School Committee - Grafton Public Schools - Regular Meeting

Good evening everybody and welcome to the September 23rd, 2026 school committee meeting. I'm going to call the meeting to order and see if there is any public comment on Zoom because there isn't any in the room. No, okay, seeing no public comment, we're gonna jump right into general business and start with our new HR director, Laura Cahill, giving an HR update. And I should note, we did have an operations update on our agenda for tonight, and that has been pushed to our next meeting.

All right hi everybody having me I'm just going to give a brief update on. How the twenty six twenty seven school year has started in relation to the arm of the district that is human resources and all those procedures and. No, there we go. Got it. So I want to start with just because I'm new to the district. I've been here just about 3 months. So I want to just talk about how I have gotten oriented to the district coming in. So, 1st of all, I started by doing school visits with the superintendent. We visited. Every school, that was my first visit to every school, so just kind of getting to know what the layout of the school is and meet some of the key players and say hi to some of the students and just stop in and do some visits. I've been to all of the schools multiple times at this point, which has been some of the best days that I have, right? It's getting into the schools. The other thing that I've been doing very... kind of specifically is creating a relationship with our bargaining unit leaders, the ones that have current leadership. So spending a lot of time with the power union leadership and the GTA leadership in forging that relationship. So both email, phone calls, visits, and so forth. I've had a lot of opportunities to connect with Sharon Siegel, our legal counsel. some questions asking some historical background on things you know as i work on things i'm wondering where did this how did this come to be or where did this come from and connecting with her on those things which is really helpful not to mention everybody else in central office has so much background that's really helpful for me Working with the finance office and the benefits office. So those are two offices we've instituted weekly and biweekly meetings respectively for those and connecting with them on a regular basis just to make sure we're keeping consistency for everybody across the district. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention the full HR team. It's myself and Marita. Steinmetz Felton she has been an amazing trainer for me coming in just showing me how things have worked you know she's a graduate of Grafton Public Schools and has been here a long time so really developing a partnership with her so that we are on the same page and working towards a common goal and giving clear and consistent messaging to the district is really important So speaking of Marita, I think really the bulk of the work that we've done the first couple of months has been our hiring and onboarding, which essentially is welcoming and integrating all of our new staff into the district. So honestly, I think it was day one, maybe day two that I was involved in my first hiring interview. So I have done all of those with Dr. Cummings. We, Marita, gets the hiring packet or the recommendation from the hiring principal, she reaches out to the candidate and then Dr. Cummings and I meet with that person and talk through any questions they have. We ask them questions and then that's how we go about the hiring process. For me, it's so nice to meet with every hire in person. It's really a nice way to bring people into the district and make that connection right away. And then as we're hiring everybody into the summer, there are two technology info sessions that we do for new teachers specifically to get them connected to all of their platforms. There's so much to be done when you're a new teacher, not only curriculum teaching and learning things, but just the logistics of contacting everybody. Then we had the new staff orientation, which was, you know, a great success to two full days with everybody from central office involved. And then we do day by day substitute orientations every two weeks because we want to make sure we have enough day by day substitutes onboarded if needed. And then lastly, In terms of getting people onboarded, the superintendent and I have started to now revisit all of our new teachers and just see how they're faring, see what it is they could, you know, if they need any help from us or they have any particular questions. And I am working with the Office of Curriculum and Professional Learning on licensure to make sure that our veteran teachers and teachers who are in need of renewing their licensure, that everybody's keeping up on that. So that keeps us very busy. In total, since July 1st, including myself, there have been 45 new hires. which is pretty impressive for a district this size, in my opinion. So in terms of staffing numbers, right now we are fully staffed with the exception of one position. That position has been posted now for, it'll be two weeks tomorrow, and the interview process is starting. Since July 1, we've had a total of four resignations of staff. In many cases, those are people who weren't working over the summer, but resigned before the school year started. And we've had five staff tell us of their intentions to retire during this school year. So some might be coming up soon and some might not be until the end of the school year. In total, we have processed or are in process for 19 leaves of absence, all different types of leaves of absence. So currently we have six staff on leave, three who have an approved intermittent leave six who have upcoming leaves and four of those have already returned from leave. So one note on this slide is just that one of the goals as we move into the budget season and we're working with principals and the finance office that Kathleen and the rest of central office and I are working carefully on position management. One thing that is so common in school districts is that we start with our list of people. We start with our list of employees instead of starting with a list of positions. So I'm working to make sure that we are tracking positions. And I think this is one thing that the superintendent and I talked about when I first came on. This is going to be a benefit to the district to make sure that we're starting with a list of positions and making sure that we have the correct titles and who's in which union and just categorizing all of our positions properly. And then last but not least, we're about to embark on a really big project together, which is our collective bargaining. So we know that our four bargaining agreements expire at the end of FY27. So we have set an internal goal to establish our initial negotiation dates by December 15th with the goal of starting negotiations in early January. And that's a very quick overview and update, but I'm open to any questions you might have for me.

Anyone have any?

Great. Thank you so much and welcome. We're so glad to have you here. It's so nice to have somebody who has experience come in and just even the way you're talking about things makes me feel a little bit better that we're a little more buttoned up as needed and that you're dedicated to this. So thank you and great presentation. I had actually just one question, I think, and that was... Oh, two. One was... Have you been working with the new hires? Are they connected with mentors or anybody within the schools? Yes. They are.

So that's a state requirement, a DESE requirement. So, jen manion's office the office of curriculum professional learning oversees the content of the mentor program and doing some of the matching and then i assist her in that um because it is connected to licensure so those are that's you know that's one of the things that overlaps between our two offices that's great so everybody's been assigned a mentor at this point gotcha good and then um oh i guess you said that

And I don't know, not all of our units have leadership? Is that, or elected?

People, are we waiting on some or? That is to be determined. I don't want to miss a week.

No, I don't want you to do that either. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. But our two biggest units have people that I'm in contact with regularly. Our two smaller units, I've been in contact with the employees, but I can't speak tonight as to where they are in terms of leadership or an election. That's totally fair.

Great. Thank you, Laura. Really appreciate it. Great to see you.

Yeah, I've heard such wonderful things about you, so welcome. I just have a couple of quick questions. So were you able to attend the retreat from the district? You were, right? Yes. And I had seen in the slide before, but it's now not there. Did you give a presentation at that retreat?

Yes.

Yeah, what was that in regard, like, just out of curiosity?

Um, just working with the school leaders to find out what things they think have been going well, in terms of human resources, it was really more of a session for me to orient myself to the district. What's going well in terms of human resources? What do you think? You know, need some consistency and so forth.

Okay, one more quick question. In regards to, I don't know if we could pull back the slide with the new hires and the leave of absence. Yeah, with the leave of absence, sorry, the next one. The leave of absence, so it says 19 leave of absence. I'm a little confused because you said that four have returned, so is it, because those four numbers add to 19. So I don't, I'm just curious, is it that there were 15 leaves of absence and then four returned until there's 11 leaves of absence? Is it 19 leaves of absence is like different things that we deal with with leave of absence?

So 19 leaves of absence have been either initiated and or are happening or about to happen or have closed.

Okay. So how many do we have leave of absence? Yeah, that's staff. That's six. Okay.

And then three intermittent leave, which is not a consecutive leave.

Okay. Thank you.

Anyone have anything else? I'm very happy you're here.

I am very happy to be here. It's been a great place to be.

You said that it's been nice to meet with new hires in person. Is that not the norm in other districts where you've worked or?

So I came from a much larger district where a team of people did hiring a team of HR staff. hired people over the phone, Zoom meetings. It was very rare in my role as an HR director to meet face to face with a new hire. So this is something that I really like because you can kind of get the pulse on where is this person coming from and where might they need support? So in my experience, I hadn't done that. And I wasn't hired that way. I was kind of hired just, here's some paper and here's your letter in the mail. Elsewhere, not here. Elsewhere, yeah. Oh, here I had lots of face-to-face time. I really knew exactly what I was getting into by the time I came here. Did you? Do you ever really? We can talk about that.

So I can't speak to what other districts of different sizes do. It struck me that you said you were enjoying that, so I wondered if it was different from your last position, which makes sense. It was a much larger district.

Yeah, I love that piece.

Well, we are thrilled to have you. It looks like you're very organized and hit the ground running, and we just, yeah, thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

All right, we'll go into superintendent goals with Dr. Cummings.

All right, they're doing my goals, yep. I drafted two goals for the consideration of the committee. First, the goal reached briefly. The first is to increase staffing diversity. About 30% of our students are students of color, roughly 5% of our staff are staff of color. That's not unique to graft in by any way shape or form. It's a tremendous challenge for everybody. I thought it was a worthy goal to dive into for the next couple of years in partnership with Laura. She actually. Identified that. this alliance partnership, and I'll be providing over the coming year more information about it. But I think it's relatively new, the Massachusetts Educator Equity Alliance. There are 10 other districts involved in it, so fairly small. We're gonna go to a conference put on by the alliance on October 30th. They have just tons of resources for us to dive into. So that's gonna be huge with those resources, a pipeline connection to higher ed and what they call recruitment pathways to get into that early. In the past, we have gone to diversity fairs. We've gone to kind of one-off events and that's what most districts do. This is a lot more thorough and planned out. And then the third piece, we're gonna create a three-year district educator diversity plan. I don't know if that's required yet, but it's on the horizon of being required by the state. So we would do that anyhow, but now to do it, doing basically everything that we can possibly do to increase our chances of increasing diversity seems to be like a very wise move in my mind. Any questions on that one?

Yeah, I have questions. So my question is, is that you state that it's going to, you want to identify, increase by 50% over the baseline three-year target. What are the, these are percentages. What does that number look like? Like what is that number?

You're hoping that you... 15, so we'd go up to around 22, but I can double check that. I put the measurement part, to be just quite frank, I put there can be any number you guys like. If we increase that number by 15, lovely. If we increase it by two, that's great as well. I want to, at the end of year two, to know that we've tried everything that we can possibly try to increase staffing diversity. And I'll be thrilled with that, even if the number doesn't move. And odds are it won't. It's super competitive, looking to increase diversity. As you well know, we don't pay at the top of regional scales, which makes it even more challenging for us. So it's more ambitious than the thousand classrooms. I'll certainly say that.

So this is a two-year goal. So yeah, I think that in order for us to really know, we need to know what that number looks like, because right now with percentages without numbers, that doesn't really mean that much.

Right, when I report out, I'd have to show that, sure.

Yeah. The other question is, why are we pigeonholing it to just be licensed instructional staff who identify as educators? Why is it just licensed staff? Like secretaries? I mean, why wouldn't it be all staff?

