is, is that here's someone who really didn't know what he wanted to do, what school was all about, until he walked into your classroom, and that's a testament really only to you, and he's starting, he does a lot of great things in college, and again, very excited to go to graduate school next year, and so thank you from all of us, but from my family especially, thank you very much.

[Speaker 5] (9:05 - 10:14)
Moving on to the next agenda item, each year as part of the convocation we started many years ago, also recognizing those educators who achieved perfect school status within the district, it is three years, and three years of learning, three years of attainment of goals, and reaching professional status is not something we take lightly, so we really recognize them at the convocation in front of their peers, I'd like to read to you those who attained professional status this year, and then I do know that we have one present this evening that Mr. Cohart is going to speak about, so this year for professional status, we had Emily Silly, our school nurse at the middle school, Alexandra Kelly, a third grade teacher at Stanley Blaney School, Caitlin Leonard, our middle school PE teacher, Eric McKay, our high school science teacher, and Leanne Pestizzi, our speech teacher in the preschool, and I do believe Mr. McKay is here tonight, and I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Cohart to recognize him.

[Speaker 9] (10:16 - 11:13)
Good evening everyone, a little bit about Mr. McKay, Eric is in his fourth year at Swampscott High School as one of our physics teachers, and this is his eighth year overall teaching, Eric came to us with experience teaching physics, meteorology, physical science, and math, he holds a BS in meteorology from Florida Institute of Technology, and a master's in education from Merrimack College, he is the husband to his wife, Noelle, and father to Audrey, who is 13 months, if I'm correct, Mr. McKay, Eric's also been instrumental in promoting and developing our new astronomy and space exploration technology course, one of our new electives, he also serves as one of our resident meteorologists, offering predictions and forecasts for our winter weather, we look forward to Eric continuing to make an impact on Swampscott High School students, congratulations on earning professional status.

Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (11:15 - 11:43)
Thank you. On behalf of everybody, congratulations, it's fantastic, I mean, I still remember my weather teachers from back in the day, so I'm sure your students really, really pleased and thank you, thank you very much for choosing Swampscott to be a professional, we really appreciate it, and honestly, getting your tenure during COVID, is a little extra.

[Speaker 6] (11:43 - 11:49)
You still have a little extra persistence and dedication.

[Speaker 2] (11:56 - 12:02)
I really like this district and look forward to my future here. Thank you. Glad to have you.

Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (12:02 - 12:09)
And we do have a gift for you, Mr. McKay. We will get that to you as well. It's my lifelong gift.

Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (12:09 - 12:12)
Eric, thank you so much for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Absolutely.

[Speaker 5] (12:16 - 12:28)
The next two items on my agenda, I'm going to turn over to our Director of Facilities, Mr. Casper. We have an amended proprietary list for the new elementary school, as well as the capital planning presentation.

[Speaker 1] (12:30 - 12:48)
Thank you, Superintendent Angelakis. I'm just going to give you a fresh copy of this. It was attached to the agenda.

There were some last-minute tweaks, so I just wanted to make sure you had the most up-to-date version.

[Speaker 2] (12:53 - 12:53)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (12:54 - 16:08)
You're welcome. Thanks. So, this letter should look very similar to a letter we looked at a few weeks ago in the school committee meeting.

Just a recap, as part of the elementary school project, there are a number of items we've identified as proprietary and are asking to be listed as proprietary in the spec and the design and the plans for the bid. I went through most of them last time, and just upon further review and working with the design team, there were a couple of changes and one addition to the list that we did make. In order to have it all be in order, we have to have the amended list hopefully approved by the committee.

So just to run through what the modifications were, we improved and added to some of the language in the camera system section, just made it a little bit more precise, and added some more technical specifications for the switches that go along with the camera system upon the advice of the security consultant. So that was one change to this letter, and in addition to that, we added the linoleum tile as a proprietary item for the spec. This is a product that we have identified over the course of the design project as the appropriate fit for the school.

If you notice in the high school lobby, we've had a lot of issues over time with some of the sheet product and the seams, so it's really been an important piece for us to make sure that the products that we're going to use for the majority of the flooring are modular and tile format so that if there are issues, we can take them up and put them down more easily in doing repairs. We didn't think it was going to be necessary for these items to be proprietary, but due to some changes in the industry that were identified through the bidding process and some of the questions that came through, we realized that there was some limited availability of this type of tile and limited manufacturers, so in order for us to get the product we need and satisfy all of the goals that are kind of enumerated in this letter for the flooring, it was appropriate for it to be identified as proprietary. So that's the big addition to the letter. Everything else is essentially the same, maybe just a couple of diction changes.

So I'm happy to answer any questions on that and we would be hoping to have a vote for that.

[Speaker 2] (16:09 - 16:13)
Mr. Kassner, just so the public knows, can you just explain what the word proprietary means when you're talking about this?

[Speaker 1] (16:14 - 17:24)
Yeah, proprietary means, that's a great question. How to best explain it? In public bidding, if you want a specific product, so proprietary sort of means specific and identified specifically.

You can't just do that for anything because the public bidding laws, 30B and 149, are designed to keep things open and allow open bidding and products that satisfy specifications to be used. And unless you have a good reason, a really good reason, you cannot list items as proprietary or have certain designs, aspects be proprietary. So this list is items that are important to the district, that we get very specific types of items or specific designs mostly because it's consistent with other practices we have in the district or we've identified them as very important to the public interest for the town and the district.

[Speaker 2] (17:25 - 17:28)
Great, thank you. Anybody have any questions? Amy?

[Speaker 4] (17:28 - 17:37)
So I noticed that on all of the ones prior, they were specific brand names. Is there, for the linoleum, is it just any kind of linoleum?

[Speaker 1] (17:37 - 18:26)
It is a little bit of a different approach to the linoleum tile. And it wasn't proprietary in our spec until recently. And no, it's not really a specific brand.

But in reality, in the current market, there is only one type of modular linoleum tile that is readily available. And the design team finding that out was a driving force on us making it proprietary. The other option was for us to pivot away from linoleum tiles and go to sheet goods.

And we really did not want to go in that direction. And we decided that this was the most appropriate route to kind of getting the type of product that we want in the school building.

[Speaker 2] (18:27 - 18:34)
Thank you. Anyone else? Suzanne, does this read good for you?

[Speaker 6] (18:34 - 19:08)
Yeah. No, it's definitely. It's necessary to do.

And Max has done a great job in the design team, too, at sort of figuring out these things. And I know a lot of people have weighed in, you know, especially Ms. Mackie Knowles. She's really been instrumental in making sure that the safety and security stuff and technology stuff is some of our proprietary needs.

So, no, I totally 100%. I mean, I would make a motion. I don't know if I can make a motion, but I would make a motion to approve this proprietary list.

[Speaker 2] (19:08 - 19:09)
Great.

[Speaker 6] (19:09 - 19:10)
I'll second it.

[Speaker 2] (19:10 - 19:13)
All right. Thank you. All in favor?

[Speaker 6] (19:14 - 19:15)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 2] (19:16 - 19:23)
And there's no one opposed, so it carries unanimously. Thank you very much. You are so welcome.

Pam, back to you.

[Speaker 5] (19:24 - 19:30)
I would just move for Mr. Casper to go right into the capital planning presentation for you all.

[Speaker 1] (19:31 - 19:40)
Thank you, Superintendent. Yes, I do also have the next item on the agenda. Are you able to bring up my presentation on the screen?

Anyone?

[Speaker 4] (19:42 - 19:43)
One second.

[Speaker 2] (19:44 - 19:49)
It should be attached to the agenda. It's the chance to be loved to bring it up on his computer. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1] (19:49 - 29:42)
There we go. Thank you, Jackie. Okay.

Excellent. So, I just wanted to give a brief overview of where we stand in the capital process heading into the FY24 budget development, which amazingly is starting. So, a brief overview of the town capital process.

The town does maintain a multi-year capital plan. You'll see a five-year plan published in each warrant at the regular town meeting. The process of getting projects onto that plan is a submission by the department heads of the town to the town administration, which happens annually, along with scoring worksheets that are used to rank the projects and used by the CIC and other boards in their analysis of the different projects.

