School Committee - Regular Meeting

committee for Tuesday January 21st our first order of business will be to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please join us if you're able the United States of America and to the for stands Nation indivisible withy and justice for all okay great so in our consent agenda tonight are meeting minutes from our last meeting thank you Kathy budget transfers thank you Jenny and a um volunteer activity form for a new member if you remember in the past one of the past meetings we um briefly discussed not briefly we discussed and voted to add a student seat to the Westford Town Dei committee and so this is a volunteer activity form from Kate Kelly to to um fill that slot and I believe the select board has already um approved that so this is our joint appointment any questions or concerns on the consent agenda or a motion so moved seconded or do you need to well just motion to approve motion to approve thank you Catherine seconded and Bill great thank you all in favor okay six to zero thank you next up is our usual public comment a reminder that tonight's public comment at this point in the agenda is for non start times related topics or items um we keep this on the agenda for individuals to share their thoughts we appreciate speakers being limited to two minutes per person and if you're un virtual and would like to speak please raise your hand and you'll be promoted and unmuted or in person at the

microphone please come up and sign in we'll give a minute to see if anyone is interested No Hands NOP be in the room okay all right that's want to appreciate for a second that Shawn is in front of Shawn who would then be in front of Shawn so when you look up there it's like Sean the way that it lined up you were right behind yourself ending wow infinite Sean sorry that's good it's been a long day it has we're going to start with students and get Daniel home for his midterms it was a great day off an observation of Junior Day and then also on the 29th we will also have a day off for uh in observation of Lunar New Year uh so midterms are in full swing right now um four are down three more to go so everyone should just hang in there um on the 28th at 6:30 in the PAC w wa counselors will have they'll be hosting a meeting for parents uh and they'll be discussing like all things College related like admissions all these events that they have coming up um and lastly the winter semi- formal is scheduled for this Friday at 700 p.m. and it's hosted by sad and stuco and it's a great opportunity for underclassman because the oper classman had their own semi-formal earlier in this year so it's just you know evening it out I guess great thank you thanks for joining us good luck we'll move on to Super superintendent updates thank you uh we'd like to congratulate Sheila McGovern um the Massachusetts School Library Association announced that uh our Sheila McGovern who's the library media specialist at chrisop foan Robinson um has been named one of their 10 president has been

giving one of the 10 president Awards um for 2024 and that award specifically Ally honors msla members who have been identified as rising stars and are in the career um they've only been in the career for one to five years and have made a significant impact on student learning through a quality School library program so um that information came to us and I I said that I want to share that with all of you at a school committee meeting um we congratulate Miss McGovern and thank her for all of the work that she's doing to support all of our students uh another update just kind of reminding everybody I have sent out two updates so far about the power school data breach uh we're still waiting for uh information from power school they are conducting their own uh they're using a third party to conduct investigation and they're going to be providing districts with a full report of that investigation and uh when we have that information we'll share uh more information with uh members of our community Andor power school might actually be reaching out directly as well too um that's something we've been talking about we've been in regular contact with our legal counsel and even um our insurance providers there was a question as to why it took um Power School so long to actually contact districts um they're really supposed to do that within 5 days and they didn't do that within 5 days so that's been a an insurance question that has kind of come up people have been asking that question but I appreciate everybody's uh patience and you know when we have uh more information we'll provide that to everybody thank you and um un fortunately uh the flu has hit Westford Public Schools um in a pretty big way right now we were hopeful that um the long weekend in addition to some targeted cleaning over the weekend and prior to the weekend would have helped but um absences continued with both staff and students today so um I did speak with Joan Mitchell today westf

Academy nurse and nurse lead for the district um she did confirm that it is flu strand a that is presenting itself with and and without fevers and so families are just um asked to keep that in mind and to remember back to some of the precautions that we had during covid time um possibly well definitely staying home if your student has a fever uh experiencing any kind of vomiting or diarrhea for at least 24 hours um after that has stopped um to hopefully stop the spread of this flu great thank you also it's not too late for the flu vaccine if families are interested in that thank you school committee updates Sean any um superintendent eval committee met although Dr CH I won't still Thunder um later in today's agenda yeah so you could that'd be fine it'd be great to add that context when we get to that yeah thanks any update um I attended the Westford Cat Board meeting last Thursday night um they are going through their strategic planning process uh they're looking for a vision for the next 5 to 10 years and one of the things they're trying to do is become a the newspaper of record for Westford um and they're trying to put out a trial newspaper which could hopefully uh have a subscription base just for cost of paper and print and it will be a 12 we week trial I'm not sure when that's exactly happening but that's please keep yes yep and a reminder for anyone um listening that's not already a subscriber they put out a great morning newsletter that I think captures stuff going on in town and they do their

Sunday yep digital version too MH and any updates that already on the agenda no so policy met on Wednesday um and we came back to Rev is are P 5325 the transgender and non-conforming students um we I know we had put a pause on it for um a vote so uh we're going to have to meet once more I think um to kind of come with our final version with have some questions to reach out and clarify there's been some obviously changes law wise and stuff as well and so it'll be coming back in probably two or three meetings hopefully um and I just do have one two to three more meetings of policy or no of yeah school school Comm we're meeting next week yeah we'll see where we're at then M um and policy side just H because it's of Interest the commission on disability have started a group called the sociability society and um the point of it is kind of creating inclusive social events for um residents in Westford and surrounding times um typically who are kind of you know that later teenage into their 20s um uh age bracket so this Friday at First Parish church at 9:00 um for ninth grade and upwards they're doing um a movie night I think it's Guardians of the Galaxy there'll be snacks there's no cost involved um and so any high schoolers who want a break from all the study that's happening um you know more than welcome it's an inclusive event um by the commission dis see what time was that 7 yeah thanks um I was going to give a brief update that the Robinson School building committee has continued meeting um I don't think I've been able to share the

great news that I am also the chair of that committee why am I not surprised so we're very grateful there you know it wasn't it wasn't a fight there is this like a reverse Mutiny type of but were you the last person to yeah step back so we're carrying on it's great um and we are presenting to Capital tomorrow morning for um their consideration in advance of what that feasibility study ask will be for annual town meeting which reminds me that at some point we should probably have this committee take a formal vote on like you know at the bottom of the annual town meeting um information will say which committees have recommended this article so before we do that could we actually have a kind of some sort of a dive presentation conversation about that what what that actually looks like cuz the information I kind of have discovered in terms of costs feels very different to what I kind of based on our previous one that smma one that we did Y and so I think it would be really helpful if we could kind of get a breakdown in the you know the difference in costs and I think tomorrow I think um we're we're preparing a lot of that information in advance of capital tomorrow so we have a budget breakdown for what would be covered um I want to be make sure we're being clear that the SMA smma report was a facilities assessment but this next step is really um Architects OPM um site design um site surveys Geographic Building specific as opposed to smma was looking at the entire District right and this is something msba requires of us yes yes so it's like would would kick off like the next module if town meeting voters approve it so it it might make

sense I mean of timing works it might make sense to layer that into the presentation that we do about the space utilization work all we want to do all of that before town meeting to to share that with you and maybe maybe those things could happen at the same time yeah yeah yeah and that leads my segue into the next update is that um the our space usage working group um which is myself Jeff Goodwin and Dr Chu you're the chair of that to yeah um we have three buildings left so we've been through six of our buildings um and we hope just two I think this week is Blanchard and Robinson and the next week is wa correct we go to Robinson so often that I forget that we actually haven't thank so we hope to bring an update on all of that to you soon um and last update more for the seven of six of you than for the public but a reminder to mark your calendar for this Thursday night for our fincom budget hearing that is hybrid so feel free to let me know if you plan to attend virtually or in person at Town Hall um and we're also scheduled for the following Thursday for any followup that's so that's January 30th okay we're going to move on to our business um section of the agenda and touch on The maale Courier and custodial supervisor job description updates so this was part of last meeting it was been in the packet um any updates from Administration or any feedback from the committee just a reminder we had shared with you what the changes are um you know previously and so I don't know if anybody has any questions or yep look good just giving everybody a minute to

orient themselves you don't want me to pull it up or anything do you no that's fine okay if there are no questions I will take a motion to approve both job descriptions so moved Tom and Mari okay all in favor okay thank you for bringing those to us and next we will discuss the midyear review of the superintendent goals I guess I'm up um the uh the like I said at the beginning of the meeting the superintendent evaluation committee uh did meet earlier on this week uh for some context uh we've been meeting probably every few months uh the superintendent's formal final eval of the the committee of us seven traditionally happens in uh late May early June um and the the idea behind these meetings that are occurring now in January is uh to hear from the superintendent about to uh what he believes his progress has been um towards the the goals that that he set with feedback from us um so with that said uh hopefully we can hear from the superintendent um and I believe there is a slight presentation on this yeah oh great um as to yeah perfect I'm fine with that so uh so yes thank you um we met we met last week I think we had a a really nice conversation I was able to share with them this slide presentation and um I got some I think I got some great feedback uh a lot of it was was even sort of questions that uh helping to think in terms of the data that will be shared later on in the spring so tonight I'm not I don't have data to be sharing with you this is more like the talking points kind of reminding people what the

goals were and then talk about where we're at in that process very similar to what you did with the with the um school committee goals as well too but there will be different measurables and data and different pieces like that that'll be coming um as we get closer and we do the you know the final um the final review of the goals so if we go to this the first slide or the second slide there we go thank you so as a reminder the the first goal is the professional practice goal and it's calibrating the leadership by June 2025 each curriculum coordinator will have joined two instructional classroom walkthroughs with the superintendent and one of the building principles each learning walk will include a debriefing conversation calibrating participants feedback identifying Universal Design for Learning or udl principles in The observed practices so again for some context remember that as part of our strategic plan we have this multi-year process of rolling out udl to make um to really help Westford become a Universal Design for Learning District while it's been pockets of things that have existed here for a long time based on different teachers experiences with their own professional development or their own training it's not something that the district has embraced um districtwide and so we've been focusing on first the the leadership making sure that we're building capacity amongst our leadership team to help will lead this work and then now talking about as we look at the different components this year Focus in on engagement how is that going to be rolled out at the building level um and a big part of this building uh building capacity was trying to calibrate as we're all looking at engagement what does that look like so um over a year ago uh some of our curriculum coordinators developed an engagement tool which um I shared with you at the very beginning of the year this link here actually has the updated version which is just slightly different and I'll talk about that um for a couple minutes the we had great conversations