And I think with that 5%, we'd find that I bet you the majority of that is not the instructional staff, but the ideal would be to have in front of our 30%. Of students who are students of color. A representative for a more representative percentage. We have 2 individuals who are students are not students staff of color on our maintenance team. That's wonderful, but they're not in front of. Kids basically at all, they might see them, you know, on a field somewhere, but that's very different than instructional staff.

So this is very specifically a teacher.

That's correct.

Not a counselor. But I'm just trying to understand what the goal is, like, how we're going to measure the goal to broaden it.

Counselors would be lovely. The more we can have diversity who are. among our staff who are interacting with our students on a daily basis i think is phenomenal does that include paraprofessionals sure oh yeah i wouldn't rule anybody else that would be great yeah right yeah so i just think you're brought in you know doing tech in the back room that's great but They're not in front of kids, I'll say.

Student-facing staff, increasing diversity there. But I think it's fair to focus on instructional staff because a school district could hire a bunch of people in non-student-facing roles. And then how have you really changed the culture in the schools? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think it's fair to focus on instructional staff. I think maybe the licensed part, you know, like a para, a coach, is also valuable, right?

So yeah, beyond the hiring, what about retaining? Because isn't that, hasn't that been a problem of retaining people?

I'm more worried about, I'll be worried about retaining once we hire.

So this is a two-year goal. Is that typical that we do a two-year goal?

We did, I think. The last two years, we set them up as two-year goals, I think. No?

We have in the past. We have in the past.

I'm really OK if you want to make it one. I think this is too much to make. Yeah, it's too much, but it doesn't. No, it needs to be two years. Let's be honest. We're not going to move the needle tremendously in 20 months.

But we also just did a big hiring. So by the time we hit the end of the year where we're measuring you, hopefully we're not hiring 40 new people this school year. So I feel like we need to give you time to go through the hiring process again, right? Like we just had the hiring.

I would think so.

So that, sorry, come on. Yeah, please. I'm sorry, are you good?

Yeah, I just had one more question. So yeah, of the 45 people that you just hired, kind of what she's saying, how many were people of color?

I don't know. Not many. That I know.

Okay.

Yeah, I just... With all of them, I'd have to go through and give it some real thought. But certainly, about probably 5%.

Yeah, well, I do appreciate the goal and I want this goal to succeed. I just don't understand without actual numbers and what a plan is for retention. I want this goal to succeed. So I just would need some numbers of some sort.

OK. The second goal.

Wait. I have more questions. I just wanted to add, it does seem like part of the action and implementation is establishing retention trends. That's how I read that. Christy, I don't know.

Yeah, I didn't know what he was going to do as far as how to retain.

I don't really know. Maybe that's part of the goal. That's part and parcel with the alliance part. I haven't been losing sleep over retention. because we haven't figured out the hiring. But that will be a great problem to tackle.

But that wasn't my question. One, I'm pleased to see this goal as well. I know we danced, we talked about it in the early 2020. We started kind of going down this initiative and so it's great to see it back. I love that there's now at least some support in the alliance. My thought is we're kind of swapping people of color and diversity and saying both, which I feel like people of color is part of diversity and also sexual orientation and class and all these other things. So it seems like this is more focused on just diversity in, I guess, color.

Ethnic race, ethnicity.

Yeah, ethnicity. Thank you. I could not think of the word ethnicity. So I don't know if you want to just because I like also thinking about diversity in general. There's there's a lot different religions. I mean, there's a lot that you bring in and that's not something you can ask people. I'm sure Laura will come right back in here. Exactly. Yeah. As I'm going down this terrible path after Laura leaves.

What do you believe?

No, you can't actually, even I know that. So I guess that I just answered my own question on that. But it's kind of just in the goal back and forth. So I just wanted. I think it's fair.

I mean, disability. Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of meanings to diversity.

Yeah, that's all I mean. But obviously. those are not some of those are not things you really can call out from people nor should you but i'm glad to see this especially with all that's going on in the world right now in our country that we are making this a priority so thank you

Does anyone have? I do. I just, so my thinking, because I know Christy wants a number and I know, like, how do you measure a goal if you don't have a number, which I absolutely agree with in some ways, but I also feel like there's so much of this part that's out of our control where it's like, I love that there's a plan to make this so that we're doing best practices to attract the people we want to attract. And we can only do as much as we can do in that respect. So I just, I think it, I mean, with many of our goals, it's sort of, you know, it's great to put a number on there, but that number not being the number we hit doesn't mean we didn't make great strides. So I love that there's a plan. It's not just let's aim for this number. It's like, we're gonna do these very specific things. so that we're doing a better job attracting the people we want to attract. And I really, I appreciate that. And I do think it's important to put a number at the end so we can point at that. But I think the number is less important in this specific goal.

Go ahead. I guess with this alliance, did you say it's a new kind of partnership?

I believe it is. There are 10 other districts, relatively small.

And over the summer when you were hiring, I think the 14 or no, sorry, I lost the count of the number of hires, but did we, is that something you saw through the hiring that we were kind of not having diversity candidates apply?

For the past 16 years. In that, again, just I want to be crystal clear, it's a problem in Grafton, but it's a problem in every neighboring suburban district. It just is.

Okay, thank you. Just one more quick question. Dr. Cummings, how many teachers do we have?

About 270. Okay. And that does include counselors, that type of thing, professional staff. Great. I love this goal. All right. Can I now go to the second goal? Please. Um, also a great, as you know, we have a growing English learner population with this goal. My plan is to become much more involved with the English learner. Program I've certainly been involved with it, but never with. Great depth. This year, in the next 10 months, we've got a bit of a void where Jen Manion's been doing a really nice job just keeping afloat with the program. It's been a challenge with its growth. We've got Juliana Kessler-Marcos on board. She's got unparalleled expertise in this area, but for the year, I expect her to primarily be focused on being a great principal at South Grafton Elementary. I see an opportunity for me to jump in, to get involved, get to know the teachers, the programming, the scheduling, take a look at the data. MCAS is rolling out right now. We'll have access data that all EL students participate in in late winter. And then my plan is to circle back with the progress reports on what I've learned. know what strengths needs and how to best move forward this spring that's great very exciting just a quick point of clarification so you think that you're you are right now like owning the el department no i did not say that um i will leave ownership to juliana and jen manion all the horrible Things with reports and grants and real schedules, et cetera. On, uh, maybe not the 30,000 feet, but 15,000 foot lens. I'm going to be trying to support them and being much more involved in the program.

All right. So this day to day goal is more like for Juliana and.

And Jen, they're going to. They're going to run all the data, collect it, organize it. I'll be a part of that. I'll be a part of the meetings with the different teaching staff to go over it. I'm going to try to learn as much as I possibly can about the EL program.

Do you know if that that is going to go forward this year? I know some of they started last year. Yeah.

Yeah. It was really pretty successful last year, especially for a 1st year. So I'll be involved in that, but Jen will still be officially running running it.

I'm excited about this goal. I really feel like, I mean, the numbers, you can't ignore them, how quickly they're growing. But I love that it's like, let's put it at the forefront and not just try and, you know, cobble things together as the numbers just grow. So I love this goal.

Me too. I'm excited about this one.

I like how they work together in some ways, the goals. Like they're both about sort of making our schools community a lot more welcoming and reflective of how it's changing and who's involved. And so I'm really pleased with the focus in these areas. So thank you for that. Great. Anybody have anything else? okay all right next on the agenda is a budget subcommittee update uh we don't have i think you'd agree christy much of an update um so i'd like to use this item to sort of um respond to the superintendent asking for more clarity from the full committee as to exactly the our shared understanding is about what the subcommittee is going to deliver to the full committee the way I see it our charge kind of had two parts one is developing sort of a transparent and consistent budget process for the school committee and the other was recommending processes for school committee oversight of line item transfers non-general fund stuff so there's sort of the budget process and budget communication process that the school committee goes through and then there's that oversight piece where we're reviewing things that we're supposed to be reviewing from a financial standpoint and um

I guess, Dr. Cummings, what point of clarification do you need?

I put two simple slides together just to get some assistance.

It would have been nice to get ahead.

Yeah, a lot of things.

What I hope we walk away from this discussion is sort of the answer to two questions. What financial information does the full committee want to receive regularly?

and what role should the budget subcommittee play in reviewing that information and bringing it back and sort of improving that whole process is that fair yeah i think that the subcommittee has kind of identified some needs of that weren't not necessarily being brought in front of committee in the past correct is that fair to say yeah sure and we'd like to understand the process and and to figure out how how it is that we move forward in creating a process and what it is that the committee needs from that.

Right. I feel like there's, I wanna delineate very clearly between sort of developing a process for financial oversight and auditing the financial, like that isn't our job.

I think that's exactly it. Okay. What simply feels like a open-ended, never-ending IRS audit. That's not the greatest, but I'm glad we're having the discussion.

No, nobody likes that.

But the clarity around going forward, not just for me, really for Kathleen, because budget-wise, she's gonna be the one that runs the reports and whatever. What is needed, what that should look like, and kind of what format, whether it's a presentation from her or me, or if it's a memo, what have you, and a timeline around that would be great. And this is just where I'm confused and I'm glad that you're allowing me to speak to it, but these are the deliverables. So right from the... the scope or the the charge of the subcommittee i look at those and those make sense to me like i get it i don't see that as the superintendent say oh this is going to be some real heavy lifting this is going to be super labor intensive um makes sense so we oh do you want to go through sure that would be great okay well let's so the I believe I probably have, feel free to set me straight, but I think there was a meeting with the subcommittee and the school finance director, Kathleen.

Yeah, so I'll set you straight with that to start with. So that meeting, we had requested materials prior to the meeting and we did not receive them till in meeting, even though they'd been printed a month before. So that meeting was more actually just collecting paper than it was to have a meet to go and review the documentation.

All right, let's go through this. I'll be real quick. But then the information was provided. I provided it to the entire committee. Everything that was asked for, and it was basically the building blocks of what go into creating an end of year report, which if you want, I'm happy to speak to that. But that's a big pain in the neck thing that every finance director has to do in the fall. Submit it to the state, it gets audited, they work through it in December, they audit, from an outside auditor comes in, audits it in January. And then in the next few months, if everything goes well, they publicize it. It becomes an official end of year report. This past year, it's always trailing by a year, but 2025, FY25 just got posted in August. So it takes a while. But these are the building blocks that we submit to DESE in, they're actually due September 30th. I don't know of a district that doesn't get an extension into October or early November and then it gets submitted. So I shared all these documents. I know there was some mix up with paper and all that stuff. And then

i think the subcommittee met with the finance director to review the documents is that not no no no no we have not so i think that we did get printouts of the same things you linked to um and as you know they're direct from the accounting they're like direct yeah unless the subcommittee wants us to create something no no no we're not looking we're not so let me just finish yeah

So that was shared with everybody. As far as I know, she's been open to receive emails or calls or whatever. Last week, and this is the confusing part to me, I was asked, invited to a meeting with myself, the school finance director, Kathleen, and Mary Lauria, the town finance director. And I believe one of the emails said there were some concerns or issues or something. And at that point, going back to, the charge, I look at that and those two worlds don't link up in any way, shape or form in my mind. So I'm simply looking for clarity tonight.