This year, you'll note that I am here in front of you much earlier this year than I was last year, and a major reason for that is that the town administration changed the deadline for the submissions. Their goal is to handle capital earlier this year before they move into the budget development. Prior to that, the two things were happening simultaneously, and it was competing for attention.

From their perspective, it's better to have a more stable understanding of where you are with your capital and then move into the budget development. That's their reasoning, at least for the earlier submissions. From the submissions, the projects are reviewed by the administration, town administrator, capital improvement committee, the finance committee, and the select board before finally advancing to the regular town meeting, which typically happens in May.

I think last year that was in June, but usually it's targeted for May. The town meeting members vote to approve capital projects, with funding springing forward July 1st of each year. Just a quick recap of how that process goes.

The brunt of my presentation, I just wanted to run through what we have on for FY24 school facilities capital projects and give a brief description of these projects. The first one is district-wide network upgrades. This is the E-rate funding.

This you'll see here every year. It's 50% grant-funded. The technology department utilizes this every year, and it's a great program.

It is listed as $70,000. Half of that is grant-funded. Half of that actually comes from the town coffers.

The second one here is middle school security upgrades. You'll note that I've listed this as a design-only project. Some of the projects, and this generally is with larger projects, I'm moving more and more towards asking for funding for design initially, so we can get the projects rolling, understand the projects better, understand the scope better, understand the cost better, before then coming again in front of the town meeting for the funding for the entire project.

Sort of how we did the major school project, but just on a smaller scale. So the middle school security upgrades. The main piece of this project is an effort to make the front entryway to the middle school more secure.

We just have a glass door entryway that we've identified as not as secure as it could be, so we're looking to design that, potentially turn it into more of a vestibule, there would be layering of doors, and the ability to improve the quality of the glass there. And also we are going to be looking at potential upgrades to some of the door hardware on the interior of the building. So again, that's a design-only project for those specific items at the middle school.

The third one here is labeled town-wide traffic improvements. This is going to be a joint project with facilities, community development, and the DPW. We've identified a number of areas throughout town to target capital traffic improvements to roadways and sidewalks.

The reason I'm talking about that here is that some of the critical projects on that list are the improvements to Orchard Road, Orchard Circle, Forest Ave extension, Forest Ave, which are integral to the new school project, which obviously opening in September 2024, if you kind of do the math backwards, this upcoming town meeting in May is the appropriate town meeting to request that funding so that we'll be on track to complete design and be able to do those on the right schedule so that they're also ready for when the school opens.

The next project is town and school phone improvements. This is going to be a phased project with the goal of upgrading the phone systems in the school and also likely some of the town buildings. A driver of this is to gain compliance with some E911 laws and regulations.

But at the same time, the phones in the high school, for example, are original. Most of them are original to when the high school was built. The building's been here about 15 years, but if you think about design, they're really probably like 20-year generation phones.

So it is time to do that and will allow us to gain compliance with the E911 regulations, which, to sum them up very quickly and not really give them their due, is when you call 911 from a remote phone in a large building like the high school, the law now requires that that identifies which room specifically you are in in the building and also that there are no barriers to calling 911, such as having to dial 8 before 911. So that's a driver of the project, but not the entirety of the project, I think, is the best way to look at it.

The next one is simply district pickup with a plow. The district has two plow trucks that one of them gets replaced about every five years, and it's due for one to be replaced. The next one on the list is green communities projects.

This is one that comes up almost annually, again, heavily grant-funded. We actually anticipate this round of green communities projects to be 100% funded. But even when we get grants like that, we are asked with capital projects for them to go into the capital plan.

And at times, some of the green communities projects are partially funded up to about 20-30% by the town. But this one, just by the nature of our current grant request, we're anticipating full funding through DOER. The second to last one here, high school media center shades.

You'll probably all be familiar with the status of our shades in the high school library. They've been defunct for quite a while. We've been making efforts to repair them, and unfortunately that has not gone very well.

They were made by a niche manufacturer when they built the high school. That manufacturer just hasn't come out, despite repeated attempts to get them to come try and fix them. And reaching out to alternative manufacturers, they won't work on these shades.

So we're kind of forced to resort to replacing them with something that's more readily available for maintenance. So that is that project. And finally, but not least important, Clark renovation design only again.

So this is gearing up for the major renovation project at the Clark Elementary School, which we anticipate occurring the year after the new school opens, when Clark closes as a full elementary school. Those children go to the new elementary school. The plan is for the Clark building to turn into administration offices and an enhanced integrated preschool.

But for that to happen, it will be appropriate to do a renovation of that building. So this funding for that will kick off that process, allow us to work with a project manager, work with a design firm, and really identify what the full scope of that project will be, and move towards design and get on track to fund that renovation project. So again, these are the projects that we are requesting to be on the warrant for FY24.

I did meet with the Capital Improvement Committee the last two weeks and had a chance to go through these projects, and they have been very receptive to our list of projects. They did give us the impression that it's going to be a tighter year with capital. They expect that they're going to be squeezed a little bit with how many projects they can select, so I don't think it's a guarantee that everything is funded.

But we're going to see how that process plays out.

[Speaker 6] (29:43 - 29:50)
Is there a priority? If they're not all funded, are we prioritizing certain ones?

[Speaker 1] (29:50 - 31:05)
Yeah, so I had an opportunity to fill out my rating spreadsheet, and in addition to that, I will be meeting again with Capital Improvement. Personally, I would say that there's a couple projects on here that are a critical path. For example, the street improvement portion of the town-wide traffic improvements, that's critical.

That needs to be funded, or we're at risk of not having the streets ready for the new school, and that's ridiculous. So that's a critical path. The grants are pretty much, you know, there's no argument to not fund those.

But something like the middle school shades, if that was pushed a year, it's hard to argue that that is critical. So I think the Clark renovation design, I think getting that rolling now, I view that as critical, or else we're going to be looking at a building that is stagnant, and we know that that is not desirable. But in order to kind of get on a path to doing something and keeping that building activated, it really has to start now.

Great, thank you. Joe, you have a question?

[Speaker 7] (31:06 - 31:21)
Yeah, it's just a couple on the school projects. So the middle school security upgrades, you see it says design. Is there anticipated when the actual project itself would start, or anticipated completion of that?

[Speaker 1] (31:22 - 31:28)
The goal with that project is to request design funding this year and funding for the actual project next year.

[Speaker 7] (31:31 - 31:48)
And this is probably not a big deal. I'm just curious, because you said about the shades. The company is not being cooperative or unreachable.

Is that like a warranty situation, like these things are under warranty, or is it just – It's too – we're too far removed from it.

[Speaker 1] (31:48 - 31:55)
Some things we do still have warranties here, like the roof, but a smaller item like that, we're going to be out of luck with that.

[Speaker 7] (31:55 - 31:56)
Not really worth pursuing then.

[Speaker 1] (31:57 - 31:58)
Correct, on that particular item, yeah.

[Speaker 7] (31:59 - 32:00)
Okay. Amy?

[Speaker 4] (32:03 - 32:19)
So my first question is, and I know I'm thinking about a request that came to us from the select board about having electric vehicles. Is that a possibility for the district pickup, or can those – It is a possibility.

[Speaker 1] (32:20 - 32:58)
We're going to be reviewing that. It's a little challenging with plow vehicles, so we're not convinced at this point that we can get a – Well, let me back it up, sorry. Fully electric plow is extremely unlikely.

There is a possibility that a plug-in hybrid would be capable to double as a snow plow vehicle, but we're going to continue to review that because we haven't been – It hasn't been made completely clear to us that even those types of vehicles are appropriate to plow with. Okay.

[Speaker 4] (32:59 - 33:34)
I was surprised to see that the design for Clark renovation taking precedence over the design for middle school renovations. I know, obviously, that it'll represent a big change in use for how that school is done, but especially with the ongoing projects of the envelope at the middle school. Can you talk a little bit about the priority there and how you came to the conclusions you did?