so the we've already done the first round so all of the curriculum coordinators have joined me in different buildings not all of the principles have done it because well there's there's fewer right so the curriculum coordinators kind of crossover and so we spent more time in in some of the elementary schools we went to most of the buildings but we didn't do with all the buildings but all of the principles have used this engagement tool so we've used this as the as the principles were doing leaderships um walk throughs because I rotate all the principal meetings um that we have every couple of weeks we go to a different building we've been doing that for a couple of years now um and so we've kind of used this tool as well we all came together at one of our full leadership teams and had great conversation about what what was coming out of these conversations talking about what does academic risk-taking look like what are the different things that we're seeing how might we what you know do we think that we're seeing engagement or are we looking at iic compliance you know what what what is the levels of Engagement that we're seeing and one of the things we found was that the original engagement tool that we were looking at wasn't really meeting our needs so we made some adjustments to it we just added some more context to to that so so the the people who are coming together and they're all looking at the same thing they can identify okay is this an introductory activity is this something in the middle of a lesson is this a standalone activity um different things like that and then we were looking at the that the towards the end of the the engagement to we were realizing that the the list that we had was um asking us are we looking at are we seeing engagement are we seeing strategic compliance or just ritual compliance or retreatism or rebellion and one of the things that we talked about is that when you're looking at a classroom setting we are fortunate that we don't typically see retreatism or Rebellion um in in our classrooms we might see individuals who might not necessarily be engaged but we don't see

that as an entire class so we felt like we wanted to adjust the questions that we're asking to say more specifically focusing on are we seeing the majority of the students engaged or are the majority of the students strategically complying and we looked at talked about what is that difference um and so that all of these conversations helped us kind of reshape this tool that we're going to now use in the spring when we go for round two and we engage the all of the principles so if they hadn't participated um they'll participate now um everyone who did ipate wants to do it again the principles themselves are now looking to use this um this practice with their building team their building based team to kind of share it and the other piece of it is that they've all talked about the curriculum coordinators and the principles have talked about talking through this is not an evaluative tool and so that's one of the things we've been very clear about at the beginning is that we're not going through this and using us for an evaluation at all we're not attaching teachers names to it we're keeping it very um General but we're looking at the different areas that we're talking about but they all talked about wanting to be able to share what these looks look fors are with the teachers and I think the best example we keep coming back to is just this notion of academic risk and we had all these conversations as what does that look like it looks like different things in different classrooms and so talking about that Andor um are we seeing self-reflection it taking place and are there ways in which if the teachers know that that's something that is a piece of the engagement strand for you Universal Design for learning then are they thinking about that in their practices as well too and it's kind of just a it's a it's a potentially a slight shift just in asking students to think quickly as they transition from one activity to another about how they felt about that activity um so these are some of the conversations that have been taking place uh We've and then the other pieces that I have that I shared on there was just the notion of we've been utilizing a a book called The udl Playbook um

that's been helpful as we talk about what does this look like rolling this out and the we um well the next piece um I'm going to talk a little bit more about cast so I won't get into that yet um but so that's goal one in general um when I did this when we did this in our sub committee um we felt it was helpful to ask questions with each goal as opposed to waiting till the end so I don't know if anybody has any questions or anything um we could go ahead and I'd entertain that now if that's okay with you yeah um you spoke to this a little bit in your intro but can you um think about can you tell me what you're thinking about for evidence for this so um I'm going to try to bring as much of the data from even the engagement tool together um making sure that it's that that it's not identifiable right um uh and looking at talking how how in which we've made these adjustments even sharing what this has looked like then transitioning to the building level in ways that's kind of the second goal as well too um but those are different things that we've talked about okay that was my question okay all right on to the next one go so the second goal is um continuing our our focus on sense of belonging and uh so the sense of belonging and engagement by June 2025 with increased exposure to Universal Design for Learning udl districtwide collaborative problem solving which CPS in grades K to 5 and a continued focus on community circles in grades 6- 12 all students will exhibit in an age appropriate awareness of intentional strategies that support student engagement and sense of belonging so one of the things even to talk about what does that look like well one of the things we're going to be doing is um looking at how are we figuring out if students are are able to

identify these in intentional strategies so we're going to be developing some type of student survey that's age approach apprpriate and talking about are they are they aware of the adjustments that are being made with with udl are they what is their awareness of the the the way in which collaborative problem solving is starting to be um incorporated into the student experience as and similar that with community community circles so that's the piece that we're kind of looking at is are students aware of these intentional strategies in the first place now the progress that we've made so far is that cast which is the uh Center of Applied uh what's the s Technologies is the T specialized Technologies I like it up and they said cast is now the name of their company they used to be an AC they used to be an acronym and now they just go yeah they do say that I so we they're actually I shared with you um earlier on too when we were first coming up with these goals but cast is really they're they're the pioneers of of of Universal Design for Learning um they're the ones who really kind of started this whole uh this whole movement and so we engaged with them they had a keynote um we had a keynote individual come and do uh talk to full uh uh K to 12 in two different sessions and an early at our first PD day that we had and they provided some um additional followup with the leadership team and provided us with tons of resources that we're still using we're using just last week for our for the schoolwide implementation criteria that they have to help focus it more down at the at the school level um so that's continued work that they've been providing with us think kids is who we said that we were going to engage with we have engaged with them to help um with professional development for our school-based teams we had a an initial a zoom meeting where a number of people were able to kind of get a a a better

introduction to collaborative problem solving and then our elementary schools have been able to develop school-based teams to help create leaders within the buildings there and we've also uh continued to work with Pathways to restorative communities um they've developed a multi-year plan to help support our middle school and westr Academy in really developing how we're going to support these Community circles as they become part of the fabric of of the programming there um but then this idea that we're going to be surveying our students to get a sense of and I think parents as well too would be helpful to get a sense of their understanding their awareness of these shifts that that are taking place um one another piece to this goal and it really even supports the first goal as well too but for the second goal is we talked about engagement being conversations that are taking place at the building level more and more well the the the leadership team um we spent um some of our meeting time developing what their next of faculty meetings are going to look like as they are digging deeper as to what things they should be able to to support and the different things that they might be seeing they're going to be doing a self assessment with the teachers of sorts um to find out where people are at with the different strategies in the first place when are you thinking of doing that survey what kind of timeline are you thinking Dr CH I was thinking later in the spring and with all of the things that we're trying to do right now it's one of those things that I'm like oh boy when do you do that in order to then so so you think potentially by the end of the year like we might have some of this as evidence yeah yeah I I my my initially initially I was hoping that we would do some type of a survey uh so that then I could include that information um at the end of the year with um with this process if if not I'll have a specific plan as to

when we are going to do that yeah any other comments on go two th this is the end of if is my understanding this year at the middle school is the end of that and Pathways um I no we had talked about we had T when we originally looked at it um with the because this was coming a lot of this support was coming from the arpa funding and so it was it was a three-year piece and this is only year two so we have that additional year okay yeah it might be nice that maybe at the end of year three that it would be lovely to hear some kind of feedback from the staff themselves about what they like something that we had talked about when I talked about how to measure these goals is one of the things is getting some of that information from the staff participation in this work as well too because because I think it even would go to like other professional development that we plan within the District of what's what works what doesn't and but I'm glad that you asked that question because some of the feedback that we had in our subgroup was even just talking about even tonight's especially as we're you're going to be voting on the budget reminding people where the funding sources are coming from right and so the path ways to restorative communities that was arpa funded right um think kids is has been um that's also was part of the arpa funding that we looked at and then um the work that we're doing with cast we have grants for professional development and so we utilize um that for that but it's going to be really good to know like what the the feedback is as we get into year four of do we renew or do something different so and related to that that point Chris for funding so when something's like tagged as arpa funding and the like it's not like we can just stop using that and direct those funds elsewhere right these are decisions that we've made prior to

this point to allocate them towards and actually at this point with the with the arpa funding everything had to the the funding actually everything had to have been I guess technically appropriated and encumbered by um de December of this year um and so we're not it doesn't have to be fully expended until uh for the other for the next two years but um that's why we knew that the pathways is an example where we were able to do that great thank you good points thank you do you want to go on to the next yes please so the third goal uh is working with the msba this is kind of meas well I'll just read it I've read the others two sorry uh by June 2025 in addition to progressing through the eligibility phase of the Massachusetts school building authority the msba process meeting all deadlines with required deliverables Westward Public Schools will develop and present a current space utilization report which will inform discussions around potential redistricting and future grade level considerations districtwide so we've talked about this a little bit as we've gone through our meetings we've had updates we talked about a little bit earlier right we've had our monthly meetings um we've now met um with all but three of the schools where we've looked at the current usage uh We've have maps that show the current usage we have maps that in indicate what they would consider if we change the configuration to K to 5 or pre to 5 um different buildings um the Robinson School building committee has uh been formed and has already had three meetings U members have had they've had opportunities to tour Robinson and we have some more of those scheduled and to that end one of the things that we will be planning is also um Public tours of Robinson and um Mr lacost and I have already scheduled time with uh Nick to develop a a video like a 3 to four minute video tour of Robinson as well too so those are things that'll be happening as we move um through the

spring as well and we've developed thanks to um Kathy MCI U we've developed a we have a website for the Robinson School building committee and um we we'll be able to put all of the msba information the different documents as they get approved as they're submitted and they'll uh they'll they'll live there we're also one of the things we talked about in the meeting today the Robinson School building committee meeting today was developing uh an FAQ because one of the things we realized is um we've had a couple of people join different meetings and you know it's something that we talked about two meetings ago and they're asking questions specifically today so we're like okay well we need to sort of capture all of this so that in some ways in which we don't find ourselves needing to review Andor telling people well we just already talked about that um but that's that's the third goal um any questions there you mentioned it earlier but we're expecting a full report and presentation this year okay y thank you y all right then go four is focusing on the equity audit um so we extended this goal because we started we knew that we actually decided to we chose air as an organization because of their two-year plan and then it took us a little while to get started so we've kind of just adjusted that timeline so the root cause analysis event which some of you were able to participate in that took place on December 9th the initial draft presentation of their findings has been created that's being reviewed those findings are going to be presented to the school committee um in one of our upcoming meetings and then um we also know that all of the school advisory councils or the sac's that they're going to be discussing the findings at the building level um during some of their meetings one of the things to be aware is that this finding these findings are really talking about the districtwide focus the next piece of it is then