So Dr. Cummings, also in the charge in Section 5.2, it says that we receive support and historical information. And that's what I think that we're looking for, is information, not just a stack of papers. Because if we're just handed a stack of papers and not given the chance as a subcommittee to meet, and I'm not, we do not want to, and part of the reason why this whole subcommittee exists is that we're not going to be calling Kathleen on a daily basis with one-off questions. That's part of the purpose of the subcommittee is that two members of this committee can receive the same information at the same time and bring back this to the full committee of what it is that we learned or what types of communicate the protocols as you're saying here. So for us, we need to receive information beyond just.

I guess though and yes like what we got was like a lot and really impossible to kind of go through and Kathleen very helpfully said that you know when she prepares the information for the year end report for DESE, she will have perhaps clearer and more context filled documents than what she's able to generate directly from the accounting software. But I think as I've kind of, as we've gone through this process and the difficulty, I think what we have to determine committee wide is, is the subcommittee reviewing that or is the subcommittee working on the process of getting all that stuff in front of the full committee?

Well, I think that my question would be, since DESE requires that the school committee chair sign off on that year end, That's a requirement that the chair sign off on it. That the whole committee having a full understanding of the year end reports is quite important in order for the sign off to be with belief that it's correct.

Right. I just want to be crystal clear that while my, what I'm hearing is Leora wants kind of a summary, like with context, what we provide, and this is the busiest time of the year for Kathleen. and every other business officer that works in the school district, she provided what gets submitted, those VADAR reports that aren't user-friendly, that's what goes to DESE. So we can more than happy to take the end of year raw data, which is gonna look like what you already have, and share it with the entire committee leora's got to sign off on it but with every other chair you're not going to say you don't know what you're looking at but nobody really does full of content it hasn't been vetted it hasn't been audited there are all these steps we haven't even submitted it yet so i would ask if if you want what Leora is talking about with, if you just take each of these things, and if we had a one page summary, kind of going back to, I looked at August 6th, she sent out a Q4 end of year report. It was 11 pages of VADAR, but it was also two pages of just a summary. We could produce all that. I would ask that you at least give her a chance to submit the year end report to DESE and then have her do extra work for the subcommittee.

Yeah, and I think, well, sorry to interrupt. To be fair, I do understand the VEDA reports. I do understand them. Yes, I do.

No, I thought I heard you say you didn't. So you got everything you wanted.

But there still remains some questions on something might not match another VEDA report. Is that the work of the subcommittee now?

That sounds like an audit.

It's not an audit, Dr. Cummings.

It kind of sounds like that.

Let's go back to- Gather information means having the ability to ask questions and not receiving the information until in meeting, even though it'd been printed a month before. not responding to scheduling requests, then canceling a meeting within 24 hours of the meeting, and now pushing this off. It just seems like we just keep delaying and delaying and delaying, and we have a deliverable by October, and we cannot get a meeting.

So are you trying to problem solve what you believe to be errors in the raw data going to something that's gonna be audited? And to fix that, we're gonna have a meeting with the town finance director, school finance director, and superintendent. Do I have that right?

Quick question, who audits it?

The state? No, an outside auditor. By whom? I don't know the name of the firm.

But so I just wanna back, I wanna back up though, right? Like if I look at like, if I look at section 2.4 of the subcommittee charge, right? The subcommittee shall recommend procedures to ensure the school committee fulfills its statutory oversight responsibility over all district funds, not only the general operating budget, but the charge is to recommend procedures, not, Right. Intensely like look at the report. I mean, we're obviously looking at the report, but I get that you, it has been frustrating and we are not getting to our actual work, which is recommending processes for reviewing non-general fund stuff and transfers and communicating and more smoothly doing a budget every year. And so I wanna go back to the recommending processes like, I would rather put together a report template that says, this is the report we're gonna expect from Kathleen every quarter. And we talked about this.

Yeah, no, we have no problem putting together a template, but I think that when subcommittee calls a meeting to get questions answered, like when we ask for materials ahead of a meeting to get the materials, like that whole other meeting was just a massive waste of time because all we did was receive 50 pages of data reports like this. And then when we then developed questions off of that, we can't get a meeting.

Can I just ask? Yeah, sure. So I'm listening and obviously three of us are kind of in the dark and getting a lot of information where I don't feel prepared or that I really understand what's going on. But as somebody's supervisor, one fifth of a supervisor, I'm at least hearing some frustration on both ends. There's obviously been asks that either That you are confused on, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are making you uncomfortable or that you're not able to deliver. I'm hearing frustration from members of the committee that they feel like they're not getting what they need to do their job in the subcommittee.

I think we have a bigger problem and is that.

we're unable to really be working together well, and that to me is really my biggest concern about all this. I think a lot of this, the VADAR report is not part of your charge at all, and I was the one who wanted this subcommittee, and it was mostly because I did not want a repeat of what happened last year, was that we had somebody redo the budget in January, we had other committees accusing us of not finishing our budget because we were making them redo it, And we were just kind of throwing a lot on the table. So I wanted us to take a step back. We very nicely came up with this great deliverables and charges. I'm thinking. As I like to think where this is the 1st time through, we might need to adjust and edit and figure that out because maybe it sounds to me. This isn't working. So if we need to take a step back. Because I've never had, I've never had this kind of, I mean, and it's great that we're having it, but like. Subcommittees you represent our committee, which is phenomenal and I appreciate it, but we have to be able to work together and I'm feeling like just. Like, what's going on and I don't know that's just how I feel. Okay.

Yeah, I think there is some. I think the charge is probably fine. I think it's the interpretation of the charge and. What I'm worried about is that we're being really focused on reports instead of process. And I too have been, you know, we agreed to the set of reports, we ran it by this whole committee, and you guys all agreed to the set of reports. And so we got the reports as they exist, and we told Kathleen to use system-generated reports. Once we saw the system-generated reports, we went, oh, these are... Not clear.

Right. It's just like in 5.2, we should get support from administration. And that's part of the charge. And we just don't feel as though we're getting, like, we can get materials. You can hand me 5,000 pieces of paper. I'll certainly go through them. But we should be granted the right as any subcommittee would to ask questions, just like in the subcommittee when I reached out to Ashley Paulson, could we get a meeting to talk about this or that? Like that should be available.

I guess what I feel, is that as I saw how it all played out and as I revisit the charge, I think we're too focused on the substance of the reports instead of the process of getting the reports in front of the whole committee. I think that's gonna be more successful for us, Christy, than taking apart these reports outside of the full committee. The full committee's gotta review them.

To be fair, I mean, you don't even know the questions I wanted to ask. Quite frankly. So to call it an audit or anything else other than, you have no idea.

Well, no, it was stated that there were, I think it was issues or problems. It was one of the two. A question, so with my verbiage? No, it wasn't questions, it was issues or problems.

So with my verbiage.

Well, yeah.

I guess my question is, how much time as a committee with all of our subcommittees are we taking up from you? And how much of a priority? And this is for all of us to really prioritize again, which is why we need to set our goals, why we need to really think about what is moving the needle in our district to help student achievement. Our budget is a big part of our job, obviously, and how we present it to the public is a big part. There were questions in the past. Maybe we haven't followed everything, you know, transfers. I think we definitely all agreed we need to button up on that. So I guess my concern is like how much of your job is managing your school committee right now and answering different questions and how much of it is actually Doing your job, because I always say to you, like, having 5 bosses would make my mind go exploded and we put together our government governance and what we were required to do. So it sounds like this. I don't know what's going on and I don't think I really want it. I mean, we don't need to get into, like, the native 3 and that needs to be worked out. You guys are adults, but I want to know, just as a committee member, like.

My goal today is for the committee to reaffirm. Here's what we want from the subcommittee. We want a process. We don't want we want, you know. Report formats, or, you know, a report template that we get quarterly. And that's it or you know what I mean? Like, I feel that there's a miss well in. there's different interpretation of the charge, which we all talked about and we all agreed to.

I'm just saying like we asked for those year end reports, the whole committee agreed to that. And we had put that on our whole school committee meeting. It was supposed to be deliverable by last meeting. We held that because we were under the assumption that you would have wanted questions prior to that in full meeting. I mean, the whole committee agreed to those year-end reports. That was not, and that should have been, and transparently, that goes on a school committee in meeting for matters of transparency, even if you just give the VEDA reports.

But the report you said isn't done till October. No, that's different.

No, he said no, he didn't read our report. On Thursday.

Yeah, yeah, we have them. We do have them.

But you didn't put them in the- The committee wants- Yeah, but it was on the agenda for last meeting and we said we'll hold it off so that the subcommittee has a chance to meet with you to ask a question. I don't create the agenda, Dr. Cummings.

No, well, listen, I knew we weren't going to be discussing the report. We don't need to discuss 500 pages of VADAR reports. I wouldn't think so. We need the exact thing you said, which is a summary, when Kathleen is able to do it and it makes sense. And the entire committee, right.

Most of this stuff in some form is in the some, the template of most of these, we have. We have a school choice summary. We can update it to numbers from, update the numbers, but most of this we have. We could do that.

I think we have to go back again. I guess I wanted to reinforce that the charges process not diving into the report.

But it's not diving into the reports, but receiving a stack of paper like part of our charge states and i guess i'll just keep saying this over and over again is that they should provide administrative support including financial reports timelines and historic materials okay support goes beyond a stack of paper but you asked for the vedar and i asked but i also asked for a meeting to get the report and to have a meeting finance director The reason with the finance director was because when Kathleen gave us the reports, she had stated that it was with.

I'm really worried about going over and over. I don't wanna go over and over this again.

We just need a meeting.

This is useless.

So you're never gonna give us meetings.

This is what you want in a more contextualized way. I can talk with Kathleen.

Well, does the whole committee want the whole thing in a contextualized?

Sorry?

I just have 1 quick question. What does support mean for this committee? Doesn't does it entail like that? We just get. The paper, or that the subcommittee has the ability to have a subcommittee meeting with the finance director or with the superintendent.