[Speaker 1] (33:35 - 35:04)
Sure, and that is not so much of a question of priority. It's more of a question of sequencing, so the Clark move is really a precursor to the vision for the middle school. Getting the administration and the preschool out of the middle school is going to free up a significant amount of space at the middle school, which, in my opinion, is going to give us the flexibility to do a project at the middle school.

That's the reasoning on advancing the design. Also, the middle school project will very likely be an MSBA project. We will be looking to submit a statement of interest and then going through the same process that we went through for the new elementary school, where we seek funding for a schematic design, a building committee.

There's still some early steps to unfold for that to all happen, where the Clark renovation, which would not be an MSBA-funded project, it's a little clearer and cleaner as to how that is funded and how that project progresses.

[Speaker 4] (35:05 - 35:10)
Is that not an MSBA project because of the scope?

[Speaker 1] (35:13 - 35:29)
It's because of the use of the building. The MSBA funds K-12, to my knowledge. I'm not 100% positive on that, but I understand that they fund K-12 projects.

As an administration building and pre-K building, it's out of their range. Okay.

[Speaker 4] (35:31 - 35:44)
Then, my next question is really more philosophical, which is, where are your pressure points? Where are your pressure points?

[Speaker 1] (35:49 - 35:51)
I'm not sure I fully understand the question.

[Speaker 4] (35:58 - 36:22)
Do you feel like there are competing projects between ... Because you are wearing two hats, both for the town as well as for the school, do you feel like there is pressure from the other 50% of your job to elevate or de-elevate certain projects?

[Speaker 1] (36:23 - 37:17)
No, I don't feel pressure like that. Honestly, since I've been in a role to request capital, I have been impressed by the amount of projects that are approved. The large majority of projects that we have advanced over the last three, four years have been approved.

That might change a little bit this year. We'll see, but I don't look at it as two hats. I look at it as a facilities hat.

These are all facilities. They don't compete in my mind other than what is neediest. That's how I look at it, and that's how I create my plan and go into it.

Does that answer that question? It does.

[Speaker 4] (37:17 - 37:18)
I appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (37:18 - 37:18)
No problem.

[Speaker 4] (37:18 - 37:47)
Sorry to put you on the spot. No, no. No problem at all.

I guess out of sequence here, I know that there has been talk over the past year about big blue bargains and finding a place for them. Is it fair to assume that that could be worked into the Clark renovation design, or is that a conversation that's happening?

[Speaker 1] (37:48 - 38:48)
I haven't been privy to specific conversations for that being part of the Clark. I have heard rumblings of that potentially being a good fit for the path at the Hadley building. My opinion with the big blue bargains is that the timing is the challenge right now.

We are so stressed for space internally right now to the point where we have more children at Hadley. We are renting space. We're just trying to get everyone in a classroom.

It's just not really an appropriate time to be trying to find an extra chunk of space to be putting it. It's a great organization. They do a great thing, but it's tough timing-wise for the town and district to support that from a facilities perspective.

[Speaker 4] (38:48 - 38:57)
It's also hard financially to have a massive outlay for something that might not necessarily be generating that.

[Speaker 1] (38:59 - 39:37)
I hear that. I think the counter to that is that they would say that they're supporting financially, and that's part of their goal. I think the takeaway from what I'm saying is that in a few years, we're going to go from being space poor to space rich with two extra buildings and the opportunity to do some great things with those buildings.

That's going to be a more appropriate time to try and support that and other organizations like that.

[Speaker 4] (39:37 - 39:51)
I have one last question, which is your mention of the middle school project going to an MSBA bid. I'm curious what the timeframe looks like on that.

[Speaker 1] (39:52 - 41:33)
It's not pinned down exactly at this point. I personally have always been envisioning that as happening in sequence after the Clark renovation. Sometimes you need a year in between to figure things out.

Speaking in larger time spans, it's not a decade away from me. It's years away. That's when I think is the appropriate time to do that.

That's going to be a lot bigger than me advancing it. It's really going to have to be a community project like the elementary. It's going to be similar in scope to that.

We know that the effort to advance that elementary school properly to the point where we are now was massive. We're going to have to start building that again. Luckily, we know what it takes now.

Thank you, Suzanne. There's a lot of chips to fall into place. I feel really strongly that that's a very important project for the town.

It's an opportunity to set us up to get us to a point where we have really elite facilities. We're getting close. We have this middle school that essentially hasn't been touched in a major way besides the roof project in decades.

[Speaker 6] (41:38 - 42:03)
I'll jump in the big blue bargains thing. I had a conversation with their board at one point. We talked about if Clark got renovated, what happens to that portable?

Is the portable the appropriate spot to have a self-contained whatever? I don't know. The portable is pretty old.

It's not really going to last too much longer.

[Speaker 1] (42:03 - 42:14)
The facility's perspective on the portable is that we cannot wait to demolish it and get it out of there. It is well past its useful life.

[Speaker 6] (42:15 - 42:17)
I was just wondering what the status of that was.

[Speaker 1] (42:17 - 42:43)
We're kind of hanging on by a thread with that and keeping it safe. Once that can go, it should go. There's other areas like the gym at Clark.

That's likely to support the preschool. That's a big wide open space that could be open for discussion. Hadley's much bigger than Clark.

There's definitely opportunity there.

[Speaker 2] (42:46 - 43:10)
Max, I actually do have a question. The biggest number on here is the town-wide traffic improvements for a million dollars. Can you talk a little bit about how that wraps around the other projects that are school-based?

And why that's on the school project side? Just again, for everyone to have your knowledge. Sure.

[Speaker 1] (43:11 - 43:53)
The reason that is on here is that say we have a list of eight projects that are kind of under that umbrella. A big chunk of those are roadway improvements to Orchard Terrace, Orchard Road, Forest Ave extension. So those are all roads immediately next to the Stanley site.

And roadway improvements that have been identified by the traffic engineer to support traffic flow and safety of students for when the new school opens. Off of the site. Off of the site.

[Speaker 2] (43:54 - 44:03)
Okay. And just a curiosity question. Why would that not fall under the town side of capital improvement versus the school side?

[Speaker 1] (44:04 - 44:39)
It does. It's a joint town and school project. I mean, there really isn't a distinction that's not labeled.

I have it in my presentation here as school projects because I didn't want to present to you on our plans to restore the facade of the town hall. It's just not relevant. But the projects aren't in groups.

And these are school projects. These are town projects. Especially that one.

It's literally joint.

[Speaker 2] (44:40 - 44:43)
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

I appreciate you letting the public know.

[Speaker 1] (44:43 - 47:04)
No problem. So I did have a couple more slides. We've kind of covered a lot of the things that I have on this next slide.

But just to let the board know, you know, further out on the capital plan, we do have the middle school phased renovation coming more and more into focus. Again, the Clark project to me is a major precursor to that and sets us up for success eventually at the middle school. A high school controls an HVAC improvement project.

That's pretty significant. It's not that we're going to put a new HVAC system in the high school. It's more nuanced than that.

But it's an important project to keep the high school system up to date without, you know, replacing the system entirely. Projects to, you know, address paving and landscaping and site improvements at both the high school and middle school is on the radar. As well as projects to invest in the field house a little bit.

That really has not had significant attention given to it in a really long time. Smaller project that, you know, we're hoping to fit in in the time before the major renovation at the middle school is the middle school media center improvements. Similar to some of the things we've done here at the high school.

Turn it from just what is historically a library to a media center with more learning spaces and just a vaster experience. And finally, a relatively small project to address high school flooring. This kind of brings it all together.

But we've had some issues in the high school with some of the sheet products. And we've really struggled with the seams to the point where at times they've been safety issues. And you'll see that we've done some fixes to address that.

But it needs to be on our radar and is on the plan to do a comprehensive replacement of some of the flooring at the high school. And finally, I thought it was appropriate to just give a quick overview of some of the ongoing and completed projects.

[Speaker 4] (47:05 - 47:59)
Max, can I just jump in real quick about the future capital projects? I just want to talk for a sec about the field house improvements. And I hope that when it is time for that, that it isn't merely just the envelope.

I know that there's a noticeable lack of equal access in that building for the male students versus the female students. And students who identify as both. So it's hard when kids are noticing that and shrugging and saying, I guess that's just the way that it is.