becoming more building specific so I think that will be probably even more richer information for the sac's and or they might be participating in that in a in a different way um and so that's kind of where we are with that and again a reminder to everybody that uh the first half of this Equity audit was also supported by arpa funding and then we decided to go with this 2-year process because we thought that that was the one that would be most robust and I think beneficial to the district and so we decided to um utilize school choice funds for that second piece of it right any questions on any questions there go four kind of speaks for itself yeah and then the last the last slide is is just uh reminding everybody that in addition to those goals we identified indicators within the performance standards and so I've just shared what they are again as a reminder um and then I'll be providing additional data sometimes the data for the goals will actually connect with those I I believe the the feedback that I've received from you is that the way in which I shared the data and shared it um with link with links and all in one document was helpful for you so I'm planning to do that same thing but before we get there I'll meet with the subcommittee again and so if I need to adjust the way in which we organize the data we can do that okay any final thoughts from the committee keep up the good no very thorough thank you appreciate it okay great thank you for sharing that uh tonight our next order of business is our FY 26 budget proposal um can you remind me were you going to

do a brief reminder on the slides or just a well we were going to kind of just talk through where we're at but not going through the whole presentation just remind everybody that the uh I'm just going to find it here for my talking points um the the main piece is a reminder that the the recommendation that has been presented to you is a balanced budget of 69,3 188,50 se2 uh we had the the different ways in which we we shared with you to to kind of meet that need um we've talked about it um over time you've you've been able to share questions and um we've had the discussions about them we've also shared that in the in the packet as well too um the you know overall we know that this is we we are still not looking at strong foundational budgets here right um we knew that we knew the conversation was a very difficult year last year uh and we took the information that received from the voters and so we looked at FY 26 and looked to see okay how can we um best best prepare for uh FY 26 and still stay within a balanced budget um at this time the information that we shared with you showed a change and an increase in reserve funds that articulates that we think we can maintain this for 3 years but in between FY 28 and FY 29 it's going to be really important that we identify new funding sources because those um those those amounts within the offsets that exist within the revolving accounts they might not necessarily be there because by then we would have hit the target amounts that we've established through the non-general fund

guide book The nfg which was something that I think again um I I I hope that you're very proud of I'm very proud of the work that we did to create that um and we're still getting a lot of positive feedback about that and I think that's going to help us in in the years to come but the idea that we are not we're not presenting this as ideal we do not think that this is ideal um we realize that this comes with some adjustments that can be difficult for some people um I do think that based on the different needs that we have as a district within our facilities and within our operating budget that it's important that we are coming to the the voters with information that I think that then they can that they're able to absorb and understand okay what these needs are because like I said I do think that in a couple of years we're going to need to be asking them other questions as to how we can support our general operating budget as well too um so we've you know had lots of this been on our agenda for the last couple meetings we have broken down had follow-ups the committee has asked questions got questions from the administration we've had a thorough budget hearing um and to keep us on schedule for our fincom um Department review on Thursday our practice would be to take a vote tonight so does anyone have any any kind of final concerns questions commentary that they'd like to add yeah Tom I just have uh one thing I just want to point out and that's around the Arts um and that is at w if anyone's looking at the detail it looks initially like a reduction this year and just to remind people that it's been highlighted that is actually just reflecting what's

actually currently being done this year uh and then the other one is um at the elementary level it again on paper looks like a reduction in in Staffing um but I do believe that that is actually going to attract a more stable solution for the the uh music program at the elementary by having one full-time person as opposed to two slightly greater than halftime so I just want to highlight those two um as efficiencies and um the they're not actually they're not Cuts per se in in the programs so thanks Tom um yeah Lori I have some remaining concerns about the reading and math intervention is cuts um I understand that there was a change in criteria this year that and that was the result uh that resulted in less students being eligible to be in the program um and we have received feedback from interventionists and classroom teachers that this um there are struggling students who are not in the program this year that could benefit from it um I believe that this presents a lack of equity because some parents cannot afford a tutor uh they cannot afford to help their children outside of school and I'm concerned about that especially with the increased class size for next year uh this could create more of a struggle for students and teachers and it could create more frustration and disregulation for on an emotional level for students who need extra help um and students may need more services in the future so that's my concern about the the cuts to the interventionist at the elementary

level okay thanks for sharing that you yeah Sean um related to Lor's Point um and this is I think it's the third year that we've had reductions to interventionists um I guess um my my thoughts are that at least my view on Intervention is that it it's a way of kind of capturing the students who are struggling but aren't necessarily on IEPs right some of them might be on IEPs but not always so I guess my concern is is as we continue to make further and further reductions to the interventionist model which we have um we could see an increase in IEP students and uh I'll articulate it now that I think that in the long run it might cost the district more money um particularly because it I mean it's just a fact it costs if a if we have a student on on an IP cost the district more money um I don't think we will see the effects of that until several years from now I understand that this is a necessity and I think Dr TR phrased it right no one's particularly happy or jumping for joy over this this budget um I would hope at a minimum that the school committee and the administration is able to look at that over the uh next few years to see what impact the reduction in interventionist per capita has had on um student performance and um whether or not that correlates with an increase in in students requiring IEPs and things of that nature so those are my concerns I uh I'm going to vote Yes on this because I think that

we don't have a better option but um it's I've said this before uh this is another tough pill to swallow so I was just going to add um sort of related to that is that I I thought one of the helpful um discussions that we that were was prompted out of the budget hearing was that the sort of um push to or nudge to think about how are we inserting Reflections and reviews into our um budget cycles and so I think that that's I I that's how I interpret my concerns that are related to yours which is I want to continue making sure that we you know I almost sometimes feel desensitized to you know not have being not having level service funding um and but but there are changes that we wouldn't make if we didn't have to I think that we want to continue to look at class siiz um mtss and say are are we um reflect on what changes these are impacting to our students and and how do we sort of keep building that into our into our review process so yeah you going to say something I just thought it would be helpful um mtss was also down on my my list tonight um I know um Valerie and I actually met recently just very briefly with um the curriculum coordinators at the elementary level um with this specific concern um because like that lar as you were saying they had raised that issue um at the budget hearing on um the criteria for for changing um I think we might have

gotten some different information kind of that night compared to things what they've kind of since gone back and discussed um but I I came out of that conversation feeling like um they were looking at kind of what are the standards and um in terms of capturing that tier to um those students and really being um I don't mean to say qualitative but really targeted is is the better word targeted in the students that are truly Meeting those needs um and so I you know I appreciated that conversation that day I think it you know Julie and Erin gave me confidence they were very confident in what they were kind of putting forward as that that tier 2 intervention um and that it it would be truly targeting the right students um but my hope um going forward and then to what Valerie was saying is that we kind of figure out a way now going forward how we can capture that data so that we can continue to review it um looking at our d I ready scores are mcast scores the number of students that are kind of coming in and out cuz I know there's kind of two terms you know kind of that September to January and then January to end of the year of students who are kind of coming in and out um and I think that's truly how we're going to know if what we've identified is successful um in in being very targed targeted um Quality intervention and because really we should be seeing you know old students leaving and new students coming in that's the whole point of intervention you're not in there for two or three years I mean if

you're in there for two years you should be going you know for evaluations into the IEP process or whatever so um what I would hope is that in advance again of that reflection of kind of when we start on the FY 27 budget that maybe we can even have a kind of um an update on even the data where it's stands on that um intervention um and and just maybe have a have a think about how we can kind of capture something that's easy as well some sort of document or sheet that is easily kind of in pushed that we can kind of continue to track this and would be really helpful I know the budget situation is very difficult uh in terms of the coming year and in and for this current year as well and sometimes things look different on paper than in reality and we've seen situations like multi levels at the high school and language classes that we now know don't work out so well so I think it is very important to keep tracking and to keep an eye on things to to see if they're working or not yeah thanks I also don't want to lose sight of the um the addition service additions that are part of this budget you know the expansion of the medically fragile program The Reach class at nabnasset and the sale program at expanding to the Middle School um so like I think it was I think Mari it was actually you who said it in the budget hearing about like you know things feel under somebody had said things feel under threat and you said but we're we're still doing good work right and so I don't want to lose sight of the the um additions and the you know creative thinking that I think that is going to make that a difference in students days that is also part of this budget and I'll just throw another shout out to the NG

gfg document um because I I hope that that helps illustrate that um sort of uh Runway that we're we're building with those Reserve funds and what that will Comm how to communicate that to the community so so with all that said um can I just say one thing um I think it's quite important on to acknowledge um from our budget hearing that night there was an awful lot of conversations regarding PE requirements at at at wa and I didn't I didn't want to not speak to it this evening um I I felt you know I appreciated all the feedback the conversations the emails um but for me it kind of came down to is this really part of our budget for FY 26 you know conversation or is this more of a policy program of studies graduation requirements conversation that's happening later um and and really I I landed on the fact that it had never really been part of our budget discussions because they're already large class sizes so I think you know the we were getting you know a number of people saying the p Department haven't taken any reductions compared to other departments and and I do appreciate where they're you know coming from in that conversation um but really the other departments had had kind of we had Consolidated numbers because we had class sizes of five six 10 students in some of those electives and class sizes where as because of wa they had already got class sizes of 30 31 32 kids I

believe you know at wa in in terms of the PE side PE classes so that for me was really I think important to kind of say I don't necessarily feel this is an FY 26 budget question but I do acknowledge there's another conversation to be had regarding graduation requirements flexibility of electives at at the high school so I just felt it was really important to kind of acknowledge that for me personally was where um yeah I kind of landed on it but I just did want to to acknowledge that that this evening yeah thank you for bringing that up and I would encourage anyone that's that was following that or has concerns about that that I think we we will pick that up as part of a policy review and have a have committee discussions about that as well not just in the policy subcommittee um but this because of our town meeting timeline this is our budget and this is the budget vote um looking at the agendas I think it's probably like right after February vacation we hope to sort of pivot to that part part of um the conversation it doesn't have to go to policy right away okay but give us a week go yeah um okay okay so and with that said there are any final pieces otherwise I sorry I just had one more again and it was more just I would hope that in advance of starting the conversation FY 27 budget we do kind of plan on an agenda um either the end of this year or early the start of next school year um just that kind of review of the school year 25 and the impacts that the FY 25 budget had um I think it will be helpful kind of to have that feedback after you know a full school year as we before we kind of start down

the f27 budget yeah and 27 that that's that I think I raised that during the hearing was it's it's challenging the timing because we make decisions and we're making decisions now not knowing the true impact of what we decided last year right um but it is it's important to to help guide you know the the future look so I'm I know I I mean I just to summarize I think we're hearing a PE requirements will be part of a future discussion um we expect and want to be up ated on mtss monitoring and Reflections um and I would add we say this I think we say this every year but I would just continue to add that to be kept AB breast of any um changes at the elementary enrollment with movein and stuff like that um but with all of that said um I would make a motion to approve the FY 26 budget in the amount of 69 m388 572 second thank you okay last chance okay all in favor a all opposed A okay thank you okay so if anyone is online and watching um we will take a brief intermission so that we start promptly at 8:00 it'll be the same Zoom link so are you going to leave it open and just turn off the screen or something yeah we can we can do that Val uh we also have uh fee scheduled do we need to vote on that oh my gosh thank you oh yeah so as part of our non um NG NF nfg um the finance subcommittee does touch on the fee amounts we um kind of built

that into our review this year um of the creation of that document and so there were no recommendations for changing the fee for the F uh 2025 to 2026 school year any questions okay I'll take a motion to approve question oh I'm sorry FIS schal tuition is that fulltime for everyone or is there a parttime option or how does that work yeah so it changed a couple years ago it's full-time yeah it's fulltime and fulltime is considered full four full days okay thank you you're welcome motion to approve thank you Mary second thankk Catherine all in favor okay great so thank you Tom what I was saying was um you feel free to use the same Zoom link and we will see you at 8 o' for the start time Forum you want to just you could just m it motion movement break friends are gonna beat us in a I I think we should reverse have them sit up here we sit out there e

you sure for e e

e e e all right so welcome everybody uh to our school start time open Forum um for 8:00 tonight um this any for anyone watching this is the section of our meeting where we are changing our format um and trying to make it more accessible for all the committee members to see our virtual um participants um we've set it up in this way I think to try to make it very accessible and capture feedback from the community um as as we all know uh we're considering a change in start times which would result in the middle and high schools starting at 8:00 a.m. grades 3 to 5 shifting to 8:50 a.m. and um grades K to 2 to