So. to me the meetings with the superintendent or the school finance director are related to us building process not to us reading the reports so that's fine there's plenty of opportunity when the reports are ready for the entire committee to dive into the reports if we need to but i think we're getting hung up and not doing okay yeah to deliver because we're not We're getting hung up on, what are the reports? Are we auditing the reports? I put the, you know, people feeling that we're auditing the reports. People, you know. Our job is to make sure that the entire committee is doing what there's, you know, getting access to the right finance. So I guess I just wanted to give Dr. Cummings an opportunity to talk about your experience and your understanding of it and have the committee as a whole reaffirm what we've agreed that the subcommittee is supposed to do.

Right, so one other quick question, Dr. Cummings, in regards to that DESE report. We've never received DESE reports, ever, this committee.

Yeah, they're all on the DESE website.

They haven't been presented to the school committee. They've never been presented to the school committee.

Yeah, no, we never would.

It's like- Okay, so are you saying, when you said about the year-end thing, is she going to be presenting a DESE year-end report to us? Is that what we've stated?

Oh, that's a wonderful question. I would think not. typically no we've got her coming at the next meeting we could you have the year-end information from August whatever that was sick okay is that what when we get to future agenda that would be super helpful for me just have clarity over what's expected for her in two weeks

Okay, thank you.

Do we feel? Yeah, everybody understand or I did not understand.

Nope. Nope.

Nope.

I mean, but I think if you feel good about it, I just really. I guess I would- I still have concerns, but I'll let you guys finish your process. I'd like the process to not get in the way of the progress of our district, too.

Right, yeah, we just wanna make progress as a subcommittee, is what we've been trying to do.

I would like the committee to reaffirm to the subcommittee that our charge is about process, not the individual line items or individual reports. Is that fair, that the subcommittee was formed because we felt that we needed a better budget process for our larger committee?

So, by process, are you asking, like, Kathleen to, like, provide, like, timely reports? Like, she, like, she has in the past, like, the quarterly and, like, that is part of it.

Right? There are certain things that we're supposed to review and approve and we want to make sure those are being done. But. And on a larger level. When are we gonna see things in terms of budget development? How is the committee going to handle those items that we receive? How are we going to communicate them to the public? How are we going to share them? That's to me what the committee really is. And also there's that piece of making sure we're checking the boxes on the statutory stuff we have to review. Not outside of full committee diving into reports that are 50 pages long printed out of radar.

Right? Do you have a motion? I don't know.

I voted on Yeah, yeah.

Okay. I will note that there's a template that the government mask of Yeah, on what is supposed to be in a year and finance.

Yeah, report. I think that's not what we need.

Subcommittee. Yeah, that you follow or otherwise, we would hear from Jesse.

Correct.

yeah no he shared the excel doc and i looked at i asked some of my superintendent friends and they sent me and they looked exactly like the reports you gave me which would have come from kathleen yeah they all look the same okay yeah all right thanks guys yep uh you're up student representative report first of the year yes we've had a pretty solid start to the year um we have yearbooks on sale right now for 70 dollars discounted price um

Open campus has started. I think we have a policy change this year where we're accepting physical passes instead of the typical like usually pull up our power school schedules. So that's new. We have homecoming week is set for October 19th so it's that full week and we are replacing the class competitions with the pep rally this year I believe which is a big change because we've been doing class competitions for a while but um I think after like recent years of like it's like too much to handle so There's been some pushback from the seniors, but I think we've cleared it up. So I think we're going to be switching out class competitions with the pep rally during homecoming week and then doing competitions later on in the year. So we have Last thing we have Gator Gab is reinstated. So I don't know if you ever heard about it, but I think a couple of years ago, we had an extended block set aside for the entire school to meet up and talk about a certain topic. So that's coming back this year for Grafton. And I think our next Gator Gab is going to be on AI. So that's going to be really helpful. It's going to be like a whole school. I think we haven't reviewed what the school's expectations are for AI as an entire school, so it's gonna be a great opportunity. That's all I have.

Great. Anyone have questions for Anushka? Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Have a good night. You too.

Scoreboard approval.

I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Do you think we should move up the student advisor? Wait, wait, wait. Oh, actually. Do you think we could have that? Can you stay?

Do you have 10, 15 minutes?

Sorry to put you on the spot. Come back. Come back.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Is that okay? I'm sorry. We're going to add another topic for you.

So one of the things we talked about last time is school committees are need to have a student advisory that helps us understand issues going on in the schools brings things to us from the students perspective and we've always struggled with it right it's never been as as easy to manage as we'd like it to be or you know we want to be mindful of you students times when you're all very busy we want to be mindful of the committee's time but we also want to uncover you know issues and things that we might not otherwise know about if it didn't come from students so we've really been talking this year about how we might do this differently and one of the things we thought about was having them very focused on specific topics like the next gator gab is going to be about ai so maybe um i don't know we would as a committee pick a topic and really focus on that during the year with a cross-section of students that all bring different perspectives that was one idea of how we might handle it i don't know if people have been thinking about this over the last couple of weeks since we met last but we'd really like to make it so that you guys really do have voice and we're able to hear from you you know what we should know about going on in the schools

I know that I'm on Ms. Calo's principal's advisory group as well. And I help her run it. And so we have a lot of students. It's a lot of diversity as well from all different grades. So I mean, I wonder if you guys could connect with them. I think that's a good idea. Because I think they're a good, like, diverse group of people that would have all like the issues that students would

The challenge sometimes though is during the day, you guys don't have a lot of time, so that's been a challenge.

I could talk to the upperclassmen as well, because I think they might be able to have a better time with rides and things.

Leora, can I just ask a question? I think that, and I don't want to speak for Leora, but I think that the question might be, do you think that approaching this as a one topic thing, am I misspeaking, Leora? It's a question. Is a good idea? Um, what do you mean, like, okay, so, you know, how the gator gab, like, um, spring was just saying, uh, focus on AI. Right. Do you think and you were part of the student advisory council with us last year correct? And you know, how, like, every time we meet, it was like, we're talking about something different and it was a really big group and we learned a lot about you guys, but really nothing. tangible happened at the end of the year do you think it would be more helpful for you as students is if we picked a topic let's we're just using ai as an example ai and and we got you and four other students and we just worked on talking about that as opposed to like the big group without yeah i think that definitely makes more sense yeah

What does the rest of the committee think in terms of, I worry sometimes, I thought, we talked about it last time, I went home and was like, oh, but are we gonna miss something important we should know about because we're making it so narrow? So I don't know, I'd be curious what other people think.

So I just have a thought. What if we did like, we spoke this, we pigeonholed on the one thing, and we got that group of kids, but at the beginning of the meeting allowed like 15 minutes of like, what's happening in the school so that we don't miss something big i just yeah like i was thinking about it a lot

as well and i was thinking about topics as well would there be a way to do it so that it's like we're meeting let's say we like we're going to try and meet once a month and we pick topics for each month and we ask students who are interested or had thoughts on those topics to come to those meetings i like that because then it's not like there's no commitment right and it's like i have things to say about whatever that is well and i think

one of our challenges is finding, you know, a group that can all come consistently. So if you're signing people up on a monthly basis for a topic they might care about, maybe that is that helps solve that problem. I don't know.

We only need to meet every other month. I was like, this is the ambitious statement. I start off that my concern about doing like a one topic. That was one thing I went home with because I got excited about it. But I was thinking about really doing a deep dive into a topic, and we'll take it up again, like homework with students and not with any educators or anybody in the room. I just felt like was leading us kind of all down a path that might not really be, like if we were going to do a homework study, I want to do a real homework study where I have professionals in the room who are, you know, and students. So that was my concern about doing one topic, but I think coming up with multiple topics, and what we kind of talked about last time was just Topics that actually we can, we fall under our, like, her purview purview, which. Fairly isn't really a lot like, we can't, you know, we can't, we can't really, you know, change.

Do you think we could, um, like, if we visit, like, a homework topic and then say, that's like October and then we pick it up again, like, in January. So we maybe give time to, like, either do some, like, deliverables or talk to resources and, you know, and say, this is this comes from the students.

speak with people and then kind of like regroup with them you know at a later time to be like this is what we found out this one like you know implementation and such to have like i feel like if we learn something um with the student advisory then we kind of come back into full committee and we talk about it and figure out if we want to turn it into something we want to work with do you know what i mean does that make sense

You want to be like the middleman? Yeah, like I like I know what you're saying. And I like that. But if like something comes up, then I feel like it is our job to put it to like our curriculum director or the principals and not us diving in and doing a Yeah, you know, come back two months later and talk about it some more and maybe do some research.

Like if something comes up, we get we deal with it. Sort of after.

But I like having maybe more than 1 time to talk about it. Stella, like, maybe we could work. I don't know how many times is it. work out that we have to meet 45.

Yeah, yeah.

So maybe there's one meeting where, you know, we do two, two, and then like a wrap up and we invite people and something like me or the month in between is a follow up meeting for anybody who wants to participate in it or Yeah, updates on what things would we be deciding topics this evening, like I think, Oh, God, I mean, like, we're talking about topics, we could, I think we need to figure out recruitment. Yeah.

Like, well, I think the topic would be to know how the recruitment works. Right, right.

Yeah, you're right. The topic will, you know, somebody who's interested in AI, if we're doing AI is going to sign up for that.

I mean, is it diversity? Do we tap on to Dr. Cummings? That I love. You know what I mean? Like that's, we did have a, I I don't know if there still is, but there was a diversity committee that some of us could go to the meetings. Mr. Mercier was in charge of it. Remember that? Yeah. I don't know if that's still going on. But it was a huge, and the kids did projects. I mean, it was huge. So I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if it's his goal and we're responsible for helping him achieve his goals, that could be one topic. I actually like that.

actually yeah well yes i actually do i didn't expect to like your idea laura often but i do thank you um no i think that's i like tying it to the goals right like what are we doing here yeah a million different things or are we focusing in yeah so

I mean, cause I would like to hear, you know, we hear sometimes about like, I bet homecoming like that, whatever came out of this change was coming from students not feeling included or whatever it is. So, and those tend to be big changes. again i don't know where we fit into it but i if that's your goal but that's his goals and some of this like there's inclusion underneath this diversity goal it is to make students feel heard welcomed accepted understood that is like our arching goal so if we want maybe we'll find some things out that roll into homecoming or roll into like the fundraising policy that you know like things that have just come up or the microaggressions that we don't necessarily know about or the dress code that we think we're, you know, like maybe that's, it'll feed in. But, you know, it's messy and it's not something I'm an expert on by any means.