So I hope that that's something that takes precedence sooner than later.

[Speaker 1] (48:00 - 49:16)
Yeah, I think there will definitely be opportunity to address that. I think one of the really good things of getting things onto capital plans early is that there's an opportunity to discuss them for a longer period of time. Like if today I came in here and said, we're fixing the exterior of the field house.

It's a great project. And if it's the first time you ever heard about that, there wouldn't be an opportunity for you to give that input. And where it's a couple of years out, now that type of thing can be integrated into the plan more.

Not that it wasn't. Just to answer it more specifically, the goal is to address interior elements as well as facade elements. Because there's issues on the exterior and the interior at the field house.

But that project has plenty of time to develop and for the scope to be identified. And to address some of the issues that might not always be at the forefront of someone looking at it through a facilities lens. And that's important.

So thank you.

[Speaker 4] (49:16 - 49:17)
Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (49:20 - 52:40)
Okay. Again, so my last slide was just wanted to take the opportunity to give a quick update on some of the prior approved projects that we're either in the middle of or have recently completed. We've had funding multiple years now for camera systems upgrades.

And we've been doing work at the middle school, the high school, the police station, and now also at some of the elementary school buildings. There's a lot of cameras in our school buildings. And we're looking to get those systems up to date.

And we're in the midst of that. We're working on envelope projects at the middle school and the high school to address issues with infiltration. So those are both in the midst.

We've done some work and there's still more to do as we continue to try and keep the buildings dry. Smaller projects here at the high school with the shop and the media center both with phased elements that we've been investing in and will continue to. Middle school roof have to report that is a 100% completed project.

And I did want to give a quick update on a fire alarm project at the middle school, which, you know, interestingly enough, was funded years back prior to me having a role in the school facilities department. And just with everything going on, it had kind of taken a little bit of a backseat while we were trying to understand where we were heading with the middle school. But as that came more into focus and understanding the needs of the fire alarm system, we are advancing that at this point.

We actually had bids, not bids, but responses to an RFQ this week that we will be reviewing in the coming weeks as we look to select a designer for the middle school fire alarm project. So glad to report that that is finally advancing. And then the middle school gymnasium.

This is a cool project that kind of sprung up last year, which was driven by some issues we had with the water damage at the middle school gym. But what was initially very painful and difficult to work through turned in ultimately to a great rehab of the middle school floor. There was a section that was replaced, just half of half really.

And that looked really good. And then over this last summer, we sanded the entire gym, both sides, had an opportunity to repaint. I don't know if you've seen it, but if you haven't, it's worth taking a look at.

There's a picture here on the slide. It doesn't do it justice, but the floor looks really awesome over there. And finally, last but not least, I couldn't do this presentation without pointing out that we're in the midst of the biggest capital project probably in the history of the town with the new elementary school.

So that fits into all this as well. That is all.

[Speaker 5] (52:41 - 52:42)
Thank you, Max.

[Speaker 2] (52:42 - 52:43)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (52:43 - 52:44)
Very comprehensive.

[Speaker 8] (52:48 - 52:48)
That's all.

[Speaker 2] (52:49 - 52:49)
That's it.

[Speaker 7] (52:52 - 53:02)
Can I ask one more? Yeah, Max, hold on. I've got one more question for you.

Sure. So since we have you, and it's on the Blaney School. I have a couple of questions on that since we have you.

[Speaker 1] (53:02 - 53:03)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 7] (53:03 - 54:05)
If I can indulge you. So I have heard, and I think you've probably heard some of this. I've heard from the neighbors about a lot of increased running activity around the school, the street.

And, again, I think you've heard this, but, again, just wanted to make sure that folks are aware of this. And the things we expected to have trouble with, like traffic bottlenecks and things like that, that seems to have more or less worked itself out. But this thing has, again, I did hear from quite a few neighbors over the past week on this one.

And the other thing, just to make sure, kind of the flip side of this, you mentioned the new school site. Is there any remediation for those neighbors for the same type of thing? Just kind of the new project, something gets knocked down, and all the existing wildlife kind of descends into the neighborhood kind of thing.

Just making sure that that's taken into account as well.

[Speaker 1] (54:05 - 58:38)
Sure. No, those are both really important points. I was actually in a construction meeting today for the demolition project at the Stanley site.

And one of the items that we were discussing was the road in control. Anytime that you are demolishing a large old building like the Stanley School, it's a really important piece to be on top of. So that was baked into the specifications and the requirements of the demolition contractor, that they maintain road in control during the demolition.

And that will also be part of the requirement for the site contractor, because you also can have road issues when you start to dig in the ground and disturb the ledge and the blasting. You know, it's something we definitely need to stay on top of throughout that construction project, especially the early stages. The reports to date over there have been that there's been some road in activity that they've been monitoring and have seen some upticks and some impacts on the neighborhood.

And we've asked them to make sure that they're doing everything they can to manage that. Again, this is the Stanley. I'm going to respond to that first.

So really timely, that point about that, because it's happening right there right now. It's been okay. It's not ever a great situation when you're taking a large building down, but it's how well you can manage it and stay on top of it.

And we're really pressing our project manager and the contractors to do everything they can and do everything that they are obligated to do under the contract to manage that. Shifting to the Blaney Street side of it, which is a similar issue, it's really interesting that you brought this up today, because this week I was part of an interaction with the health director and the building inspector, because they had been made aware of some road in activity, uptick on road in activity in Blaney. And actually, I got a report from the principal at the Blaney School that they had noticed some road in activity around the building.

So I reached out to A1 Exterminators, who's the pest control company that the town and the school utilizes frequently. And what their response was that they are attributing the uptick of the rodents in the Blaney area to the construction site directly next door to the school site. And we actually had found some dead rodents around the school, and that is a sign that they had taken the bait.

And we don't have rat bait boxes at the Blaney School to date. And it's something we like, but there's pretty intensive regulations for exterior baiting with IPM plans and the such with school buildings. But it's our understanding that they are baiting at the construction site, I think it's 56 Blaney, the old nunnery, which had been a vacant building for a very long time.

So I know there's a lot there. I think at this point, given the uptick, our expectation, our analysis is that it's mostly due to the construction project. And I know that the health department and the building department are both kind of on that, and that's the appropriate sort of channel to deal with the construction side.

But it's also kind of worth taking a look internally a little bit to make sure we're doing everything we can to make sure we're not contributing to it, because we do have an intensified use of that building, and we have dumpsters actively being used on the property. So we're going to also reach out to our pest control company to make sure that we're doing everything we can for our side of the problem. I really think it's a multifaceted issue because there's multiple layers of things going on on Blaney.

[Speaker 7] (58:39 - 59:02)
Okay, that's very helpful, Max. Thank you. And I think you touched on it a little bit when you mentioned the dumpsters, but that's another theme I was hearing as far as that there's an awful lot of trash.

Maybe lids aren't down all the way at the school. So maybe that's another area, if you're going to be looking at maybe root causes, just make sure that that's adequately addressed.

[Speaker 1] (59:03 - 59:04)
Absolutely. No problem.

[Speaker 7] (59:04 - 59:04)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (59:05 - 59:05)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 2] (59:06 - 59:10)
Anything else for Max? Thank you, Max, very much. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (59:11 - 59:11)
No problem.

[Speaker 2] (59:12 - 59:13)
Pam, back to you.

[Speaker 5] (59:14 - 59:21)
That concludes my superintendent's report for this evening. And with permission of the chair, I need to exit this meeting.

[Speaker 2] (59:22 - 59:22)
Feel free.

[Speaker 5] (59:23 - 59:24)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 2] (59:24 - 59:24)
Thank you, Pam.

[Speaker 5] (59:24 - 59:25)
Have a good night, everybody.

[Speaker 6] (59:26 - 59:27)
Take care.

[Speaker 2] (59:28 - 59:34)
All right. That was interesting. Thank you.

So, chair update.

[Speaker 4] (59:36 - 59:37)
Director, if I may.

[Speaker 2] (59:38 - 59:50)
Oh, God, you know, Martha, I'm sorry. You know, we've been together since 530. My apologies.