910 we've put um a community survey was out for about 10 a week and a half a week and a half yeah um we've got a website on the district website with with landing page with um a frequently asked questions our past presentations um this information has been shared in principal newsletters and we are hoping to hear tonight from anyone who would like to share their feedback or ask questions about it um if we have a lull um I've I've looked at the survey and the 1300 I'm 1300 yeah close to yeah I think yeah 13005 yeah um responses that we got um so we can share some of that information but I really want to make sure we're prioritizing hearing from the people who took time to show up tonight so um since there's no one in the room we'll see if if anyone on Zoom would like to raise their hand um and we will gladly take feedback questions or comments from the audience oh yeah I've got someone here I can't read that tiny thing so I'm gonna Kati M us M us so I'm gonna letot K in time for some classes Valerie no Katie can you hear us you should be promoted into take takes a moment sometimes yeah give one second just yep sometimes it takes there we go Tak a minute yeah can you hear us the name KY you want to do that part

to just KY can you hear us here we go yes there we go so sorry I um my husband and I are actually in the car outside the Millennium building and we were just wondering where meeting is want me to we have Melissa to your there's experience and for anyone watching there is a door in like about the middle of the building right behind Abbot that is considered the main entrance up a ramp it's up a ramp and um if you walk all the way in the building to the back there is a conference room where you will find us and there's like a wipe off board that says school committee thank you so much sorry about that no problem okay look at that for resourcefulness I'm impressed that was smart yeah that was PR smart problem solving don't see anybody else with their hands up well at least we know hang Jamie Jamie you're coming in I'm promoting you there there we go sorry yeah yeah yeah hey Jamie hi there we go can you hear me yes hey Jamie I can't tell if you guys can hear me yes we can can okay um how is everybody home 20 more Road um I have a few questions um the first is do we know around the number of students that could possibly be affected by having earlier start times to their practices meaning hockey or swim the

offsite um the offsite programs that maybe won't be able to get a slot after school hours and would get would potentially be practicing before school hours do do you have a list of questions or do you want to to answer them individually oh however you would like to I'm pausing for the sorry okay well we could we could pause there and speak to off-site athletic practices we have principal Dan Tumi sort of pseudo representing athletic director Jeff Ban tonight um you know Mr Bun's had conversations with all of our facilities off-site facilities that we use for the many different sports um they've all been positive conversations is with those sites uh West fit skate three um you know even we use nutting field here in town for a lot of different things and they've all been very positive responses that they're going to work with us find additional things uh additional slots or times and um there's really at this time there's no we haven't even explored the idea of doing anything before school that hasn't even come up that hasn't been hasn't been needed hasn't been needed so so oh sorry j From perspective my son my oldest is at nooba Tech and because their start school start time is 8:00 a.m. they have to practice before school for hockey so they have a 600 a.m. practice at uh the chelsford Forum so I'm speaking from like that perspective of you know how many if if that ends up being a possibility because maybe I'm speaking out of turn but Mr Tumi would you say that there is a possibility that there could be before school practices if they can't find after school slots um that would not be something I'm in favor in of I would say it it'll be after school it'll be later um it's been positive relationship with Skate 3 in

the multiple rinks that they have uh to find us from different times and different slots uh after school so okay so you don't think there's any possibility that they'll be moving to before school practices um you know at this time I'd say I'd say no I mean it's it's because it was a 30 minute change uh Mr bunan told me that all of the facilities said that they'd be able to make that adjustment to go later that that amount of time I think the initial thought was if it was a larger window that it might have been more problematic for them but when he approached the different facilities they all said that they could make that adjustment and just move the Westford Academy um practice Time by that amount the 25 to 30 minutes okay um again I'm not you know saying anybody's wrong on this end but because this won't likely be figured out before the time like or confirmed I don't think the practice times will end up being confirmed prior to there being a change in the time or or will that happen because 30 minute slots don't really exist in these rinks and pools they're they're our slots right so you're you're pushing out or ahead you know I guess my my thing is is just I want to make sure like everything's thought of because if if this does end up being a before before school thing now mind you I may not have any kids affected by this because I only have one hockey player um but it is a very difficult thing to manage getting your children to a before the school before school practice while also trying to get four other children out the door on their their respective buses so I just think that should be something that you know maybe in the back of people's minds if there's any possibility that before school practices are going to um um be on the table in this scenario um it sounds like they're not but stranger things have happened

where you know you can't end up getting that after school slot because it's you know much later or you know if you're talking about nine 9 or 10 p.m. prac practices which they do have slots for at at Skate 3 um I don't know about pools but um you know you're talking about you're you're you're cutting one for the other kind of thing um so that would be my first perspective there um my next question would be about um having talked to any dbus drivers and how they feel about having K to two students on the bus for an extended period of time in the morning and the alternative having three to five students on the bus in the afternoon where um I have grade three to five students and they are on the bus on the way home luckily their bus hasn't had much action but I know that other buses that are just traveling from Abbot to the NAB area have had to turn around to bring students back to the school due to behaviors on the bus so now these these bus drivers are getting these kids on the bus then driving to nabnasset school to wait for the nabnasset school students to be dismissed managing behaviors there and then having to drive their bus route is there any concern on on that end from anyone well first first of all one of the things that uh D shared with us was the fact that they had done this not necessarily with the two stops but they'd had the combined ages on the same bus before in the past and so they they didn't say that that was a concern from their end um one of the things that we've talked about as a leadership team the principles have talked about the time that the students will be on the bus and the different um things that that they might need to consider in terms of trying to reduce that time so that students aren't sitting for a long time um Idol on the bus if you will so that has been a part of our

conversation okay so it like D hasn't mentioned any concerns about like being able to manage behaviors for the kids that are on the bus for an extended period of time no we did not service we did not survey the bus drivers either though I kind of I expect the owner of the company to share that concern with us and she did not and we talked about it and she talked about the idea of again they that they've had students um the age ranges on the on the bus before and one of the things that that we talked about at the leadership team and we'd be prepared to talk a little bit more about tonight was this notion of the amount of time that exists between the buildings right now for example I mean chrisop Foley and Robinson are so close to each other and NAB and Abbott not so close and Miller and day not close at all um that we talked about the differences is do we need them all to be following the exact same schedule if we're looking at this window could we be making adjustments to decrease the amount of time that students are sitting and waiting um and I think that that's something that we're all prepared to do okay great because I do think that um I'm not so much worried about the fact I I have kids on the older spe side of the spectrum so I I can't speak to that that point of view anyways at this point but I'm not so worried about the spread of the ages I'm more worried about the bus drivers having to manage that on the bus and I assume that you know unlike the high school where when they get to the school early they are allowed to roam the school by themselves that um at the K to2 level in the morning you're not letting kids off the bus before school starts right to be able to roam the school they're going to be sitting on the school bus that they probably already been on for at least 30 minutes potentially 45 right so it it it it sounds like a great idea but I do think

there are some very real concerns that you know would come out of this there are as far as that goes I think and I think it's a good point Jamie I think there's also there is though a difference between like one of your examples was a bus needing to return to a building because of a behavior situation which could happen honestly at any age level um and the difference being because the bus is in route whereas what you're talking talking about is the time in which the bus is sitting parked at the school in which case the bus driver is in a better position to be if depending on if the students are sitting for a little bit of time that the bus driver is also then able to have their attention on the students because they're not driving as well but that's one of the things that we've been talking about because we want to figure out what are those expectations um for those students and you know how how much can we minimize that time in which they're sitting on the bus I think I think that is definitely ideal to minimize the time that you know those those students are on the bus because you know this goes back to I I do appreciate their being creative you know like ways of thought like ways of thinking and trying different things and all of that kind of thing but um I do feel like it goes back to my same sentiment a couple years ago where you're kind of sacrificing one one subset of students to you know try to come up to a standard on another set of students that are potentially only going to end up being up later not not because of a parenting issue but because all of everything got pushed later for them right like they're their activities are later so now their homework's done later and so on and so forth so um I just hope that we're not trying to check a box here and make sure that we're you're we're checking off goals that have been

made by the school committee and in the principles and the leadership team and that we're really considering like that cost benefit analysis of you know all P to K to 12 students yes thank you Jamie I think also one thing to note just on the the behavior part or or the bus drivers's concerns um just to note the seating you know on the bus and that the idea would be that the bus would sit with kind gardeners at the front and that they would kind of sit by grade level through the bus as well so um if there's any kind of concerns regarding behaviors expectations um on the bus drivers even just having I mean from my perspective my kids were living at at where I live in my proximity to NAB lots of things happened between my house less than a mile away and NAB school and just sitting in the parking lot so I I get that and I'm fine with like the fact that they're leveled off but still happens you know what I mean and so lengthening the time the time on the bus bus is only going to increase that right so that's just something to consider like as much as yes I totally understand the point of view to put all of these kids on the bus at the same time save cost on busing all of that but the longer that they're on the bus in a you know they're supervised but they're not there's a bus driver on there but there's nobody watching every single move that all of those kids are making in a buck seat you know so it just you know that I think needs to just be considered you know deeply considered for for that type of thing um and I guess the the last thing um that I was gonna the like other um that was I was going to ask about is like um I've heard through the grap Vine with the the kids