No, I would love it if, yeah, our theme for this year was diversity and that could be different subtopics throughout the year.

Like, you know, going back to fees, not, you know, we're things, but seriously, we're going back to, you know what I mean though? But it is something we're going to talk about again, you know, I don't know, I guess just, and again, like I just have brought this up, so.

So recruitment then, what does that look like?

We could go by the law.

well then there has to be an election which i don't enjoy which i don't like i mean i think part of it part of the recruitment also has to do with like when we would meet because i well i mean i guess it it depends like what what would it look like if we were trying to recruit kids to show up part way through the day in the middle of school that would be the recruitment what are we going to go to extended block for 20 minutes exactly it's every two months so i guess that's the like would it be after school probably I guess, I mean, there's so many components. This is why it always ends up being a disaster.

Kids have jobs, if they have at-home responsibilities, whatever, they're shut out of being part of it.

Right, they can't participate.

Sports, yeah.

We could do it over Zoom.

Hmm.

Right? Like, why not?

nothing in the statute says it has to be in person a lot more people would be able to participate i know yeah you get more out of your person quite frankly i think like the speaking with the students especially if it's a large group i don't know how big the group is but well that's like a zoom meeting with even just five of us that's

right now like it's a lot do you think we could like post like our topic and like sent you know have like put tracy put it in our you know newsletter that goes out each week or like announcements or something like that where they can sign up to oh i like it in announcements so yeah the school committee's coming in to talk about x yeah next thursday you feel strongly about there's a sign up yeah put it in schoology they can sign up and be part of the group group If we have a small group, we have a small group. If we have a larger group.

And we can get feedback on what works and what doesn't and adjust as we go.

I mean, if we try it and it doesn't work, we're no worse off than we are right now, right?

Okay, so I guess I have two questions. One, are we, where are we with topic?

Are we- I mean, we could just pick a topic for the first meeting, right? We don't have to go bananas right now.

Well, I guess the question is, are we going to do right? Yeah, are we doing a theme? Are we going to do all different topics?

I mean, I like the diversity. I just don't know how you would like position it as like, so yeah, what they're what they're looking for, you know, I mean, because we're working on the hiring piece, but yeah, but how do you feel?

How is the culture? You know, do you think that? I mean, I don't know, I think that students could probably tell us a lot about their experience with diversity in the schools that we have no idea of, whether it's the books they're reading, their teachers' understanding of their cultures, I don't know. And maybe we can't affect all of it, but we should know about it.

I mean, if it was open-ended in a way that it was like, you know, how do you feel like diversity is impacting your school experience? End of story. It's like, then it, that could mean 1 million things, which I think is fine, right? Like, it's like, I don't need to interpret what it means for you, because if you're gonna tell me what it means to you, that's what it means, great. And so like, if we make it too narrow, then it's, we've already made a decision about what diversity means to someone else and we can avoid that, right?

i guess i'd want to make it so that we're using the broad definition of diversity though so people from totally different walks of life and perspectives show up absolutely and feel like and we're not just acting like some sort of tokenized thing right like we actually care about the entire community yeah yeah i love it and i'm

Well, could we use that to like kind of post in our newsletter, like maybe like an update on like, you know, like a diversity topic and then, you know, written by one of our students and like maybe they could do some like research on it.

Anushka, do you have any thoughts on this?

I think the morning announcements are definitely a good idea we have I don't know like how much you guys know about them we have morning announcements that like a good amount of the teachers play every morning and it's like by students that are taking TV production mm-hmm so I think you could definitely reach out and have them do like a whole segment about about having a way to sign up and then i know miss kayla can include it in like a schoology message to be in high school i think that's definitely possible i think i would um students might be like a little reluctant or intimidated is like the only thing i would say is because um i guess they don't necessarily know too much about the school committee so they might be less

Do you think the topic is interesting to people? Do you think the topic is welcoming or off-putting?

I think it's definitely a good place to start. I think I would just say it's like you would have to advertise it in the right way to be able to make students comfortable enough to come and share their thoughts. But I think the boarding announcements is definitely probably the way to go or something along those lines.

Just a quick thing. So I had not been like when I had been thinking about this at home, I was thinking more in the way in which we had kind of discussed last time. And well, like I do like appreciate the diversity aspect of it. The talk, like, of course, this wasn't fresh of mind when I was thinking of it at home was I started going through, you know, how in the high school they have to do those. A student advisory type things where they send us an email and say, we're advocating for this. Like, what not? Yeah. Right. So I started going through those to see, like, what is 1 of these things that we could actually tackle as a committee? And 1 that stood out to me was it was a group of 3 girls. They were in 10th grade. I don't know their names off the top of my head, but their topic was, and we had had a lot of back and forth this group and I about. counting gym accounting sports as a gym class and that is something that this committee could actually do like there's there that could be in our policy if that was something that we felt that was like a tangible goal I felt like for like if like we could get feedback from a lot of people so I don't know my thought was looking back at what student like what we'd heard from students when they were doing these outreach things to school committee members or whatever but I mean, I'll do whatever.

I guess I worry that the spirit of the statute is that we get like a pulse on what's happening in the schools. And I don't want to prescribe it too much by being so focused on a topic like that.

Month to month topics. Yeah. So my fear of like, is that we're going to get like, not that this shouldn't be a fear. 40 kids show up or whatever we do. But as we saw last year, like when you get like a huge group, we really heard a lot. There's no introduction or nothing, you know?

Well, I think we have to be more if we had a topic, we have to be better prepared. That's my only like, concern is like, with something as important as diversity,

Yes, you don't want to wing that.

No, and I don't want to be like a white woman, you know. But I, so... Like, I feel like we need, like, honestly, like, you know, somebody that could help us. And that's kind of beyond it, too.

Yeah, and we're still being, like, really vague and weird about what it is. I don't know that we're going to solve this tonight, guys.

But I like, Christy, like, going through those, because those letters come, and that's another thing. They're at the end of the year, and they're, you know.

And then we don't do anything with them, right.

And we're grateful for them, and they're well-written, and, you know, but...

Don't hit me, but is this a subcommittee that's in charge of this? Or something like I feel like. Somebody should own it, and I'm happy for it to be me if we think it's the chair that should own it and really coordinate more with Tracy.

I would really like to be a part of it.

Great. That's why I'm wondering if it's a subcommittee.

My only question is if we make this into a subcommittee. I mean, we have to meet every other month. This is going to just push it off how much further? We're going to have to create a charge, and then get the charge approved, and then go back and forth.

I guess can we just put somebody in charge of it then? Do you want to be in charge of it?

Yeah, just put somebody, like we put somebody in charge of warrants, or well- What? Get me in charge? What is that? Yeah, just task Laura with it.

I move that Laura's in charge.

Well, Jay has- It may have come up and I missed it, but has the committee thought about

reaching out to other committees maybe through masc and that's another reason anybody's really figured this out i did think of it in my head when i was going to be in charge i have to think somebody's figured this out yeah i've been meaning to do i we were going to have a session i mean this has been on my mind for like years so can you own it for the committee do you mind that I feel like if you guys want me to, I feel like maybe somebody needs to make a motion.

I'd like to make a motion for Laura Ofton to be in charge of this.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? Great. Thank you.

We appreciate it. Thank you, Anushka. We appreciate you. That was really appropriate.

Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up, Laura, too, for having her voice part of it. Scoreboards.

All right. Over the course of last year, the former athletic director, Ashley Paulson, in the subcommittee of the GHS Boosters, a relatively new club doing great work, they worked very hard, put a ton of time into generating funding for a scoreboard that will go on the GHS complex. It's gonna be, if it goes forward, left field of the baseball field, which is directly behind the school. I wanna, so actually left the district in late August. I basically by default have been trying to chase down scoreboard stuff. I don't know, I'm hoping I know everything that you guys want to know tonight, but... It's been a few weeks of diving into scoreboards and where we stand. I think I'm clear on it, and I'm gonna try to very simply put that before you tonight. I wanna thank John Stevens, who's behind me. He's the chair of the CPC. You'll see that they're offering to play a role in this. He was super patient with my questions. And Erica Wennerstrom, a parent in town who I've never had the pleasure of meeting, via email has been wonderful, incredibly patient with my million questions. So tonight I'm looking for three things related to this proposed scoreboard from the school committee. Really two actions. So number one, have your approval for the advertising, which we have to have by policy at the very least support of the project, which is required by CPC to move forward. And ideally funding contributed to the project recommending or suggesting a thousand dollars be spent by the school district towards this project. I'd recommend we take that from school choice. So that little red triangle is where it will go if it moves forward. This is the rendering. It looks exactly or almost exactly like the other scoreboards that we've recently brought on solar powered, which is fantastic. Obviously we don't have to worry about power, all that stuff. It will not say Unibank on it. They generously, Unibank generously contributed to our other scoreboards. We have different funding sources for the proposed scoreboard, but we didn't have those set in place when they did the rendering. So they just used Unibank. So we've got one company and three organizations who have generously offered funding, and we'll dive into that, but Gaudet Insurance, Grafton Little League, the GHS Boosters, and the Community Preservation Committee. So the total cost breakdown, the quote that is received for the entire project is that $35,431. The contingency is built in at $7,000. Could something unexpected happen where we need it? That hasn't been the case with the other scoreboards we've put in. They've been pretty straightforward in terms of installation. But with the contingency, total anticipated cost at $42,517. With the funding through the donations, we've got insurance generously contributing $10,000, Grafton Little League at $5,000, and the GHS boosters at $5,000. So all super generous, greatly appreciated. The subcommittee worked with CPC, put in an application for funding for the remainder of that cost, which if we have to utilize the contingency fund would be 22,517 to get us there. Assuming, if we can assume that we don't need to utilize the contingency, whatever is unused would essentially go back to CPC. If the school committee Does decide to contribute 1000 dollars that cost would also come from the difference that CPC, um, is covering. So, at the very least for CPC to move forward with this potential funding, which has to go before town meeting, um, the very, very least would need support from the committee of the. for the scoreboard. Ideally, they typically, I believe require matching funds. They haven't done so for the school district, which is again, incredibly generous, but some skin in the game in the form of a thousand dollars would certainly for me be recommended. Yep. And that's all I have on the score. So

Let's see if I'm forgetting anything else.

So there's a couple of motions, Jay, one on the advertising and one- I think if you go ahead with either of the two motions, that's going to indicate support. But looking for approval of the advertising for policy, and instead of obviously saying Unibank, we're going to have really two signs, one with Gaudet and the other half having the other three organizations. So that's the advertising piece, and then it's up to the committee. At the very least, I encourage you to have a, at least vote to support the scoreboard. I would recommend voting to support the scoreboard in the form of $1,000.