Martha, the budget discussion is all you.

[Speaker 3] (1:00:00 - 1:02:09)
Thank you. Committee members. So you do have it.

And I'm not going to lie, it's a little late to be giving an update on FY 22. We had hoped to give the update in the August meeting. But given some vacancies in my office and trying to onboard and offboard staff, we just couldn't make that August meeting.

So we are presenting it this evening for the committee, just so you can understand where we finished FY 22. The books were officially closed in September, mid-September. The town director of finance and operations, Amy Sauer, successfully closed the books.

The chart, the first chart on the handout for you all, I really want to try and demonstrate for the committee the sources of fund and how we spent our funds. So the town appropriation was $29,376,863. And we spent $29,376,206.

We spent all but $657 of our appropriation. Spent every last penny I could. Kudos.

Where there's a little bit of a buffer was on the funding source from Nahant. And so you may recall that when we developed the budget for FY 22, we had anticipated about $150,000 of special education nonresident tuition income. And that didn't come to fruition because of a change in placement.

And so we actually materialized about $105,000 of revenue. So you can see that there's a budget shortfall of about $44,000. So when you look at the bottom line, it looks like we underspent our budget by $45,000, when in actuality we really didn't.

I had to supplement from the town appropriation to cover expenses. So we gave back only $657 this year.

[Speaker 2] (1:02:09 - 1:02:10)
Good job.

[Speaker 3] (1:02:10 - 1:02:15)
So we spent 99.998% of our budget.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:15 - 1:02:20)
The nonresident special education tuition is not the...

[Speaker 3] (1:02:21 - 1:02:48)
That's separate from the negotiated contract with Nahant. That's where we leverage capacity in our programs where we have a wonderful autism program and there's extra capacity and there's a need from Nahant or any other neighboring community where they don't want to place them in and out of district. They'd rather place them in another public school district.

We leverage that capacity.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:48 - 1:03:03)
And so unfortunately I'm going to assume that if we don't earn that $44,805, that it's not like that money is still being spent. Correct. Because they don't need specific service.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:03 - 1:12:27)
I know they need specific services, but they don't need... Well, we don't have the student here, so we still pay for the teacher. We make extra revenue if we sell a seat in the class.

So it's a bonus for us. Excuse me. Pardon the cough.

So the second page of the handout, which is much larger, really goes into the more detail by cost center and by DESE category of expense. And I'll just kind of go through some of the highlights. So the administration cost centers was under budget by $108,000.

That was largely driven by other expenses where we had a lower expense related to unemployment, pension matching. That's the 403B matching, which has been decreasing the past couple of years. Fewer conferences.

I think that's kind of a hangover from the pandemic. A lot of things were still remote last year. People didn't attend as much.

And then we budget each year about $5,000 for school lunch. And because school lunch is free, we don't have any bad debt. So that's just a savings right off the bat.

General education cost center, that came in right really at budget at $86 off. Some of the largest swings in there were over budget for professional salaries. That was really a couple of supplemental positions being offset by salary savings.

And then the other wild swing there was the other salaries. And that was really the result of vacancies. And we really did materialize about $193,000 of substitute savings.

And I've said it before to the committee, there's a difference between a problem and a dilemma. A problem I can solve, a dilemma I can't. It didn't matter what we had last year as a rate for our daily sub.

We weren't going to get any. People just didn't want to come back into the buildings yet. I am seeing anecdotally the first 30 days of school or so, we are seeing an uptick in daily subs.

So that's a good thing. We have a healthy budget for it in FY23. I was doing some quick back of the envelope math.

And even if we average 10 a day at $110 for 180 days, we've got a budget that will safely absorb that. And we're getting about 10 a day now. So that's good.

We weren't getting that a year ago. We just couldn't get people in the door. So I'm happy about that.

I don't anticipate that type of savings this year. There may be some, but I don't anticipate that much. Contracted services were over budget.

That was really the result of increased ____. Translation services, about $3,000 over. And then transportation, we did see an uptick in our expense for homeless transportation.

That really kicked in towards the end of the year. It had been tracking really towards budget for most of the year. And then at the end of the year, there was an uptick in that expense.

And then the METCO transportation, the operating budget, does support the cost of some of the late buses for the METCO. The METCO grant does not cover all the costs of transportation. The operating budget does support some of that.

And that was about $85,000. We were really under budget on materials and supplies, and I expected that. We knew that we were in a tight budget year going into the end of the year.

And towards the end of March, the superintendent and I did unilaterally implement a budget freeze, which meant if you didn't need it, you're not buying it. And so I do believe that some of the savings that we had there were because we just didn't spend money towards the end of the year. So elementary was under budget collectively by about $40,000, and the middle school was under budget by about $20,000.

The high school had already spent their budget, so they spent their money early, and that's what happens. So Special Education Cost Center, I tried to go into more detail here because this one's a tough one to just lump in and say by line. Talk a little bit about the professional salaries.

Really, it was the result of a couple additional FTE and some of the loss of the non-tuition revenue. Non-resident tuition offsets the professional salaries line. Other salaries were over by about $71,000.

This is actually one of those it's good news, bad news. The good news is that it's off because I missed booking an offset of $65,000. That carried into this year and helps this year's budget.

We take in tuition for our integrated pre-K, for Lunch Bunch and other revenue sources. And typically at the end of the year, I book a $65,000 entry to sweep some of our expenses into the revolving fund. And I didn't do that this year, and I didn't discover that until after the books had closed.

And I was like, okay, well, that $65,000 rolls forward. It's in a revolving fund. So this year, we'll take $130,000 offset.

So the bad news is I missed it, and the good news is it carried forward. I wanted to talk a little bit about the contracted service line because that was $239,000 over budget, and there's a lot of things in that line that are very large dollar amounts. So, you know, the first two are kind of small.

Translation service is illegal. We had an ongoing federal case that, you know, Martha Raymond did yeoman's work with our attorneys, and that I think is finally resolved. So I don't see legal being, you know, $30,000 over budget going forward.

I think that it's going to be more reasonable and in line with what we've been budgeting. Purchase services was over budget by $106,000. That was really the result of having to backfill for positions that we just couldn't get filled for contracted services for staffing, basically.

Transportation was under budget by $313,000. I'm not sure how much of that's going to carry into this year. That was a lot of families made the decision to not use the vans.

So a lot of families have elected to transport their students themselves to a landmark or to other out-of-district placements. It saves us money. I think during the pandemic, it allowed families kind of a certainty of where their kids were and, you know, mask versus non-mask, that kind of thing.

So we'll see what happens this year, but we do have a number of agreements in place with families for private transport of their student to their out-of-district placement, and that definitely saves the district money. And then tuition was the other large one. And tuition, I put a little extra box in there for tuition so you could see what came from the general fund, what was funded from Circuit Breaker.

We had two different IDEA grants that helped fund tuition out-of-district tuitions this year. The IDEA ARPA money, that was a one-year. That's not coming back this year.

But the regular IDEA money, I think this year's grant was $567,000. Don't quote me on that one. And then we did have the good fortune to prepay some with FY21 money.

So our all-in expense on tuition, out-of-district tuition this year was $3.5 million. School facilities, the cost center was over budget by $126,000. That really was a function of contracted cleaning came in a little bit higher than what we thought was going to come in.

And then we had some preventative maintenance at Clark and Middle School. And then $107,000 over budget, that was really the result of electricity and gas expense. And I think we were still in the mindset of, you know, open windows, get fresh air in so, you know, when you're heating the building and you get the windows open, it's not ideal.

It's not optimal in terms of maintaining your bills, if you will. And then the district-wide cost center, which I'll just refresh, and for anyone who's watching at home, district-wide cost center is, you know, health, you know, the nursing, information technology, athletics, and I think that's it, those three. And that was under budget by $23,000.

And some small swings in there. The largest one worth noting was just crossing guards was under budget by $35,000. And again, some of that savings was unfortunately the result of not getting people to come out and man the stops, man the posts.