that are um that do Theater Arts you know they they usually have a time after school this is for the high school aged um kids they usually have a time after school to like get work done and stuff and now this this is going to push everything back so then you know they're going to lose some time because they can only stay at the school till a certain time um again I don't have a kid at Theater Arts yet at the at westf Academy because my oldest is at n show Tech but um just thinking you know it's another subset of students that if you're pushing all of their work back a half hour or an hour it's not about responsible bedtimes at that point they still need to get their work done for the next day so if they're just staying up that much later to get everything done what where you know that that cost analysis benefit right like where does that does that work out for them in the end okay thanks Jamie thank you I've got somebody else here online too there are folks on the room now though yeah yeah found [Laughter] them so if you were joining um if you were trying to join Zoom to to hear us and find us earlier um but but public comment is available in the room if you want to come up to the microphone and share feedback just or questions um you can start by um introducing yourself and I think there's a sign in sheet for your name and address it's part of the public record thank you sure speak in here yep thank you all right it doesn't amplify your voice it's just for the recording am I about to become like a Supreme Court Justice confirmed not uh so my name is Mike Mills uh Katie and I have a kid in middle school kid in high school um I guess first of all I just want to say thank you all for

addressing this um I think everything that was just said there's truth in all of it for sure and like nothing is perfect and everything's got problems and so i s respect that I think for us the reason we feel so passionately about this is like the mental health challenge it is real and I think we personally experienced that and you know it's uh it's not like we can just uh fix everything you know a 15-year-old 16 year old it's only so easy to manage we do everything we can but they are not wired to get up this early and on top of all the other mental health challenges we Face we lose 30 minutes of sleep every every single night and it makes it worse and you know when you talk to experts and we get advice on this sort of thing it's the number one thing they say can you make uh sleep improvements it's the number one thing we hear every single time to improve mental health but you know our hands are kind of tied and so we see you know this uh this change although I realize there's a lot of logistics to work through um I applaud you all for looking at the actual research like this is not made up stuff it's not like you know one group of parents had this idea I mean there's real science behind this there are actual reasons why this makes sense and uh I can say I can corroborate that with the little color commentary that we see it too as parents and it's not like we're not going to do everything we can regardless of whether this goes through uh but boy it sure sure would help a lot with with mental health especially for for high schoolers so pretty much all I got I really apprciate coming yeah thanks all right thank you guys yeah thank you and I've got J&J I'm promoting you to panelist yeah you should be able to

speak you you asking people to identify themselves can you hear me yes we can yeah we can can you just make sure that sorry that I just want to uh excuse me sorry can you make sure to introduce yourself and give your name and address oh sorry my name is j I'm in 310 old uh just want to follow up one of the comment uh one of the previous uh uh parents made in terms of the you know stay up late to do finish the homework um my son is already uh is in the 8th grade just the based of my own experience the have to say that Elementary School start from the the lower the grades are the homework load is extremely light as they going up to um so like now eighth grade I can see a little bit more and I heard in high school the the the workload extremely it's a it's a big jump uh in terms of the workload so uh I personally did not see a issue with pushing back um the school time by I don't know 30 minutes or even an hour for younger kids to finish their homework uh on time so just my personal experience okay thank you for sharing that is there anyone else on Zoom that would like to speak just check back no hands up at the moment how many do we have a attendees nobody else raise their hand um so we could take this moment to um review the survey so I've got do have that slide ready

um I uh broke down the community survey so we'll start with the high level um I hope you were all able to review it I sent you it the full file over the long weekend for some light reading um but the top question was um ranking your support or opposition to the change 59% are in strong agreement with this change and almost 14% agree which total 73% of responses are in favor of the change um the following questions were to try to gauge whether we thought there was going to be um change in participation to bus riders and early arrival options at the elementary levels um and I don't think it was as big a swing as we were expecting so I've kind of left those questions for this to the side for now and then I focused on the few hundred um wrin responses that we got um the most of the wrin responses uh the areas of concern that were highlighted although some some right and responses were full support so it's not that it's not that there weren't it's not that the only right and responses were negative but I wanted to just take a minute and highlight what pieces of information were raised as concern um and I don't think any of these are real surprises but I wanted to capture them here so um impact uh worries about impacts on student after school activities whether those be Athletics like we've heard a little bit tonight um clubs uh external programs outside of the district um and their

jobs um I I I learned this from one of the comments that Market Basket has a set shift for high school students which is like 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. I didn't know that so you can only work during that time if you're a high school student um the next the next highest area of concern was impact to caregiver work schedules um the third most cited area of concern is Elementary bus concerns which again we heard tonight about route length Behavior challenges um and understanding what does this mean to the numbers of riders per bus um and then the fourth most the fourth sentiment most expressed is the idea that nothing is broken so we should spend our time on other things that's a paraphrase cuz some of it was not worded as kindly can I also just note the responses the amount of responses we got to this we got to the survey thank you to everybody who did respond because it was it was a really high response rate from the community and but I thought that was interesting I think one of the things I think about is homework load or behavior on buses those are things that were constantly thinking about and planning about and I know this the administrations of Western Public Schools it's it's not like it's all it's all one thing those are other things that are also being managed and thought about on a daily or yearly basis as well so um you know we we've collected those concerns and we we are definitely paying attention to them but it's it's it's part of a complex picture so yep do I to speak to the student survey and then yeah we with um stack the student advisory committee that works closely with the school committee

um on a ongoing monthly basis they ran um a survey in the high school um just pre Christmas break winter break um so we had 432 responses to that 69% of which was in favor we just gave it a yes no the students really advised us on um simp keep it simple stupid um so uh we didn't go into as much detail on that one um but the frequent areas of concern was impact and after school activities potential for no real benefit that idea of only 30 minut minutes and again that logistical concerns of work you know transport Child Care um uh so that was the information we have had asked other information on that question kind of you know would it change bus ridership car ridership and stuff and that's more kind of supposed to kind of give to our transport manager um and kind of to help us think um in terms of planning but for for the conversation tonight we kind of just thought this was the more important thing to to focus on um Tommy you have a question well just uh I just want to let everyone know that we are also looking at the overall ride times too right we're we're getting that data so I don't know if you're presenting that tonight great um so so it's the the only 30 minutes may not actually be only 30 minutes in some cases so um I think that's that's also um another piece to again it's a big puzzle and and these are all just their their concern concerns that I think we all are aware

of and um yeah yeah I think no I was just going to say if the just a continual reminder please if somebody jump in and say this if it's been 15 minutes maybe you've see numbers change on the zoom and I haven't said it again but continue to remind people joining on Zoom to raise your hand if you'd like to join this discussion um but maybe now if there's if there are no active hands would be a good time to draw Upon Our ad administrators who took time to come tonight um I know you've all been having conversations with your staff um so if anybody wants to kind of represent some of the feedback they've been hearing or weigh in on some of that transition Logistics that we've been thinking about between the sister schools um Melissa's just jumping out of her seat so I'm gonna pick on her to start but up to yeah sorry cuz the microphone won't catch you for the recording we'll swear you in now I think it's a little bit easier Melissa boand Melissa boand principal princip of the high school I'm sorry the Middle School Miller school so I think it's a little bit easier for our for our pre 2 schools because it's really a five minute change so in polling staff you know the positive responses or the it's only five minutes and if it's what's better for older kids you know we support it was 90 something per. um School advisory um parents on that were you know in support given the research and what's better for older kids so we really it's like a five minute window um I would say you know for the the bus and the behavior concerns coming from a k to5 District we had K to5 students on the bus um together both ways there wasn't a little weight period in between but I would say we had no more or no less than bus issues than we have now um so you know you just it kind of just it works and you know we still had kind of the kindergarteners towards the front you know only the fifth graders were allowed

w in in the back and and then you make adjustments sometimes where assigned seats or sometimes you know there were pieces um we had talked at leadership that you know you'd have to collaborate maybe not Miller day but others with their sister schools if there was like a behavior issue yes you might have to make a phone call to the other school to work it out but we collaborate all the time so um that wasn't you know an issue for us at all so I think that's all I really have thanks for speaking to that specifically was um raised in some of the survey responses about how to address you know an issue between a fourth grader and a second grader and obviously we have great relationships between all the I think it's important to note as well just for anybody who hasn't followed along um to make it clear we're not looking at at um developing new routes or combining those bus Journeys for the Miller and day schools because of the distance um so at the the moment the bus routes are only for between ab and Abbot and um Robinson and chrisop fly schools um I did I there were a couple responses about being a car rider between Miller and day um so can you can one of you speak to a little bit about like I I think parents or caregivers sometimes feel that pressure to be like lined up and um you know that like well if my line if the if the lineup is at Miller at 3:00 um you know but I'm my kid isn't getting sitting in the car until 2:55 at day my poor kid is going to be left there last standing alone um so I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that concern sure I mean in I would say in the morning there's that sorry I should have thought of it before you left that's okay I love it um so I would say that in the morning right now we have kind of that 10minute window of you know students arriving and coming in so

there is you know yes we have the cars lined up right at the beginning um um but it's a trickle and it's staffed for those those fulltime minutes so I don't see any issue kind of in the morning with the drop off because it's more fluid um our afternoon dismissal is is more once you know once the last car rolls away then then we're done however if we need to look at that and find that we need a window of time to so you know parents aren't nervous that they're you know child's gonna hang out with me in the office until they get there then I think that's something that we could definitely look at especially between Miller day just because it is further there's more traffic it's busy but yeah I I don't see it as an obstacle yeah and some of those discussions would happen as it goes between both School sites yeah to to that point though and this would be something that maybe Chris you could chime in and if it's different in any other school but the afternoon pickup yes we all know that at all the schools parents arrive earlier than they need to to get to a specific spot in line for various reasons but once that start starts right once the actual process starts then I mean what I've seen is it's always very smooth and so then there's not a delay there if someone happened to be later in the line it wouldn't necessarily have a massive impact about their ability to get to the schools I mean at Miller it's it's quicker than dismissing all our buses it's it's very fluid so that's why we may need to add a window um that you know we're waiting but I don't see it I I can personally speak today I'm 10 minutes it it's pretty impressive quickly at at day kind of between Belle and the last few cars well and I just saw you nod when you when she said that the bus that it's faster than bus dismissal would you all agree that the pickup parent pickup is goes faster than the bus dismissal no question much fter