Okay, so I guess I need a motion on supporting the scoreboard with contribution of $1,000. Oh, all right.

Madam, I was gonna have to reverse. Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve the advertising and donations from, or advertising of Gaudette Insurance, Grafton Little League, GHS Boosters, and the Community Preservation Committee to be advertised on our school. Second.

Okay. Can I put that in the idea fridge for a second? Because... I feel like we have to approve even doing the scoreboard first.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, the other way. You did tell me that and then I disagreed. Put that in the idea fridge, Madam Chair.

I don't know what that is.

I love that. I love it. I'm going to keep it cold in there so it doesn't go bad. Right. I don't want it to go bad. I don't want it to go bad. I love it.

Can we talk about actually having the scoreboard first?

Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to... Yeah, I don't know how to make, I guess support. So to support the project cost and include $1,000 from our school choice, is that where you're recommending? Yes. Coming from school choice to show our financial support of the project as well.

Second. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Christy.

Yeah, I just have a quick question. Dr. Cummings, I just, in regards to the school choice, I just find it hard to recommend taking money from an account that I don't know what's in the account or what's out of the account. It doesn't matter the amount taken out of it. Why isn't it coming out of the athletic funding, like in the general budget? Why are you recommending school choice?

I know we have money in that account but if I personally I don't care where you take it from so we're going to backfill and you could take it from books if you wanted. But yeah, if you want to take it from athletics, do that. And if we're short, we'll take it from school choice. That's totally fine.

I mean, it makes sense to make it come from athletics. But right.

Sure. Yep, make it come if it gets approved. I will do that. Okay.

All right. Any other discussion, questions, comments? Thank you to CPC. Thank you very much. Thank you to CPC and the Boosters and Grafton Little League and Gaudet Insurance, of course. We are very lucky. We have a great community of folks who care. So I'm excited about that. Anything else before we vote? Okay. All in favor? Awesome. Okay. Next, I'll take a motion on the advertising.

Take my idea out of it, please.

I hope it's cool.

Okay.

Can I? Please.

Do you want to restate it? Do you want to reheat it in the microwave?

Can we revisit?

I'd like to revisit my motion about approving Gaudette, Little Insurance, Grafton Little League, GHS Visitors Community Preservation Committee as advertisers on our board board.

Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? Awesome. Thank you, everybody, for your work on this. Appreciate you guys.

Thank you both. A quick comment.

Yeah?

You still have to vote at town meeting, and it's the town you're thanking. We just facilitate. Yes. Thank you to town in advance. Vote at town meeting and then thank the taxpayers.

October 19th? Once we have it, absolutely. All right, so the next thing is the stabilization account warrant article. And before we get into discussion on that, Jay, I had a question. Select Board touched on this last night. There's gonna be 1.2 million coming out of free cash. to cover overage on health insurance from this past year. Have you heard anything from Evan or the town in terms of the impact of that capital on budget and how the school, we've got roofs, we've got a big field that we're redoing, we've got a lot of expense

and you know how us putting this on the warrant will fare in terms of the impact down the line has that been a discussion at all i know it came up i did email i think it was two days ago i emailed evan asking uh that very question it was shortly after i saw that memo that went to school committee select board um it asked and said is there any benefit to on their end, because I don't know the inner workings of the bond rating and free cash and whatnot, but in terms of advising the committee, is there any benefit to pushing that off into the spring? And he said, we'll be in the same, we're gonna be in the same boat with free cash in the spring, so it really doesn't matter. He did say, and this was just a few sentence email reply, I have not met with him about it, that going forward, the committee would have to be aware that our capital would be directly impacted by funding this account. So I haven't had a chance, I'm happy to, but to meet with them and find out what exactly that means. If that means instead of 700,000 in a given year and 200,000 go into this account, we go down to 500,000. I mean, that's...

I guess there's a pot of money exists.

But I have not had a conversation with them.

I guess I'm wondering then if it behooves the school committee at this time to have this on the warrant. I don't know. I guess that's what I wanna talk about.

Well, I mean this this whole stabilization account was created back in 2018 and Part of it is that it like it continues to grow. It's very helpful for the district for special education If we pushed it off last spring because we were afraid it wouldn't go through with the override I don't think it's a great idea to keep pushing this off, because in another six months, to be quite frank, it will be forgotten about again. It had been forgotten about since 2018, and I just think it should be considered every fall, whether it's 200,000, 100,000, 50,000, something should be going into this account for special ed, a sudden cost, right? So that's what, in your surprise, was the purpose of this account. And I don't understand, I wanna understand more what you were saying in regards to this will reduce our, with the capital out of, so how much free cash is there? Do you know that, Dr. Cummings?

I was in the memo, I know it went down by 1.2. I thought it was about 5 million and it went down, so I'm gonna guess 3.8, but that's, I could be wrong. I feel like that's about right.

And then how much do we go, so we get a portion into capital, correct, is that what you're saying? How much?

Like this year, kind of the problem was we had 700,000 and 100% of that will go into the field. So 700,000 this year, it's probably ranged from 400,000 in rough years up to maybe 900, maybe a million even.

Maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but it sounded like the way that you described it, We'd get, we get five, let's say 500,000. That's what the school gets. And whether you take 200 out of that pie and put it into this where I didn't. I don't read that in this. In the stabilization account, it's a separate account, separate from capital. It's a totally separate thing where this money would come out of free cash just for this. It's not part of the pot that goes to the school department.

But I think he's saying that if you take 200,000 out of the free cash pot, it's gonna affect, I mean, the pot is what it is.

Right, but if there's three point something million in a pot and you're taking 700 out for capital, that doesn't affect 200,000.

He's saying it would.

So I guess what percentage would it affect? It could not affect the full 200,000. There's no way.

Why not?

It would take a percentage of that because you're taking a percentage out of this three point something million dollar account.

I think to me, Evan, and again, Jay hasn't talked to him, but to me, he'd say we've got free cash and X percent of it is going to the schools, or this number is going to the schools, and if the school chooses to use part of that to put into this account, then... See, that's where I'm confused, because nothing in this...

this account says that it's like, that the school only gets this percentage and how they wanna divide it up is how they divide it up. It seemed to me before that we get a percentage as capital and this is a separate vote for a percent, this 200,000 goes into

A one-time transfer?

Yes, it's a one-time transfer and yes. So that's where I'm confused because there's a 0% chance it would take 200,000 out of your capital. It would have to take a percentage away if that's what he's saying.

I guess we can't know until we know, right? Jay has to talk to him. or maybe he needs to come to our next meeting.

Either one's fine with me. Well, when is the- I found the email about the, it's 3.8 million. It is 3.8, yeah, I found it too. And then he simply stated, we should probably look at the process for this account going forward. As of right now, it's just a separate request outside the budget slash capital process. Maybe times when you don't want the school committee to pursue this as it will impact capital. So it's outside of capital. That's all I know. And I didn't, I don't want to do it. I haven't had a conversation with them, but it's obviously worth looking into and discussing.

I know that this select board and I did not watch the full meeting, but I had a discussion with the chair. I know the select board, when they were going through the warrant talked about our, article that we'll be voting on tonight and sort of mentioned this, the free cash, the decrease in free cash and whether they're wondering if we were going to pursue it or not because of the the reduction in free cash available so um they're probably going to want you to come speak to them about it and we're going to want everyone to come speak to us so when is town meeting though october october 5th 19th so we only have one more meeting prior to that week correct um so

Right now, we get, what, about 18% out of the free cash, if free cash is 3.8 million, so 700,000 of that is like 18%.

Well, we got 700,000, what, last year.

Yeah, that's about 5 million. I know it ties to the bond rating. Maybe you're aware of what that means, but I don't know of them. With that decrease, I'm going to guess it's going to impact capital. Right, I don't know that we're gonna get the same.

In addition, this 200,000 is not a number that's set in stone. The reason that this 200,000 had been a number that we've talked about was because that's what this account was originally set up with in it. Since then, of course, there was a withdrawal out of the account, but no money has gone back into the account. The reason for the 200,000 versus let's say 100,000 was kind of to play catch up on this account that it had never been funded over the last, eight years this is not something that the school committee would be asking for at both fall and spring town meeting this would be a yearly transfer and in addition we can only store let me see what it said here um two percent of our net school spending in that account so that would only get us to approximately one million dollars because our net school spending is about 50 million two percent of that would be one million is that do you follow dr cummings so so with you If we looked at, of course, the year-end report on the stabilization account, there's about $109,000 in this account.

So,

I thought it was never funded. It was funded at 200,000. Oh, the 200 actually went in, okay.

Yeah, it was funded originally. And it has been brought up in our bond ratings that because we have one, it increases that rating or it increases our- It helps the school.

It helps the school. But if we come up with a cost this year, like all of a sudden, as Nicole can spend, a special ed cost comes out of the blue and we have to spend 100,000, now we don't have an account anymore. That's gone. So we need to maintain this account. I don't think there's a question on that. The question could be, what dollar amount do you wanna put into it? What dollar amount do you wanna ask for? But the question cannot be, do we do this? We have to do this.

Yeah, and we fought for it years ago and then never followed through with a process. So I don't think it makes sense for us to ask for the full 200,000. I just think that we also unfortunately always have to look at, you know,

The whole picture.

And the whole picture. But I appreciate that Christie's brought this back up to the front because it is something that the town agreed to do and should be done.

So they closed the warrant with an article that does say $200,000. Right.

But we did vote on that before. We voted on that back in the spring. We voted on it. We had gone through this already. We voted on it. We just decided to hold it to fall town meeting, but it had already been voted on by this committee for $200,000. Granted, we have more information now, so yes, we could amend it. all of that, but it's not really needed for a vote if we're keeping it at the $200,000, because that's already happened.

Where does the future funding come from? Free cash. Same. From the school budget?

No, from free cash.

Oh, it always comes from the account side?

Right, that's kind of the purpose of this, is that it's a short-term, it's a savings account for unexpected special ed costs.

And why are they funding it as opposed to our budget?

Why is this purpose of this? It's a separate savings account that is supposed to grow.

Um, so it'll make money and hopefully, you know, pay for it. Right. I mean, like, what Chris, I think when you presented about this in the spring, you mentioned, you know, what we could have been. So it's right.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean. Could we do like the difference of the 200,000 from what we have in there and ask for that to be transferred in to get to the 200,000?

So, I mean, I don't have just in that leaving it. I just, yeah, I want to be mindful when there's a, you know, well, a significant reduction in free cash. Do we want to also, well, and can we get it?

We have to make the case. Can we get it approved too? So we have to spell it, right?