I do think Officer Wilson, excuse me, and the addition of having a dedicated HR person has really helped on both those fronts with getting some crossing guards in and hired and helping get more and more daily subs in. So I know that was a very quick run through everything, so I'll pause if there are any questions concerning FY22.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:29 - 1:12:32)
Any questions, anybody? I don't have any questions either.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:32 - 1:12:36)
I'm just impressed that your budget is right on. Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:37 - 1:13:53)
$600 on. Oh, if I could have spent that on something else, I would have. I thought I had it down to $337,000, and then we had liquidated something.

I was like, oh, it went up to $650,000. We'll miss that acumen, so thank you. Thank you.

And then the last one, and forgive me, because I didn't have it early enough to link it to the agenda, but I did hand it to you all as a handout. This is really just a formality at this point. We had the FY23 budget.

Initially, the superintendent and I presented a recommended budget that was amended slightly. The school committee voted a budget. Town administrator changed it and submitted it to the select board.

Ultimately, the town meeting appropriated another number. So this is just to get us all in line with what was appropriated at town meeting. And so town meeting – actually, the town meeting appropriated to us $30 million, but this is the number that we would vote on, because this includes all of our revenue sources, not just the number appropriated at town meeting.

That's $31,915,053 is our budget for FY23.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:53 - 1:14:08)
Okay. So can I have someone make a motion that we will approve FY23 budget, school budget, at $31,915,053?

[Speaker 8] (1:14:09 - 1:14:10)
I'll make the motion.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:11 - 1:14:11)
Second.

[Speaker 8] (1:14:12 - 1:14:13)
I'll second it.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:14 - 1:14:24)
All right. Thank you. All in favor, say aye.

Aye. All opposed? It is unanimous.

It passes. Thank you. Skybird, I can see you smiling.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:25 - 1:14:29)
Just one more thing done. On to FY24.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:30 - 1:14:34)
All right. Thank you. Anything else you'd like to add?

[Speaker 3] (1:14:35 - 1:14:56)
I don't think so. I know when you get to the consent agenda, we've got, what, one, two, three, four, five weeks of warrants on here, and I think that that just goes to show how much we desperately miss Claire Gorman in our office. She's been working part-time from home, and we're thrilled to have her returning next week.

So we've been limping along.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:56 - 1:17:49)
Okay. All right. So from the chair point of view, I just have one thing.

It's more of a community thing. For those sitting up here, I know I'm a social media guy, and I enjoy it, although I'm very careful now. Thank you, Amy.

Be very careful what I say. I do want to implore, though, folks out there, I've read a lot, especially recently, of parents who are asking very specific questions about their child on social media. And for someone who kind of does this for a living, I would just implore you to be very, very careful what you say in the public domain, because Facebook is not secure.

It's not. And if you have any questions pertaining to your child, please ask the teacher. Please ask the school principal.

I guarantee you you'll get a better answer than us riffraffers who are out there. So I think it's a great—again, I'm a social media guy. You can get some great answers to the best restaurant in Boston if you want, but it's probably not the best place to ask very specific and personal questions about your child.

So I'm going to leave that one as it is, but I really felt compelled to say that. One other thing. During our little hiatus here, the Swanscot Hall of Fame inducted many, many individuals and groups.

I would be remiss if I didn't congratulate a lot of the folks who I graduated high school with. The 19—hold on, I've got to look it up here. The 1981 class of the state co-champion and indoor track.

A lot of folks that I went to high school with, I was not a track guy. Pretty obvious. But to those folks, congratulations.

You posted some really great pictures out there. All right, moving right along. Review November school committee meeting dates.

Let me click on this and see what this is. This is—oh, you know what? I might not be able to do that.

Can you call that out? Here we go. There we go.

I got it. All right. So for November, we have November 10th and November 24th with an asterisk.

And I know the superintendent is not here, but looking at November 24th, if I may. So November 24th—isn't that Thanksgiving?

[Speaker 6] (1:17:50 - 1:17:52)
I think that's a Thanksgiving thing.

[Speaker 2] (1:17:52 - 1:18:16)
So I guess the question does—because then the next meeting is not until December 8th. Do we want to have a meeting on the 10th and 17th? Do we want—just to skip over that meeting, I'll kind of open it up to what we've done historically and what everyone's thought is.

[Speaker 4] (1:18:16 - 1:18:21)
I would say a lot's going to depend on what happens in budget.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:22 - 1:18:22)
Right.

[Speaker 13] (1:18:22 - 1:18:22)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:25 - 1:18:26)
That's a very good point by you.

[Speaker 6] (1:18:27 - 1:18:35)
I think—I feel like we're going to need it to—well, I mean, I guess it depends what's on the agenda. Right.

[Speaker 4] (1:18:36 - 1:18:40)
What else is on the agenda, but some random Thursday in there.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:40 - 1:18:49)
So what we could do, since we're not going to be here on Thanksgiving, we could schedule a meeting for December 17th.

[Speaker 8] (1:18:50 - 1:18:51)
November 17th.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:51 - 1:18:52)
November 17th, excuse me.

[Speaker 8] (1:18:52 - 1:18:53)
And then just get rid of it.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:53 - 1:18:56)
And then just not—yeah, we can cancel it if so be.

[Speaker 4] (1:18:56 - 1:19:00)
I think that sounds— Okay. Say that again. I'm sorry.

We got sidetracked over here.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:00 - 1:19:12)
That's okay. So we're going to just move the meeting from the 24th to the 17th of November. If we don't need the meeting, we'll just cancel it outright.

At least that way it'll be on the schedule.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:12 - 1:19:20)
And then you had a question about the 27th of October. And that's— Yes. And that's the next meeting.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:20 - 1:19:20)
That's the next meeting.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:21 - 1:19:22)
Yes. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:23 - 1:19:34)
So just to keep it clean here, can I have a motion that we change the November— I'll make a motion to change that to the 17th. Great. Second?

[Speaker 4] (1:19:34 - 1:19:34)
Second.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:35 - 1:19:36)
All in favor?

[Speaker 4] (1:19:36 - 1:19:37)
Aye.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:37 - 1:19:52)
Aye. No one is opposed. So we will move the—we'll cancel the 24th meeting, since we'll be eating turkey, et cetera, and schedule that for the 17th.

And if we don't need it, we will cancel it. All right. Excellent.

[Speaker 6] (1:19:53 - 1:19:56)
Are we going to talk about trying to start our meetings earlier?

[Speaker 2] (1:19:56 - 1:20:23)
Yes. That was—I was going to do that, Dee, but we can do that now. Thank you.

So we've had—for all the myriad of people who are out there watching us, we've had— More than you think. More than you think. We've had discussions about—our meetings just tend to run a little long, and we all want to be really cognizant of the school employees who are here and then who have to wake up and come back to school on Friday.

[Speaker 16] (1:20:23 - 1:20:23)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:20:24 - 1:20:33)
So the thought was moving our meetings from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursdays.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:34 - 1:20:44)
I didn't think about it when we talked about it earlier, but how does that impact you guys? That's a really great— I didn't think about that before.

[Speaker 12] (1:20:44 - 1:21:03)
Right now, I mean, for me, that doesn't really change that much. But since those are the ones who are not in the new season that are coming, so— Okay. We may have to re-adjust in the coming months, but I'm good with that for now.

All right.

[Speaker 14] (1:21:03 - 1:21:04)
Getting home earlier would be nice.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:04 - 1:21:05)
Yeah.

[Speaker 14] (1:21:05 - 1:21:09)
I do. I get up at like 6.45 in the morning.

[Speaker 16] (1:21:09 - 1:21:09)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:10 - 1:21:14)
Does anyone have any thoughts, comments one way or another? Yay or nay?

[Speaker 8] (1:21:15 - 1:21:19)
I like it. Yeah. I like it for us.

I like it for the employees.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:20 - 1:21:21)
Great. Amy?

[Speaker 4] (1:21:22 - 1:21:38)
It's totally fine by me. I do appreciate the ability of our employees to be able to get home at a better time and would also say, like we've always done, that hopefully they'd still be allowed to call in when they need to rather than be required to be here.

[Speaker 6] (1:21:38 - 1:21:43)
Just as long as we don't make this like permission to go to 9. Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:43 - 1:21:44)
Yeah. Absolutely.