wow okay okay that was not my experience at the middle school level because the middle schools they release to the buses immediately and it's a different scenario so the pickup took longer but that's interesting CU it's just different at the only and I would say to speak to Miller it's because of the arrival of the bus times yeah if they were all there at dismissal time then it would be quicker but they they trickle in up to 10 or 15 minutes ler okay well it they also have to do with the ratio of students that are Riders as opposed to bus Right Moving you know 50 students as opposed to 10 just usually numbers is is different so does anybody else want to chime do we have any hands on Zoom would anyone else like to chime in on their staff or sack conversations and feedback yeah Pete Pete Myerson principal of Abbott school um so the feedback from know from parents and from staff is the as we brought up tonight is just the wait time on the bus and and that's sort of an unknown um you know when the kids right now they aage between 20 and 25 minutes for the ride home and that could be 40 45 but I think it's going to be hard until we actually start it and we talked our leadership meeting there is probably room to change maybe 5 10 minutes either way and until we do it do it for a few weeks it's going to be hard you know if we can get it down to they waiting on the bus maybe 5 seven minutes that's that's pretty doable and so but it's going to take a little time okay that's about it how long does it typically take to kind of get a bus loaded and you know from when they pull up at the door like cuz you typically have the students kind of ready to so basically we have three buses get there pretty quickly so they're once we call those buses within 5 minutes they're out on the street wow and then we have few more buses trickle in and a couple buses Trickle and the whole thing takes about 15 minutes by 2:45 they we're clear all the bus yeah and probably about for uh pickup it's probably 10 minutes the parents would

pick up the car line the car line that has got better the last couple years the first I know I got here two years ago was a lot more but it's much less with the pickups and for anyone that hasn't participated I mean you guys all have it I'm sure down to a science obviously only picking up at my kid school but like you know somebody's out there taking down the names the kids come out in an order I mean you guys have done it really well to to make it sing like uh um smooth like that and one of the things that we talked about and I know we talked about with d as well too is that the trickling in effect that takes place right now in the afternoon is because they've been out doing a route before they come to you right now what we're talking about is buses will go from school a directly to school B so they'll leave there at the same time so there's not going to be that the there wouldn't be that same trickle effect of did this bus need to wait a little bit longer because someone wasn't there to to to greet them or whatever the case may be so that would also help us kind of um shrink up the time okay along those line sorry um and I know we're looking at this uh we calling it two-tier now two-tier two-tier so would it be two separate sets of buses or would it be buses going to the high school middle schools and then those same buses going to the elementary same number of bus same number of buses okay um I just wanted to was curious if you because I know at three we like a lot of the conversations are at the middle in the high school you know the the shift but it really is in a shift for the 3 to five have you had any feedback from staff about what that sh um I obviously like to start earlier um but um again to make this work and I think as as we talked about the research the high school research it's it's it's it's pretty clear they need to start a little later so I think that kind of Trumps okay that I appreciate that

thanks B do you want me to share some of the bus data we're looking at now um because I think some of the conversations are kind of landing on that bus sure thanks Pete give me one sec do you want somebody to speak while you they want okay do we have an taker to go next oh okay oh why don't we stay why don't we stay Elementary for now just because she's gonna bring up the bus routes um Chris Foy so we had a mixed um my was in favor of the time change for the middle high school but then concerned about the later start for the 3 to 5 because we're very busy in the morning um so that's extending the EA the early arrival option and one concern staff brought up is like we have a hard time Staffing that anyways so having that additional time would be able to find staff to staff that for me and be there um so like four main things that came up was the concern of is it 20 minutes really going to make a difference for Middle High School 30 minutes um or could we flip-flop it and Elementary goes first and then the Middle High School go next so that's an interesting thought holding the students on the bus but between Robinson and Chris Philly it's pretty quick when we we get kids out and in pretty quickly that if we did talk about staggering our times that would be amendable we thought that might be a great idea and working with Kevin and the other pieces would the might be a big shift for some of our staff with their own children's schedules because not everyone goes to Western Public Schools we have staff that come from all from all over um positive things is we have some staff who aren't mourning people so like a later start great them um personally I like an earlier start because I like to be out in the ass in the in the light um but you make adjustments as you have to make

adjustments so I think that people we're we're thinking more of a shift because we are we are starting later like at the three at the K to two it's like a FIV minute difference but for us it's about a 35 minute difference but I think we'll manage it we'll work together I think working with every everybody um we do agree that the later start times and the more sleep for the older students is much better shift in that manner yeah in a vacuum I think there's a lot of support for that it's the worry about the impact stuff yeah can I just follow up with Sharon on that point you you made some of the staff were saying about flip-flopping because I I want to make sure that we um highlight that um a couple of years back there was some look at kind of doing something like that and some of the feedback that came out of that conversation at the time was um it could potentially cost more for child care um either to families or to the wreck program in town because they wouldn't have high school students available so when the starttime subcommittee um started looking at this we did specifically discuss that issue but we felt that it it just wasn't fair to start that we because of the financial ACTA directly on families and and the recck program and trying to staff it so um while we do acknowledge it um it just Logistics wise we were very um we kind of really made the decision that we wouldn't do that flip-flop um so a couple just one other point on just staff to support the staff I have some staff right now that don't have to use that opportunity in their own towns and the potential that they might have to now incur a child care okay fee for themselves so they can come to school at that later time because some can get their kids on the bus and then get to work whereas now they might have to look into some other type of

child care option that they have not had to before and then commute times because some people do come from far away overall I think people are in agreements of of the later um the sleep time for the older kids but I think they also like our kids cuz sitting I think having them I know kada to does the before school care for almost two hours I think that was kind of a concern like are the three to five going to be burnt out by the time they get to class so just looking at those things and making adjustments as we need to just like we talked about the buses and behaviors and it's all about if we do collaborative problems solving training kids making good choices and working with debus we work with them anyway so I think any bus issues that might come up we would be able to collaborate together and work on great thank you just something you said there about um like Po staggering the times and I know Catherine's going to talk a little bit about this with the bus routs but I just want to be really clear because it didn't hit me until we had had a conversation about it but what you're actually saying is that potentially Robinson and Chris Foy might have different times right different start and end times than other schools in the district because they're so close and to reduce the I don't think anybody agrees that we want kids idle on a park for no reason right so it's it's not that this 20 minutes in between sister schools is like this hard and fast it's this first out of thegate proposal that we're saying here the bounds that we're working on um but that there's we expect and even um uh I think Pete said it was once you get once you get in it a couple of weeks too that we expect there could be further tweaks to keep making this um improved if it went that was something that that we had all talked about was just this notion of okay wait a second are is it do we think that it's manageable to say after a month of school we might say hey we're actually

going to adjust this start time to this amount of time and and we kind of all talked about that yeah we could you know with good communication and and if if you if you if you have the rationale behind it then that makes a lot of sense to do that so once we talked about that it's not you know if if we need to make an adjustment we can still make an adjustment in this and I know when this when the subcommittee was working on this they really looking at a window we didn't know exactly we we we weren't even sure in talking about it well should the K to2 go first or the 3 to five we're like well and honestly that didn't also matter to The Matrix of does the math work and then we can look at well what makes sense developmentally and that was something we talked about as a leadership team and so I think when we said that and we're like okay would there be problems if say Chris ofly had a different start time than Abbot and day yeah schedule wise we have to be mindful of teachers that we that are shared we have to be mindful of meetings and things like that but it's not something we couldn't we couldn't overcome yeah but also they wouldn't be massive tweaks it's not like we'd be saying chrisop and Robinson are like it's a 5 10 minutes potential tweak Asos to it makes it harder for those like early release reminders that that some of us do districtwide of you know like this time this time this time now it'll be like six different a grid maybe um but yeah okay I just wanted to really spell that out for people to think that through okay thanks Sharon so we want to take a minute and again if anybody's on Zoom wants to raise their hand to um speak but we'll take this minute to talk through a little bit of the bus through data that Katherine has from conversations with d oh yeah real quick Valerie so one of the questions that I have um well I think it keeps coming up right this concern about that that the average bus time right now

is what 20 to 25 and now we're looking at as this wonderful grid shows um some of which are closer to 50 minutes so I I guess one of the questions that I have and I think Katherine might get into this is what do we know approximately how many students this is actually going to be impacting um who are now faced with a 20 to 25 minute route where we now in some instances looking at Double of that like do we have a number or a rough approximation as to that or is it I could pull that up I'd have to go back into the bus ridership numbers to see how many students are currently riding various buses and I think the big takeaway Sean is in the conversations I've had with Renee um debus um and we can look at this a bit more is that you know they they've tweaked and maybe created some new Roots but the ACT ual ride time that the JK from the time the bus leaves the school the car park to the time they drop off isn't really changing for a couple of minutes the the time that's kind of when if you see on that like bus two currently the average ride time for that bus is about 23 and a half minutes but it can kind of Max is about 25 minutes the estimated new ride time is they're kind of saying it's about 25 minutes which is kind of what it is right now but we put in that 20 minutes of transition time but as I think Pete was saying they're getting a bus in and out in five minutes at Abbot in in that transition time so really that 25 minutes for only one route of the day bearing in mind depending which if you're an a if you're K to2 or 3 to five is gone from maybe 25 to 30 minutes um so that that's why we wanted to put

that range in because like that in having this conversation I think it was really important to show um this is kind of more definitive what we think the ride will be but at the moment we're allowing for that 20 minutes of transition time so just so I have this right so in many ways this this is uh shows that we're kind of under promising in hopes that we're able to overd deliver is that right we've kind of done the worst case scenario okay we're assuming the max 20 minute window and we you know we're having these disc questions about potential sister schools adjusting yeah I think I think one of the bigger things that we took away from our conversations that there also right now currently is a lot of buses that are not being fully used there are some very empty buses and not to sound cliche but we you know we're looking at this model also in the lens of a fiscal responsibility that we have to the community and I think those times on right the 40 4550 is is the end point and we're going to try to work that down right with d even even smaller right um what what we're going to see is more students getting off at certain stops right you know in higher density locals in Westford um we're going to see potential for additional stops along the way but what we've heard from D is that it's largely going to keep you know we're talking a minute or two when you add those stops and along the route that already exists or that that partially adjusted route that isn't going to be too far off from what's currently right rout in sorry just a follow up um and feel free to interrupt me because I asking bun questions but no the the okay so presuming that D is able to get these numbers down is that something that we would be looking at