Yeah.

Well, it might not get approved. Like we just gave you guys an override.

We have a roof we're fixing.

Yeah.

We got a lot going on.

We'll talk to those six people that show up at town meeting in the fall. That's kind of the problem. So the current balance in the account Stella's asking based on the year end report was 108,000. I do have questions about how interest rates are because they go from point two to 21% on this. And there was actually the withdrawal on that account. But we need to so if you want from 108,000 to 200,000, that's what 192,000. Rather than 92,000. So the I don't know that you would just make it 100 I guess. I don't know.

Maybe it's like a meet in the middle type of deal?

I mean, if we wanna discuss amending it, then I think that's a motion.

That's a motion. I would really like to understand more from what Dr. Cummings is saying in regards to Evan, because that doesn't make any sense to me that this would come out of a portion of what the school committee, the school department gets for capital. These are two totally separate things.

I mean, I guess I know we don't have a ton of time, but I think we need to have a conversation at that point.

I guess for me, I know what you're saying. There are two separate things, but I also know like at your house, there's a pot of money, right? You have a family budget, right? But if you decide you have to paint the house, then maybe you're not going to Cancun or you know what?

Right, but I mean, if it's 3.8 million and you're taking out 1.2 million and then you're taking out, what, 700,000 and then another 200,000, you're still millions of dollars.

But there's the rest of the town.

Right, but there's still, yes, but it's not as though it's going to be like, this transfer is not going to deplete the town's free cash.

Right. But I don't know what else is on the right. That's all but what did the select I do have been depleting the free cash is definitely not going to help your bond rating, right?

But neither is not having this account. It's not going to help us. Yeah.

And no, I think we're all in agreement that we need to talk. We need more info before we can So it has to be at the next meeting, either information from Evan or Evan himself.

Yeah, just have Evan come. It's part of our reason for having separate nights. Right. It's Wednesday night to the test.

But also the warrants, they have to close early. The warrants are closed. Oh, the warrants are closed.

So we have to make an amendment or pass over or whatever. Which is fine. I mean, we'll talk to the Finance Committee. They might, you know, they haven't reviewed it yet.

Yeah, that's another reason. Yeah, that's true. which is a great segue into future agenda planning because um maybe we want to see if evan can be at our next meeting and we're moving frank so am i asking i'll talk to evan no matter what but i'm requesting he attend Yes, I think so. Yes, it can. Yeah. And if not, we'll make it early in the agenda. So we can go home.

If he can, if not, then just the information written, like if he could write us like a memo or something, so you're not.

It's not hearsay ish.

Yeah, yeah, I think I want two pieces of information. I want to know the percentage that the school gets is if that's a set percentage for capital.

Yes.

Well, okay, then what would, if you're taking 200,000 out, are you taking a percentage out or are you taking the full 200 out? Because that would not make any sense to take the full 200 out.

Do you understand what I'm asking?

And then from Kathleen. that fy 28 budget development that's obviously our internal like what we're doing yeah already we've already had a few of the school budget meetings like we're moving she usually goes over that uh and then that quarterly report from q4 yes and q1

Yeah. Will Q1 be done like seven days into the next quarter?

I'll have her do her best.

Okay.

Is there anything else that the committee wants from her? No. Okay.

Actually, I don't think so.

Maureen and Frank.

Yes. So can we talk about this technology presentation for a second? We talked about, you know, vulnerabilities and talking about that, but I also don't want to in public give a roadmap to everything we're doing to protect the school district. So how do we want to handle any questions we might have that or could be sensitive. Is this something that can be done in executive session?

It's covered under number four for executive session. I would recommend. If we have questions after that. I would recommend probably before it if we can do it, but if you want to have her wait, that's okay too.

Yeah, I would go with what Dr. Cummings says. I think do executive session at like 6.30 or something before the next meeting to allow so that Maureen doesn't have to sit here. Okay. Because we'll get the presentation in advance to ask.

We already have. Okay. Great. Everyone cool with that?

6.30?

Yeah. I think half an hour.

Is that enough time, you think?

Do you want to do thanks? I feel like that would be a long time for poor Maureen to have to sit with us. I think 630 is probably sufficient.

Yeah. I have a question when we're looking at future agenda. What is happening with the school committee goals?

Yep, I am going back and forth with Tracy Novick. I don't have dates from her. We might combine like goals and the financial workshop and then and also do negotiations. We want to get negotiations and it's a priority as well because We have some deadlines and we want to be prepared for that. So I actively spoke with Tracy today and asked for dates. So I will email as soon as I have a list of suggested dates that we can coalesce around.

So another thing I'd like to see on the agenda at some point is an update on that strategic plan, Dr. Cummings.

Yeah. got it what's appropriate for that do you think jerry was waiting on uh one thing about uh curriculum and i actually finished it yesterday so whenever 21st yeah the next time yeah i wouldn't do it next time but the 21st sure

And then one other thing, could we get an update, Rebecca, with like the wellness, what's happening with that?

They just set their first meeting. So there's a date set. I cannot remember off the top of my head what it is, but the first meeting has now been set. I can't either. You're like, it's a date.

It's a Friday. I'm supposed to be on it.

Oh, I will mess, yeah, absolutely.

I can't make it, I'm just kidding.

Let her know I won't be there, just kidding.

No, yeah, can you just get me on?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. I'm excited about wellness, I don't wanna miss it.

I also, I have a CIPC meeting coming up in the next few weeks. Speaking of capital, so maybe we'll add a CIPC update or something in November.

so uh with laura when do you think we'll get in you've had this committee for all of a minute i already solved it you've already solved it i mean it would be good to give i mean i'd love to be able to give an update in two weeks at least i'm going to learn something and

okay see what i can do and if i can't hopefully i'll have grace but we have to get i mean exactly what you know we need to get going so i'd rather do it sooner than later and i'll see what i can learn and come up with something and then we can go from there okay we'll touch base on it in two weeks then yeah great i'll do that yes i'll try to keep it brief but yeah we have to keep going yep you know it's good to give me a deadline too

Do we have the athletic director, the new athletic director? I mean, we're going to give him a minute, but do we have him on here?

No, we don't.

Yeah, let's give him a few, maybe like in November, the one November meeting or something, but I would like, I don't want to forget about him.

He's still part-time in Tantasqua, so. Oh, God, really? He's getting there. He's doing great.

Yeah, either November 18th or December 2nd. Can we see what would work there? Sure. Thank you. anything else on agenda okay great all right september 9th minutes we have we don't yeah we do we do sorry madam chair yes i move that the committee accepts the september 9th minutes as written Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? Great. Should have asked if there was discussion. I guess not. All right. Warrants, anybody have any questions on any of the warrants or comments?

I just wanted to make a comment on the warrants, just because the committee is supposed to know where school choice funding goes. So just to highlight for the committee, in case they didn't go through 9,000 different pages, as to where $1,000 was spent on a one-year weather consulting, 14,625 was spent on an analytics platform system, and $11,229 was spent on payroll from school choice.

Great, thank you. Anyone have comments, questions on that? Okay. Then we need to take a vote on entitlement grants.

Yeah, so I included that September 9th memo from Kathleen, and I'm looking for, acceptance of the FY27 federal grants and the fair share education earmark.

Madam Chair, I move that the committee accept the FY27 federal grant and fair share education earmark grant stuff as written.

Second. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Kristi?

Yeah, I have a discussion. So in this, Dr. Cummings, it says that there's a chart, there's no chart included as to where the money is actually being distributed per, like how it's coming in. We had received those.

We have not. So.

Wait, what?

Usually in past years, I'm guessing since they went to the GEMS system, it just hasn't happened. But typically in the spring, late spring, early summer, they'll say, all right, Grafton's receiving 900,000 and they have a breakdown of how much is allocated for Title I, Title II, Title III, whatever. And it's the same basic thing every year. They have not put that out this year. We know behind the scenes because we have the workbooks that we have to work through that we know the amounts, but they haven't been shared publicly yet. I'm happy to share them with you. We expected them literally four months ago.

Okay, and then another question is, typically I guess we receive a grant for early childhood, ECSE. I don't see that listed in this memo. It looked like last year when I went through that you kind of had rolled it in with the IDEA one, but it's two separate things, so I'm just trying to figure out.

Can you speak to that? They're both under IDEA.

They're both under IDEA?

They're both special education grants.

Okay, yeah, because they have them under different coding numbers for DESE when I look up.

Yep, you apply under two separate lines, one for 262 and one for the 240 grant, which is the early childhood grant.

Okay, and then with the Title IV, Dr. Cummings, It mentions it, right, that's part of the five you were talking about?

Yeah, I don't know off the top of my head if that was even funded this year. Usually that historically has been like a $10,000.

Yeah, historically it's been 10,000, but again, according to the end of year, like it wasn't even there at all, so I don't think it- It wasn't last year.

So- You kept it on there. I don't think it's funded this year, but I don't know.

So that's not one of the, so that would just be checked off, like yeah, correct? So- This is, how much is it now? So it's 953 total. 947.

We got a decrease this year.

So the decrease is mostly from what, do you believe?

No idea.

Well, it looks like Title I and II.

Yeah, they don't give us, I mean, I'm sure there's a backend formula, but I certainly don't know it.

So the memo that we have says the decrease in Title I and Title II federal entitlement funding is primarily attributable to changes in the federal formula and updated census poverty and school age population data. Whatever that means. We have a slight change in how many kids are here or something.

We don't have a Department of Education. I don't even know.

Fill out your censuses, people. So we're gonna be getting another 180 on top of that, is that correct, if I'm reading this right, in addition to the entitlement grants, earmark funding and the amount?

Correct, with the earmarks, we've actually already started to receive all of this money, but yeah, that went to obviously special education costs and the 130, most of that was tied up with the activity van that can transport the wheelchair.

Oh, that's right, yep.

Any other discussion on the motion? Okay. I'll take a vote. All in favor?

Aye.

Great. Thank you. Do we have any policy tonight? No. Okay. Then I want to discuss correspondence as we made the commitment last meeting.

Sorry. Wait. I have a question on policy. Yeah. So did you see that newsletter that came out? Yes.

We haven't had a chance to meet yet. We're going to meet next week to talk about it, and we will review what our policy says and what we know about student dating and violence.

Right, like I know that it is mentioned we had, because we had taken on the MASC version, those had that in it. I mean, do what you want to recommend, but personally, I don't think that anything needs to be changed.