[Speaker 4] (1:21:45 - 1:21:47)
Yeah. We're still going to be a four-hour meeting. Right.

[Speaker 6] (1:21:47 - 1:21:49)
Like we still need to be efficient.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:49 - 1:22:03)
Right. Yeah. I mean, I agree.

I agree. I mean, yes. Oh my God, yes.

I did have a brief conversation with the superintendent. She was also very much in favor of starting early and just said the same comment that you had.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:03 - 1:22:07)
I was going to say, as an early bird in particular, I imagine the superintendent would appreciate that.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:07 - 1:22:11)
Right. All right. So would you like to make a motion?

[Speaker 6] (1:22:12 - 1:22:14)
Are we going to be starting this the next meeting?

[Speaker 2] (1:22:14 - 1:22:16)
Yes. If we could start the next meeting. Is that okay with everybody?

[Speaker 6] (1:22:17 - 1:22:20)
Fabulous. How about our TV crew? Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:22 - 1:22:23)
Are you guys okay?

[Speaker 16] (1:22:24 - 1:22:25)
It's fine.

[Speaker 7] (1:22:26 - 1:22:32)
All right. Well, that's a good question. The TV crew said fine.

I just have to say, when the select board moved six.

[Speaker 8] (1:22:33 - 1:22:34)
Oh. Oh, they already did?

[Speaker 2] (1:22:34 - 1:22:34)
Oh.

[Speaker 7] (1:22:35 - 1:22:37)
They just kind of like.

[Speaker 16] (1:22:41 - 1:22:41)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:41 - 1:22:47)
Yeah. We won't do that. We won't.

Yeah. We will. That won't happen.

We'll have a mutiny.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:47 - 1:22:49)
We'll set it hard.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:49 - 1:22:50)
Yeah. That's a long time to talk about.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:50 - 1:22:56)
Maybe we need to like put a timer on the screen. No, honestly. And keep ourselves on track.

Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:56 - 1:22:58)
Definitely. And when we have presentations.

[Speaker 6] (1:22:58 - 1:23:18)
Yeah. Well, you know what? Remember a long time ago we had.

We did have times. Agenda items like this. You have 10 minutes here.

You have 20 minutes here. Trying to really like stick to that. I mean, I just think that's a good practice.

Even if it's not public. That you sort of think about. That.

You know. I agree. Yeah.

Because I don't want it. Right.

[Speaker 16] (1:23:18 - 1:23:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:19 - 1:23:22)
All right. So, since we all agree. Would you like to make a motion?

[Speaker 6] (1:23:23 - 1:23:27)
I'm happy to make a motion. Thank you. That we change our start time to 6 p.m. Excellent.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:27 - 1:23:27)
Second?

[Speaker 6] (1:23:28 - 1:23:29)
I'll second it.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:30 - 1:23:42)
All those in favor. Aye. Aye.

There is no one opposed. So, beginning at our next meeting. Which is the 27th of October.

We'll meet at the lovely hour of 6 p.m. All right.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:42 - 1:23:44)
We will not end at 10.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:44 - 1:23:45)
We will not end at 10.

[Speaker 8] (1:23:45 - 1:23:52)
Guarantee I will mess that up. Probably. Would you say?

I'll walk in at 7. Like somebody remind me. I will definitely mess that up.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:52 - 1:24:03)
All right. School committee protocols. These are the.

I actually thought we voted on this last time. Yeah. I think.

I think we did vote on it last time.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:03 - 1:24:06)
Yeah. So, did we sign? Did.

Did everybody sign?

[Speaker 2] (1:24:08 - 1:25:46)
I think we did. Actually. Matter of fact.

We did sign it. All right. So, we will say.

We will table that little piece of the agenda. Appoint school committee subcommittees. We've been trying to do this for a while.

So, let me just. If I could ask you just to pop that on. All right.

So, there are several subcommittees. And, just going to kind of run through it right now. So, probably a couple of changes.

So, John, can you mind just popping that on the screen for me? Thank you. Just give John a sec.

Thank you. All right. So, as you can see, the subcommittees.

We just have this in an open discussion here. We'll start with the subcommittees for bargaining. John and myself did that last year.

Would you like to continue, John? There shouldn't be a whole lot for today. Would you like to continue with that?

Sure. All right. I'm going to step back from that.

So would someone like to join Mr. Jantus on the bargaining subcommittee? Don't make me a point to everybody.

[Speaker 6] (1:25:47 - 1:25:49)
Well, it feels like a quiet year.

[Speaker 2] (1:25:49 - 1:25:55)
Yeah, it should be. Yeah, I'll do that.

[Speaker 8] (1:25:57 - 1:25:57)
All right.

[Speaker 2] (1:25:58 - 1:26:08)
Good. Thank you, Amy. Appreciate that.

On the budget and finance side, Karen and John.

[Speaker 8] (1:26:10 - 1:26:29)
I mean, I'm happy to stay, not in one of the other leadership roles. Did you meet? I mean, it sort of has lessened in what it is, because we do committee of the whole.

So unless there's, like, talking, direct updates to the actual and maybe the scheduling, that's kind of all it is these days.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:29 - 1:26:47)
I guess I would imagine – first of all, I believe that the – I don't think I dreamt this, but the finance committee has two liaisons to us, which – was that an email?

[Speaker 13] (1:26:47 - 1:26:58)
Did I see that? No, but remember – I don't remember where that left off. For some reason, I feel like – Not two, just one.

No.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:02 - 1:27:07)
Ms. Seibert, you're going to add some color to this conversation.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:07 - 1:27:16)
I feel like Naomi Dreeben and a new member are the liaisons to us. Naomi has been this last person.

[Speaker 3] (1:27:16 - 1:27:43)
Yeah, she wouldn't know. I'm not trying to humiliate enough, but there have been budget updates. I know that we've tried to get some traction in spite of the pandemic.

I mean, we've put a lot of experience on it.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:44 - 1:28:05)
And so while things are sort of – There also does need to be officially somebody who is responsible for that committee, because when we have a meeting of the whole, it can't be run by the chair.

[Speaker 12] (1:28:05 - 1:28:07)
It's not supposed to be run by the chair. That's correct.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:07 - 1:28:09)
So that's a technicality.

[Speaker 8] (1:28:11 - 1:28:15)
So I'm happy to stay there, but up to you guys.

[Speaker 2] (1:28:16 - 1:28:22)
So that's fine. Would someone else – John, you have first dibs, or would someone else like to join? John?

[Speaker 7] (1:28:24 - 1:28:29)
I'll stay unless someone else feels they wanted to. I'm fine with that.

[Speaker 2] (1:28:29 - 1:28:37)
You've been anointed. Thank you. On communications, myself and Amy, we had not met, so you want to just leave it the way it is?

[Speaker 4] (1:28:37 - 1:28:47)
Well, so it's kind of worked into more of like who to handle questions or emails that come in.

[Speaker 2] (1:28:47 - 1:28:50)
So I would say – Yeah, I would definitely like to do that.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:52 - 1:29:05)
But, you know, as I counseled, I think important to everyone is that being the chair doesn't mean you have to do it all. So feel free to delegate as you need. So you want to just make it you?

[Speaker 2] (1:29:05 - 1:29:21)
Yeah. I mean, it's fine with me. I kind of like having a partner.

Okay. So would someone like to continue? I'll stay.

Okay, thanks. Policy, Suzanne, if I could ask you to continue to do it.

[Speaker 16] (1:29:21 - 1:29:21)
Please.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:21 - 1:29:23)
You do this just so well.

[Speaker 13] (1:29:24 - 1:29:24)
Please do it.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:24 - 1:29:25)
If you don't mind.

[Speaker 13] (1:29:27 - 1:29:27)
Nope.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:28 - 1:29:29)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 13] (1:29:29 - 1:29:32)
Did you say nope? No, I don't mind. Thank you.

Oh, okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:33 - 1:29:35)
I have my heart distraught. No, you don't.

[Speaker 12] (1:29:35 - 1:29:37)
I'm done. Oh, God, please. I don't want that.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:38 - 1:29:45)
And, I mean, John, you're already on a couple of things. Do you want to continue with policy? Is there someone else who would like to do policy?