come next Fall or is that something that we think that they'll have an idea as of you know this spring I think the biggest part of the control of those numbers is what happens between the in between the schools so I don't think it's something that we'd be able to really address until next fall okay it's not about D getting the numbers down D has provided us well this is what the typical ride is and has been a part of the conversation to say if you add this extra stop of going to the school it would be about 20 20 minutes but the I think that's going to take collaboration along the the buildings to say you know how much can we shrink that time okay which we would in in theory know well we'll have a much better idea of that come September yes okay right so so really will'll be I if we approve this and we move forward we'll be really asking for that flexibility come the fall to say look we're going to we're going to these are the times we're going to work with now uh but bear with us and we're going to we're going to throw some changes at you as the as the year goes on which minor minor yes not yeah not an hour but uh but we actually do that already with the buses anyway because the route is set out with estimated you know you know and we always kind of feel it out for for two three weeks and then we go oh well you don't actually have to go outside until yeah XYZ time so and and just to reiterate because I know that there are probably people who see the 50s and are are alarm bells are yes but but I think it is important that we say this is the outer bound that we are think that it's it could possibly be because if we do find that between the sister schools

we're shaving 10 minutes off now that becomes a 40 and 35 and it immediately comes right off like to to C to reiterate Katherine's point that the route the kids still live where they live now so it's just that the route is being picked up and picking up the the sister schools at the bus stops together it's not that a route is being doubled in length yeah it's that the route is running and just going to two stops and we are hoping that there's efficiencies in tweaking between the schools for that transition time that would keep continue lowering and lowering and lowering that number essentially a lot of the rights were doing it twice over M minus some tweaks they were essentially doing the same r twice um I just to say the reason why we put in that 20 minute where this 20 minutes originally came from was actually day and Miller because we were kind of looking it's a kind of a 13 15 minute drive so let's say a 20 minute Gap and that's kind of for the start times that's where the 20 minutes came from um to start with and and that's where we've kind of left it for now so it's yeah the parents in the buses a little security you know in in that distance but yeah so it wasn't Renee at debos saying you know oh we can't do NAB and abbis with with a 20 minutes I mean she most definitely kind of felt we're being very over generous with the with these four sister schools um with the 20 minutes so it's really actually um Miller and day that kind of were dictating that this 20 minutes so we we could choose tonight to or as conversations go on to make that suggestion you know to stagger the start times and not have all six of the elementary schools do in 850 and and 910 MH and that was just the start of the conversation to bring it to

the wider community and for leadership to be involved yeah okay um so I don't know okay so why don't we keep going to the um principles and also just to say any of the these routes all subject to change yeah until registrations are in and confirmed registrations will sorry one one question about Abbot and NAB and this is not necessarily knowing the the routes would there be like the bus leaving Abbott in the afternoon going to NAB and then having to come back to Abbott to start dropping off probably you know what I mean right like if Providence Road or something yeah y so so there would be a little bit of that back and forth so just just something to and I'm sure D will have to figure that out as well so y okay when don't if again if you're on zoom and you'd like to speak please raise your hand otherwise we'll take another Dan maybe to the hosp actually okay sorry sorry Dan you Dan you can just come back and February be Chris sardello principal of day um so I did present this to our school advisory Council and we did have a healthc care professional who is one of our members who was ecstatic and she said that she reiterated that data that you looked at and is very excited about this proposed time change so there's that um but we do have a mixed bag with our faculty um some are very much in favor of it and they feel like what's best for students is definitely something that we should be considering um but there are other faculty that are concerned about that time that's spent on the bus it's not much of an issue for Miller and day um because we will not have that issue of children um you know K through five being on the same bus but

it is going to be for the others and we know as principles that the more time you spend on the bus whether riding or waiting at the school means more unexpected behaviors are going to happen and it's not because it's a mixed group of students it's just that time that they're sitting there and so I'm happy to hear that you're flexible with the amount of time um that they will be spent on that bus once we figure out what's going on in the fall so I think that will alleviate some of the fears we do have some veteran staff members that um live quite a a distance from the school up to an hour commute we're concerned about that and um that would not um work out for her family if if in fact we went with the proposed time and there were some faculty members that were concerned about being able to offer clubs after school because of that 25 minute difference in time so if we were able to tweak that even by 10 minutes that would be amazing because I think it would change um people's minds about um whether or not they'd be able to uh um offer those opportunities to our students okay yeah thank you you CHR do you want me to go for Middle School go ahead hi Patty DM assistant principal Blanchard um for us we had positives um also for Stony Brook not too much of a dramatic change in the time and it could have some benefits we're hoping that it will reduce some of our ttes um and We Know It aligns with you know the school with the Athletics we don't think it will impact our Athletics or afternoon clubs we had a couple of negatives from the staff about 18% total said that it could affect their

availability to stay after school or for extra help or activities um some didn't think the 25 minutes was big enough for a difference and some were worried about the roots with kids sitting on the bus so basically the same what we're hearing across the board but um we do know that it's better for the students for the the sleep so positive great thanks PTY thank you thank you um so I did a quick poll with um first of all with my my before I talk about the poll my uh school council my that we have been in favor of a school start CH uh start time change for 10 years i w when I was first a Dean I was on the original school start time committee um I believe that was 2017 where we you know we had met at the the town the fire station as an original committee and was part of that original proposal um so yes we've been in favor of this we've watched many schools over the years in the area change their start times to later start times um so it's you know as far as after school activities and all those things I I I I don't see a reason that would stop me from saying it's the absolute right thing to do um so it it will help um I I did pull uh the staff and it was a mixed results it was about 53% were in favor of it and really for the support of students um uh the 47% it became more of traffic and after school availability and changes to their own personal schedules and um some of those things then there was also another sub set that felt like it wasn't enough um and it ties kind of into my last point which

was are the bus is still going to be picking up so early and dropping off so early and um I've said uh that at this committee and that has come up numerous times is something that we are actively working on to have an appropriate drop off time at westr Academy and and if that's a scenario I I would say that there would be much more support um for it just based on if it's 35 minutes or 40 minutes more of sleep of every single day for the students it came up in almost every conversation with d about first of all the rationale is to wire buses still dropping off early at wa I will say that there's not a there's not a solid answer for that other than when we continue to say if we make this change and if you tell us that we're able to do this and we're able to still do this with our existing contract then this is when they would be able to drop off they cannot drop off um before you know before before x amount of time whatever that whatever we determine what that is because of that exact reason that you're it's defeating the purpose it's similar to your your reason answering Jim's question earlier about we're not exploring doing things before school in terms of um practices or rehearsals I mean yeah practices or rehearsals because that defeats the purpose yeah and I think you know you'd mentioned there Dan and it had also kind of come up about you know are it's not is it's not going far far enough in the sense you know we it's well established the American Academy of Pediatrics say the earliest time for any High School is 8:30 um in a perfect world where Money Was No Object I don't know what that's like um you know that's where we would love to be but in order and you know for everyone we looked at that so we had software that we were using um that could allow us to kind of test using

um current bus ridership data that we had um we we had this company consult with us um on this and we looked at 8 805 810 820 830 I think if we wanted an 8:30 start time with it like going no later at the K to FS than kind of like 9:15 I think we had said it was going to double our amount of buses required in order to make that happen so 800 a.m. became The Sweet Spot in that we could make some change and it's about progress not Perfection sometimes um we could get to 8:00 a.m. without within the constraints of our current um budgeted bus um time so we absolutely had discussed could we get it later um and I think it's also something that is not off the table longer term if we you know find lots of money down the back of the sofa or um you know if we do get to the because I know the conversation is going to happen at some point regarding redistrict the the K to fives and potentially making neighborhood schools and I think that allows us to if if that happens that potentially allows us to move the the needle a bit more on the um start times at the middle and high school further F further route efficiencies like that example of that Abbot bus driving to NAB and then back to that neighborhood if you have a section of kids that are all going to Abbot then the roots are all closer you you lose that transition time that need for that transition time at the schools so um it would potentially give us more an opportunity to re-examine it so it's not like this is it forever but it's at least making progress now in the hope that in the future we can re revisit it does anybody have any questions for Dan excuse me no do you know what the largest weight um early drop off if you

will that kids are like what time is the earliest bus that gets there right now um some days it arrives at 6:53 most of the time it's the average time is 706 um and 655 a couple roll in so that that's still half an hour yeah that's another half an hour start at 7:35 yeah we're talking for I I was there with you Dan that Friday morning it was we're talking 40 minutes plus you know for these kids and they're alled waiting out outside the theater in the cafeteria just the the bodies keep mounting and okay and we have spoken to to deos about that we just that is that is a priority that has to yeah yeah great thank you thank you thank you another reminder that if you're on zoom and you want to speak just raise your hand um or if you're in the room and you've thought of something else um I'll share a couple more thoughts I points I saw in the survey um there was concerns about if you have Elementary siblings and you have one car rider and one bus rider if the times are too close um you can't get home for the kiddo off the bus um another impact I saw and this kind of speaks to a a theme we're hearing but and and I know you're you've said before Katherine that in your opinion that this is progress not Perfection that this is one of many tools I know as a subcommittee you've had that conversation but um and some of the responses were about like okay so this is this is one thing but when do you look at Homework policy or are there rules about or guidelines about activi should be done at this time and you know how else can we partner with families um

to sort of even educate on sleep behaviors and sleep um improvements that can be made and stuff so I think that's should be also kind of part of our discussion about um not this year but how it how it fits in holistically to the district and the conversations about homework the conversations even about times that activities should be taking place that all at least six through 12 came out of challenge success as well too I mean and so we've done that work we'll we'll continue to revisit it and look to see how how that's been working but those are examples of things that we were proactively trying to make adjustments that existed within the constraints of our schedule that we could still make now this was the this was really the last piece of it that you know previous committees had hoped to explore and so it's good that you've been able to fully explore this in a different way than they've been able to in the past yeah I think on the homework and the activities it might be worth a review anyway because I will say I have got I've had conversations with parents um particularly up at the kind of the high school level is that you know kind of it's not necessarily happening in in you know what's the the policy versus the Practical what's happening and so I think it's definitely worth a kind of a review um I see this as just you know part one of that because you know it's in our esep that that social emotional learning of our students so um it's maybe time to review again kind of what's happening to the students with homework and and um after school clubs and stuff um the last point I want to raise from the survey summary I have is um a lot of requests to if you make if this change happens to keep the early arrival option times the same um and not only that but