Yeah, we're just going to take a look. We're going to reconvene. I made a mistake and I just didn't post the meeting. We were supposed to meet actually tonight and we, this is my bad, but we will next week. But also wasn't too concerned because I do think we have it covered and it didn't need to be immediate. But thank you. Yeah, we did vote it and we're working on it.

great so last meeting we made a commitment to talk about correspondence and how we handle it moving forward because we don't as a matter of course include all of our correspondence in our packet so wanted to revisit that here and see if folks have had any thought I kind of like because some again I want to kind of remind the community that technically anything sent to a government group is public and so someone can always request our correspondence, but we are not required to publicize letters as a matter of course. The select board very clearly kind of states that if you send stuff to the whole committee, it's gonna be included in the packet. We have traditionally not done that because some of our stuff is sensitive. I generally ask people who send letters, whether they'd like us to share it. I probably don't do it 100% consistently. So I guess I'm gonna throw it out there and say, what do people think our process should be? Should we always ask people who contact the committee, whether they'd like their letter included in a packet? What do we think?

Madam Chair, I think that, I don't know, for transparency reasons, and since the Select Board already does it, and I get that we have a whole different thing, it would be good if they were included in the meeting materials, especially if it's not about a student, per se. I don't even think that there should be a question to go back and forth on that if it's not touching a student directly, touching a classroom, touching a teacher. somebody like, for instance, when Bob Carroll came up here and spoke about just a general thing about the budget, I don't see reason why we wouldn't just place it in our correspondence. I mean, typically, since I've been on this committee, we kind of like roll through correspondence and we just say, yeah, there's not, but like sometimes we do get letters and we never discuss that. Like we don't, We haven't not really been transparent in how our correspondence is shown or, and we don't discuss it in meeting.

i wouldn't say we weren't transparent i would say maybe we're not consistent i mean i will say you know we got a letter from a family about the student parking fee and they specifically did not want that shared right but maybe that could be if do you know how um on our on our website that they can reach out to us perhaps there could be an option would you like this shared

record check box so that you it doesn't go back to you as the chair to have to like remember each and every individual person would you like this as part of our meeting packet how much we get that i couldn't remember but i'm just saying like well i mean but as you just said before it's just not consistent like you're not consistent like he sat here and said you know he he was never asked or whatever like you know so it's it's not consistent because he copied the select board his stuff was all

all of his communications and ours were in the select board packet.

So I'm saying like, I've been on the other side of it, too, as a parent, and and not had my questions put into the meeting materials. I just think that if you want to make it that people have the option to not put something in, hit it at the source of when they're submitting it.

I would like to just have a formalized what happens with our correspondence. Like, for instance, you know, Bob also, you know, wrote to us and said, you know, none of you answer because we have a policy and, you know, that and not to use not to pick on Bob. Sorry, Bob. But, like, it was like, you know, no, I'm doing what we agreed on as a committee. It's up to the chair. So I think it. i think it makes sense um and christine i read your letter no no no i'm just saying i want to just be clear we have done correspondence in the past but right are inconsistent and we need to just let the community know what is to be expected with their letters we also you know and bob had made the you know we can redact and all that we don't we do not have the resources to be redacting i i do not want to do that Um, we do get a lot more, we get a lot of sensitive, so I like the, but we also don't all get it through that form. A lot of times they go right to our email addresses too. So we just need to agree. Like, I'm with Christy, like, I'm happy to throw things in a packet and make them public. Right. Um, or we, you know, I, I just want to make sure we're really protecting any student confidential information and yes, everything's public, but then it would be redacted if you request a public record, right? Then you, the staff goes and redacts, but we don't have that.

Right. And I also, I have real concerns about people not contacting us because they think it's going to end up public. So I feel like if we say this is our process, And we're gonna ask, and yes, it's on the chair to ask for every letter.

Can you summarize it so it's not like you're calling out the family's name who submitted it? It's either we make it public or we don't.

I'm not gonna now write summaries of letters. No, I'm just saying, give an overview.

It's for future chairs, too. I wanna chair-proof this and make it a consistent... policy for us and i understand what you're saying because in the past we actually have done that we have said we've gotten a lot of letters about jim being me you know which could be fine that's different but individual but yeah again i want something repeatable yeah consistent

And everybody knows this is how it goes.

Well, I think, like I said, I think that if we had it, that it goes through this, I'm so sorry, the website with that, you know, yes or no thing. And then if we got individual letters, say we can only accept letters through the website or something to that effect, or you ask the person, because you know, it's quite clear whether an email came through the website or whether it was sent to us.

Like, I mean, how many times do you get in... I'm so sorry.

No, that's okay. Go ahead. Yes.

I'm so sorry. I mean, there's also a lot of times I get individual emails. I don't share that as correspondence. Like, how many people, like, reach out directly? I get Facebook messages from people. I get text messages. Same. I don't consider that official school committee correspondence. Nor should you. Because you're contacting me on my, you know...

Well, so maybe it's a process thing of, like I said before, that maybe we say official correspondence must be entered through our school website. By this date? By this date. I think that would be the easiest. And then you could hit it right at the source of like, yes, I want this public. No, I don't want it public. This is how correspondence is done for the school committee. If you want correspondence for full committee, you have to do it through our website.

Is there one like generic email address?

Yes, there is actually. I have a couple thoughts about that. Number one, in particular when I'm using a web form I am super fast and I don't pay attention and I would not click the button or even notice the button. I type and then hit enter and it goes in.

Well sometimes you could you could make it that in order to hit submit like you have to set it up.

Yes, so we have to do that number one if we're gonna do that. And two, yeah, I guess we need to know the capabilities and It's the town website that people email us from, not the school website.

I got it through the school website. It's through the school website. It's the school website. Yeah, it's the school committee website.

But I think there's also one on the town.

Yeah, under the committees. Well, you can make it that at the town one redirects you, that it would link to the school one. Because under the committees, it's- All it would do is link over. That's not a difficult process at all.

No, but we have to coordinate with the town. Right, so you coordinate- We don't- We don't own that website, but yes.

And then the other thing I read was if we refer to public, if we refer to correspondence in discussion, like heavily, and it's used in debate or whatever, that it's then supposed to be part of our minutes, and there seems to be no question on that, that that has to be in the minutes, because then it's a public document that was.

I'm sorry, I didn't follow.

For example, the letter from the teachers, like we discussed that during that whole thing. So if something is sent as correspondence and the whole committee has read it and is using that as part of the discussion in meeting, that that is then part of your meeting minutes.

Well, it was referenced in the minutes, was it not?

No, the letter itself was not in the minutes.

I will tell you that I did follow up with the sender of the letter who does not want it released.

Well, but it's a pub. But I don't think that they have that right at that point. Once we've used it in the meeting. How do we use it? We spoke about it multiple times in the meeting, but the person who wrote about their child's parking fee.

Also, we spoke about it.

Yeah, but it wasn't used in decision making. It was

It's a letter from a teacher. That's my fear, too, is people

when we did how we use correspondence to make or break our decisions too so they won't reach out if then we post their information and they didn't want that well that's why a website would allow about why are you writing and is this something like is it right is it is it a complaint that is meant to go behind it or are you writing because we don't you know i

I know I feel you're like, I know there are seems like there's some strong feelings, which I think, I think that it needs to be a website, a form in which is, this is how school committee correspondence is received. Go to our website, build this out. That is your correspondence that would alleviate Laura gets one email. Rebecca gets a different version of an email.

I get an email alleviate that.

Well, it might not alleviate it, but then it's not correspondence. That's right. That's Susie Q reaching out to me because I met her at a third grade function. That's not correspondence then. That's a discussion. That's not the same. Official correspondence, I would strongly suggest goes through the website and here's the form that you fill out.

And I think we make it dependent on clicking a yes or no. Yeah, that's fine.

Right, and then that's it. And then it just goes into a correspondence packet and we're done. We wash our hands of this. We don't have to hear.

We also have to make clear when it must be received by. So for example, the teacher letter came two hours before our meeting. It never would have made it into the packet.

Right, but then it would have to go in the following meetings packet.

Fine.

if it's not received by within six hours in advance or 10 hours, whatever the 24 hours, whatever it is, 48 hours in advance is when we're supposed to have meeting materials. So per our other thing, so our policy on meeting materials. So I would say- Well, it's Friday end of week and then- Well, no, I'd say 48 hours in advance, because that's our policy on meeting materials. So this is a meeting material. 48 hours in advance. If not, it will be placed in the next, the following week's correspondence folder. That's the simplest way to handle this, I think. It alleviates the chair from having to go back and forth, back and forth. It alleviates any confusion with the public, with the board,

I also think though, is it the same as public comment? Like, do they want it? Like, is it just in the mirror meeting materials? Is our clerk reading it aloud? Like I've had people in the past, I want this read into the record, you know, dictating what we do about it. So I'm not I agree. I'm just it gets messy because I do not think they should be.

Well, I think that unless somebody says it in the letter, I feel like this alleviates that this alleviates everything in the record.

It's in the records. It is a recorded correspondent though.

It's in the no, I don't think no.

Unless you have to, like, unless there's something pressing in it, that's like the school committee needs to get involved because X, Y, or Z is happening or somebody agenda.

Right.

Right and then, which case you would put it on that agenda agenda.

Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to public comment. Like, you're not going to necessarily get an answer. Hey, I really like Laura often stress. I want to know where she gets it.

You know, versus we could probably answer that in the next.

probably wait. But you know what I mean? Like, I just don't want people like I want to manage expectations. That's all.

Right. And I think it would alleviate a lot of things because then in fact, it could just send an automated response of thank you for your comment. This will be placed at work. And then it alleviates any kind of serial communication, which is It alleviates any one member, whether it be the chair or another member, from giving their personal opinion on something that has not been discussed in meeting. It would just be an automated response. Thank you for reaching out. This will be placed in, the meeting materials, X, Y, Z.

Or you opted out of placing this in the meeting materials if you would like us to.

Right, if you change, yeah. Let us know. Yeah, something. Or something.

And the chair will respond within whatever. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay, so who is, we have next steps, because we need to reach out to make sure this is all happening.

Is this a Maureen thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go with Maureen. Does the board request obviously a name but a Grafton address?

What? Does the?

Oh, do you have to say?

No.

No, I don't think.

No, it does not. I could go on, say I am Fred Snuffleupagus and I hate you all, blah, blah, blah, and that would go in the.

Well, that could happen right now.

Right, but we wouldn't put it in the box. We wouldn't put it in the packet.

Just because they checked the box, you're saying?

Right.

I mean, there's a lot of people that... Maybe there could be like a disclaimer, like anything with like foul language or like... Yeah, you could.

You could have somebody that just...

Right, well, you could put a disclaimer.

Okay. See how it works. I mean, I guess, who cares if Fred Snuffleupagus sends it?