[Speaker 13] (1:29:45 - 1:29:47)
I kind of like John's take on policy.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:47 - 1:29:50)
Yeah, so do I, actually, Joe. I like your take.

[Speaker 15] (1:29:50 - 1:29:53)
I like how precise you are. I know.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:53 - 1:29:56)
I was there. Wellness?

[Speaker 6] (1:29:59 - 1:30:09)
Does that even, like? I know. Isn't that a good thing?

We'll figure that one out again. That one's just bothering me. I know we're supposed to have that subcommittee, and you're supposed to.

It's just. What, like.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:09 - 1:30:10)
What is wellness?

[Speaker 13] (1:30:10 - 1:30:10)
Wasn't it founded?

[Speaker 6] (1:30:11 - 1:30:17)
Like, there was some requirement. There's a policy that's. The state requires school committees to have a wellness committee.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:18 - 1:30:29)
I know. I have to. Oh, so you do submit things?

Yes. Because we are part of a national school wellness program.

[Speaker 16] (1:30:29 - 1:30:30)
Oh.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:30 - 1:30:31)
And there are requirements.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:39 - 1:30:43)
Yeah. Picture of health. Didn't I just have, like, four candy bars at our meeting?

[Speaker 2] (1:30:43 - 1:30:46)
Yeah, but she did a lot of biking the last couple weeks.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:46 - 1:30:49)
I am not qualified for that role.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:49 - 1:30:50)
So, would you mind.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:50 - 1:30:52)
Yeah, no. I'll stay on. I think I can.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:52 - 1:30:53)
Whatever that happens to be.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:53 - 1:30:57)
I have to. You have to do something more.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:57 - 1:31:00)
All right. The liaison to Metco.

[Speaker 15] (1:31:01 - 1:31:02)
Oh, I thought that was Suzanne.

[Speaker 2] (1:31:03 - 1:31:05)
You're first. Suzanne is a substitute.

[Speaker 15] (1:31:06 - 1:31:12)
I have been going to the meetings. What? I have been going to the PTO meetings.

Okay. I don't know why. I thought that was you.

[Speaker 2] (1:31:12 - 1:31:14)
You want to continue with that?

[Speaker 15] (1:31:14 - 1:31:14)
That's fine.

[Speaker 2] (1:31:15 - 1:31:15)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:31:18 - 1:31:20)
The other. The other. Oh, CPAC.

[Speaker 2] (1:31:20 - 1:31:38)
Okay. The liaison to the district special education PAC. I'm happy to continue that.

Kind of. We didn't meet because of the pandemic, but it's kind of something that's near and dear to me. You guys don't mind.

And then.

[Speaker 6] (1:31:38 - 1:31:47)
I think the other two we can just skip. I think they've been expanded. I mean, they're the same.

They're basically the same thing. Okay. Under different names.

[Speaker 2] (1:31:47 - 1:32:02)
All right. And if they happen to come back, we'll revisit that. All right.

Okay. Do I need a vote? I think you should.

Okay. So can I have a motion to approve all the new school committee subcommittees?

[Speaker 4] (1:32:03 - 1:32:07)
I will make a motion to approve as agreed in our previous conversation.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:08 - 1:32:15)
Second. All in favor? Aye.

All opposed? There are none. Thank you, everybody.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:15 - 1:32:17)
Well, that was easier than the.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:17 - 1:32:17)
All right.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:18 - 1:32:19)
Month that we were putting that off.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:19 - 1:32:25)
I know. All right. Subcommittee.

Suzanne. Could you tell us how everything's going on the building committee?

[Speaker 6] (1:32:26 - 1:33:00)
It hasn't been much activity since I last spoke with you. Other than if anyone's gone by. You've noticed the school is down and the site is just about cleaned up.

And yesterday we got all our filed subcontractors. We got their their proposals. And next.

On the 23rd, the school committee will probably be looking at general contractors and voting and voting someone in. So moving right along.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:01 - 1:34:16)
That's incredibly exciting. Awesome. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. And I think that's the only subcommittee we have a discussion about.

All right. Moving on to number eight. Consent agenda.

The consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business of the district. The school committee may adopt the entire consent agenda with one motion. At the request of any committee member, any item or items may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion.

So there are five items on the consent agenda. Executive session minutes from August 29, 2022. Regular session minutes from September 8, 2022.

Donation from the boosters regarding golf for paying for an additional coach. Donation from John Brew for the arts department and the aforementioned warrants 23-5, 23-7, 23-9, 23-11 and 23-12. Any discussion on any of these consent agenda items?

Okay. Can I have a motion to accept the consent agenda?

[Speaker 4] (1:34:18 - 1:34:19)
I'll make a motion to accept.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:20 - 1:34:23)
Second? Anyone? Second.

All right. All those in favor.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:23 - 1:34:28)
Wait. Before you go. Go.

Just publicly thank the donation, the people who made the donations.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:28 - 1:34:29)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:29 - 1:34:32)
Boosters and then Mr. Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:32 - 1:34:33)
Let me open that up.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:33 - 1:34:37)
I just think that's important. Sure. That we all know what the donations are made for.

[Speaker 4] (1:34:37 - 1:34:48)
Sure. I have to say I appreciate this gift to the art department that it includes photographs. Yeah.

I can't remember the last time we saw that and that's helpful.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:48 - 1:35:50)
So the first one here and I apologize for reading this. Donation from name of the donor is the Swansea High School Golf Boosters and the funding source was the boosters themselves. The total amount was $1,525.

The donation was for a coaching stipend. Let me go down the bottom here. Money to pay for an additional coach for boys golf.

And so I thank the golf boosters for that. We appreciate all your support to the team and Swampscot Athletics. And just as a note, I remember from my aforementioned social media page, the golf boosters, I believe are having a benefit golf tournament on the next.

I believe it's next Saturday, the 22nd at Salem Municipal Golf Course. If you're interested, please go check out your Facebook or Instagram page.

[Speaker 6] (1:35:50 - 1:35:58)
Also, I just want to say it's not the boys golf team. It's golf. It's the Swampscot High School golf team because it's coed.

Okay, I'm sorry. Just so you know.

[Speaker 2] (1:35:58 - 1:35:59)
Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Speaker 6] (1:35:59 - 1:36:00)
I'm just reading from here. It's a coed sport.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:01 - 1:36:02)
All right, great.

[Speaker 6] (1:36:02 - 1:36:02)
A coed team.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:02 - 1:37:10)
I did not know that. All right. Thank you.

I apologize for that misstatement. And then the other donation. Okay.

And again, pardon me here. The donor is John Brew. John is a resident of Nahant.

He made a donation of $500. The description is photography equipment, lighting, backdrops, and stand to give the students the use of some professional equipment. And he did attach some photos.

So to John, to Mr. Brew, I really appreciate that on behalf of the Swampscot School Committee and the district. Thank you very much for your very generous donation. We really appreciate that.

The kids will definitely appreciate that. There's a very large, there's a robust number of students who take advantage of that. So thank you very much.

And Suzanne, thank you for reminding me to read those.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:11 - 1:37:17)
And just as a matter of form, I know that the superintendent's office sends out thank you's for all the gifts that are on here. Oh, great.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:17 - 1:37:25)
Thank you. All right. So can I have a, let's try it again.

Can I have a motion to accept the consent agenda?

[Speaker 4] (1:37:26 - 1:37:27)
I'll make the motion. Second.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:27 - 1:37:53)
All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

There is no one opposed. The motion carries. It is now public comment time.

I don't believe there's one person out there. Does anyone in cyberspace want to make a comment? Please raise your hand or let us know one way or another.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:59 - 1:38:01)
I can't access that to see it there.

[Speaker 2] (1:38:03 - 1:38:14)
All right. I don't know. Yeah.

No hands. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. So with that, can I have a motion to adjourn? My goodness.

I will make that motion.

[Speaker 16] (1:38:14 - 1:38:15)
Second.

[Speaker 2] (1:38:15 - 1:38:19)
All right. All in favor. Aye.

Good night, everybody. Thank you for joining.