there have been some points raised about um right now we have a a fee for the whole year for um no matter it's not pro-rated it's not based on usage it's it's just participation it's not participation based um is to consider with this change changing that model of fee um to either I think smaller chunks of throughout the year so that you can sort of gauge your usage um or by day I don't know how how that would work um keeping track of of that but these are all P pieces that we can continue to discuss over the next couple weeks um I I would just say I would I I think we've talked about some of those things in the past by day that would be that's not practical because we have to staff it right so you have to have an idea as to how many students You're Expecting but but whether or not we broke it down to half a year or some that that might still allow us to you had those estimates you know you had people signing up but I wonder if the by day is well we would need this Monday Wednesday and Friday but not Tuesday Thursday type deal which not not like impromptu got you but just like I thought you meant like they're showing up at the door with you know cash in hand and we're like no no no no no sorry we don't commiss to 3 days a week every week whatever yeah I would I would really support and appreciate if we could look at that um any any kind of flexibility would be great so I just want to use everyone's time wisely right if if we're petering out on community feedback what I'd like to Pivot to is what we think as the committee is next steps I did talk to the chief oh yeah oh okay right so just one last piece of information I called Chief Chambers and shared with him what the consideration was that he had an understanding as to what this impact might be in traffic through town um his response was that well yes it would would impact traffic

um he said that typically traffic starts to pick up around 8:00 through town but the other piece of information that um I had forgotten um was that there's also major construction that's going to be taking place on Boston Road um maybe for the next two years um and he said starting in April okay and he said that's going to impact us as well and so he said we'll work around this most of the it the impact would really be wa because all all of the other schools really have other ways to get there for the most part and then the time that we were talking about for the elementary schools wouldn't make that big of a difference so he really said you know Abbot and wa being in the center of town but um he just said it would have an impact but yes we are also part of the traffic in general so you know it's hard to say if it would have a tremendous impact or not but he said I think your your your students and and parents who would be driving to wa might want to consider that that might add you know five minutes to their commute time um they'll obviously be putting a plan in terms of managing traffic right and so but we talked about it and once he heard the impact and he heard that you know the shift and and really what was happening at the elementary schools he really didn't have any concern and both of the middle schools are you know so far apart that it's really just the impact on the Cent he said the afternoon wouldn't be a problem it's just in the morning and just really people who would be trying to go from one part of town to wa if they needed to use this Center to do that okay thank you I have one quick question yeah please so did your survey um find out whether or not this would impact bus ridership so in asking parents whether or not they would be uh more likely to drop off children at school or take the bus because I think that would have an impact on us for sure so it was it was a goal of the survey I think it got a little confusing with how it was worded um we asked does your Cur

does your family currently use the bus um 70% said yes and then with the new start times would your family be likely to continue using the bus um and it's 66% yes with with some like and at 10% I'm not sure yeah right so yeah you know I I think I was expecting like a big swing it's it's pretty similar for the early arrival participation well that does make sense though because the idea is that there might be some people who do not currently use the bus who because of the start time there's a swap you can't see right so like when you're saying like there's a 10% I don't know well those questions don't necessar that those cohorts don't necessarily mean it's the same people exactly so see switches on either yeah and and a switch ends up neutral for ridership right so like I I think it tells us not to expect a massive change one way or the other yeah I age massive a massive net change and you could have some people who their question really is what is this bus experience going to be right before I make that decision y yeah so I think yeah well that's good news because a massive change and drop off would significantly impact how we do things at the day school just because of the logistics of the parking thank you um I think you did a good job with the questions that's why I was saying that oh thanks um so um we should figure out what if there's any outstanding information that the committee needs what other steps we see needing to be taken when we think a vote might make sense those are all things that I'd like to open up for discussion at this point um I think there's two things I want to

kind of note tonight or one of them was um I really wanted to make sure that um that this this the star times committee we weren't coming saying this is a recommendation this is what you we should do as a school committee we wanted to come and saying if this is what we want to do as a school committee this is the option right so I wanted to make sure there was kind of no bias in there to begin with um that this was this was giving us the choice um the the thing for me is really just looking at the sister schools that K to five and if we can have that conversation about can we actually tweak those start times potentially now before we votes that we wouldn't necessarily vote on a 8:15 910 start time but can we actually consider and have that disco conversation and maybe it's kind of really throwing it back sorry guys I know you've a lot of work to leadership to say what do you think is possible um you know in terms of that transition time of of what could make work I I would like to see kind of that feedback more specifically on but not right now sorry but not right now from them not tonight not tonight I'm looking at people I like this should be sorry no go away and have have a think about and so think I mean I will say I think I think we can look at that and we can talk a little bit more about it it is going to be something that it's going to have to I think it's going to have to Stew for a while because I think the discussions that need to Happ look I mean we do know that chrisop Foley and Robinson are right next to each other right so I mean we know that that's the first one that we're like they're just not going to need 20 minutes so we can think in terms of what could a re what could what could that window look like and what would that impact be if it was different I think we can kind of have those philosophical conversations about it I don't think we're really going to know

what the difference should be between NAB and Abbott because I think they're far enough apart with the train track that it's just enough that I think they'd have to really wait to see what it's like in practice and I think it's worth not noting though it's not just 20 minutes of a drop off window right because it's technically 30 minutes CU we typically open the schools for drop off 10 minutes before classes start so right now it's kind of like a 30 minute window of drop off time um so so I think we also need to when we're having those discussions keep in mind that we're not just talking about buses we we are talking about those parents that are are picking up and may be at the back of the line for whatever reason at the first school and therefore they're going to be although again they speaks to the window too that's and that and that speaks to the window that Katherine's mentioning yeah all of the schools already have with the drop off yeah yeah there's got to be real intention about where things stack in terms of the order even like the buses the longest bus routes between sister schools we'd like to get them out first and foremost right you know so like yeah you have to be deliberate um so do do we think we need um a February 3rd meeting and a February 10th meeting to nail this down I I personally would think we would like to not have this carry out over vacation if I think people want to start planning if this is if this is happening um I think it it trickles down to a lot of discussions we have to have about logistics like do we change the bus pass registration window this year and try to move that up a bit so I think and I think even just the vacuum of space to let it linger right like I want to try to limit that and

think about deci a decision from the committee before February break so at the moment I think our schedule is the 10th no the third the third sorry thank you yeah the 10th is tentative tentative can I just note on the bus registration deadline I I think we're going to look at moving that regardless of what the vote is based on request from central office staff okay um so it's that's not necessarily tied to this um does anyone have thoughts on what our meeting schedule should be like and how to make this decision does anyone feel like we need a lot more discussion on this I don't think that we need a lot more discussion on this I have a a question so is February 10th a tentative meeting meeting or it's tentatively on the schedule for February 10th I guess I understand um it's it's on our it's we have it listed as a tentative school committee meeting because of the next week is is um the break so we were like so it's on there as a tentative meeting I'm going to just take a minute and say we're pivoting to Logistics and stuff I know this is p bed time I'd love it if we can release them all for sure thank you thank you thank thank you thank you so much for coming tonight um Dr CH just while it's in my head is it also something you could have a conversation with leadership that we would kind of have a a pause on or whatever for you know that 20 30 minutes hold on I want to stay on schedule and and vote for a minute so I the reason why I'm saying I don't think that we need more discussion is because I think that we've surveyed folks we know what the issues are the feedback is very consistent the feedback is very consistent throughout um so I don't think that there's any um issues that have not been brought to the four and folks have had an opportunity to give feedback a lot of different folks

have so I don't want to like sound like I'm being callous but I think that we've definitely have the feedback and now it's about like you said Valerie um you know there's there's someone that I work with that often says that uncertainty causes anxiety and I think about that a lot when I'm working with my team and so I think that I agree with your sentiment about um you know folks know that this decision's on the table they've been giving us feedback consistently um and I think that making uh an opportunity for folks to know when the vote's going to be and having that be as soon as possible I think might be um much more helpful than giving more opportunity to discuss the same issues that folks have been very clear about I think the feedback is very clear yeah yeah yeah I don't think anything was surprising consistent right I don't sound callous I'm just trying to say like it's more is is every is any of the seven of us un sure that they couldn't be ready to vote on February C is there information you're missing as a Committee Member I'm definitely ready to vote right now lar I mean I guess I'm just reflecting on our turnout tonight and wondering if that's the absence of Engagement is also telling us something think it yeah yeah I I don't know Marcel and I were joking about that but it's it's I think it's reflective elsewhere I I'm unaware of us having other th surveys that have 1300 responses our emails have been consistently uh we've been receiving plenty of responses from staff and community members

um so I think people are just engaging in different ways and actually one of my my suggestions was going to be is to have whatever emails we've gotten to the school committee General mailbox to have those as um oh part part of the record for um the night that we vote because I I do think that I mean what we had three three public comments and questions so I I think a lot of it is coming in from in different ways yeah and I think people are giving their feedback right like I think if they feel like if they've you know what the ISS issues are okay um I mean I know we I know we heard Dan speak today about representing Jeff on the facilities I guess I uh Athletics yeah sorry faili discuss the offsite facilities I guess I just wonder if there's any other is there is there any further step there to take to show that we've done due diligence with those partners that give us the confidence that we will find practice time and I don't know what those conversations have been like but I mean I can ask Mr bun and I'm not sure if there's a signed agreement that exists in with everybody as as to when they do that and if they're prepared to do that I just shared with you the conversation that he had with me which was he talked with all of them and they all said they could make that adjustment 30 minutes later because it's not a significant amount of time they would be able to do that for Westford that also goes to having a vote sooner is if we take a vote yeah more time then they can say hey this is what we have and can we we have I don't know if they do you know this is our agreement we're just going to continue next year you know but the sooner they

can get out there with their requests the more likely they're going to get what they want I'm not overly concerned about that either I mean these are most of these are private facilities if they want our business then they're going to work with us yeah so and and just to note in an earlier conversation that Jeff onion had with us and the committee um he had said like that 8:00 a.m. was like the optimum time to shift in terms of balance like we could get that later time without it was like minimal impact if any on athletic spased on it so he had even said himself that that 800 a.m. time he was like even once you go to 8:05 then it was like okay then we have to start thinking but eight was the was the time that he even felt himself was very achievable so yeah he attended a couple of those meetings you had asked him to go to those okay um if we are looking at February 3rd um is it something we you could put in your February 1 Mr Dwight email yep do we think another blurb in the principal newsletters make sense to announce I think communicate seven different ways seven different times it just where I I'd rather overcommunication like the way that we we will publicize some of what's going on with them sometimes it it may not hurt to just have it out there I didn't mean to um interrupt sorry but like the other piece though is if anybody listening right now Andor as we and as we communicate that if you're deciding that you want to say

that you're going to vote on February 3rd that's a typical business meeting so that means if someone wants to say something that they haven't said they'd have public comment to say it but it's not going to follow this same public Forum that we just had which was a back and forth discussion and question answer that's what we're saying right yes yes okay I think that's a consensus then we will plan for a vote on this February 3rd and we will communicate that accordingly okay motion to adjourn uh kather made a motion to adjourn second how are you second all in favor okay e