1.10.2022 Fall River School Committee

i'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the fall river school committee january 10th uh deb would you please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here mr hart here miss larabee here miss pereira here miss rodricks here mayor coogan here salute to the flag please

pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible i just want to before we get into the agenda a little bit i want to welcome

three new members along with our veterans tonight we have um bobby bailey sarah rodricks and shelley pereira welcome and we appreciate your input and your time your offering to the city um citizens input we have one person signed up tonight colin dyas of ray street

good afternoon mr mayor members of the school committee new members of the school committee i wish to welcome you and thank you again for your time commitment input to this community i see on the agenda for tonight's meeting a vote of the school committee to select a vice a new vice chairman i think there would be a few good candidates that could fit the role but in my opinion that obvious choice would be

kevin aguiar i believe the years of experience not only in the school system but in government and the internal and understanding of the school committee and agenda making it all speaks for itself obviously he doesn't need me to speak up for him i'm doing it because having him in this role is what is best for the school district and that's what we all care about however i do have fears that this mayor

and as he often does likes to play the role of kingpin he off he says otherwise publicly but we all know if you don't support him politically he won't work with you even if it's in the best interest of the city i think the main part of a vice chairman and it's important that the community knows this is to have a seat at the table and craft in the agenda

i have no doubts that mr aguero makes sure every school committee member voice is heard at the table and that we have open and transparent agendas and will speak out if if and when there is any shenanigans because the residents of this community deserve an open and transparent school committee which was missing these last two years thank you thank you we have no recognition awards tonight but we do have

item number four is the superintendent's report superintendent thank you thank you mr mayor thank you so tonight one of the things that we wanted to do is to give everyone an update on test and stay we began fall public schools began test and stay last week upon our return from our break testament stay allows for students and staff identified as close contacts while in school to remain in school each

east coast clinical is a vendor for cic they're working within our district testing asymptomatic students and staff that are deemed close contacts we've set up hub schools where the folks from east coast are stationed durfee high school cuss morton and spencer borden once the school is notified of a public case the nurse then contact does some contact tracing if they're close contacts the nurse

contacts nurse long and folks from east coast will be deployed to that building to test students and or staff parents of students are identified are as close contacts are notified and those with and they have to give us consent if they so choose once we have consent those students are tested and will remain in school as long as they are negative students are tested each day for five days and as

long as they're negative and have no symptoms they remain in school if for some reason a student or staff member tests positive they will need to isolate at home our schools have done an outstanding job in mitigating the spread of covet 19. the members the numbers of close contacts have decreased considerably because everyone is being so cautious we're going to continue to exercise

caution within our buildings cleaning sanitizing daily distancing as much as possible frequent hand washing wearing masks while indoors it's imperative that parents notify the school as soon as their child is positive so that we can make sure we complete our contact tracing and so that we can protect others this is a challenging time for everyone no one has all the answers and there are

no easy answers we want to remain in school safely when our students and our staff to remain in school safely and we're going to continue to do whatever it takes to support our students and staff and families also we have a capital projects updates new durfee high school progress the main academic core building is substantially complete with punch item lists only remaining the remainder of the

exterior of the field house is 95 percent complete with hardy board installation ongoing total construction workers at that site on monday through friday averaging 15 approximately 10 workers on saturdays the old durfee if you drive by there demolition is ongoing with portions of the two-story structure completely demoed the abatement process is 90 percent complete in of the entire old structure

hauling of debris from the demo operations is ongoing with approximately 25 to 30 trailers per day leaving the sites the future durfee field and tennis courts the design work on the soccer field and the tennis courts is underway and remaining site work is close to complete to complete design watson renovation our phase two bids have been received and the general contracted tower construction will be awarded the

contract the city will sign the contract and mobilization will begin within the next 45 days at henry lord k.r resendys has completed all phases of the access road improvement project that looks awesome if you have an opportunity to drive by there the boiler replaced design work is ongoing for new boiler plants we're currently operating the building with a temporary rental boiler at talbot

talbot k.r resendi's has also completed all phases of the drainage and parking lot improvement project the installation of the old greenhouses from durfee will start during the week of january 18th science lab renovations are ongoing using the labs from the old durfee building at the special needs district offices renovations are 60 complete at the pace building for the new office space dedicated to the special needs

department and other office back office operations rough framing plumbing hvac and electro electrical work has been completed and inspected drywall and taping is going to begin on january 18th and at laterno the flood renovations the gymnasium floor was completed over the holiday break minor painting is to be completed and the main office is complete new floor was installed later on a work that's not associated

with the flood there were two office breakout spaces created in the library and that's at the rough stage library space is divided into three areas to better utilize that space that work is completed and cabinets and counters were added to that classroom and that's all for superintendent's report excellent a lot going on any questions on mr again the laterno leak that we mentioned there yes did we know

i i recall hearing some couple years ago about a leak that happened there is that something that we should have been more prepared for or is there any it seemed like that's been like uh something happened then we fixed this supposedly and then it's it seems like i'm not sure if that we should have known or not but i'm just asking that question maybe you could get back to us on that but

i i think i recall that being an issue like back a couple years ago i don't know mr pacheco sure so this was not a leak this was a backwater during a storm that came through the storage system and flooded probably a third of the first floor it was nothing to do with any particular piping or any kind of leaks in the building so it was a surge a storage surge

that entered the building and was that storm yeah i said leak but i think now you're making my recollection so if it was a flood surge was there a flood surge before that or is this the first time no that there was a a small there was a small issue i want to say about six months prior we had the drains cleaned to the street and took care of that situation it didn't happen again

the amount of rain in that particular storm which was remnants of a hurricane overtook the uh the system since then we've installed the backwater valve on the ground right after that flood to prevent that from happening again on the um the line on anthony street was um overcharged so there was really nothing we could have done there was something happen but it wasn't necessarily linked i think is what

nothing like that right i just recall that there was something yes twice there thank you um mr hart thank you mr chairman ken um i see all you know the the uh updates for the capital improvements i'm just curious i didn't see in here and i don't know maybe i haven't asked you about it lately but the progress at sylvia as far as the in and out the um so that still is under um

under advisement by army corps that's a wetlands reclamation project so it takes a little over a year for them to take a look at what our plans are in order to cut a new access into meridian street from our property so the process is about i want to say it's about six and a half months seven months into their period of of discovery and as soon as we have a little more information uh to share with

the committee we will as soon as that's finished then we'll go into full design when do you think they're anticipating them coming back to us i would say that hopefully mid-summer mid to late summer they should be back um with the determination if we need to to you know tweak any of the uh of the documents that we've sent them we will if we don't then we'll be ready to start

that design phase right and uh it won't it's just relatively uh speaking compared to both talbot and henry lord it's a much smaller project the reclamation piece is what's causing the delay it's a it's a short road um but we do have a bridge to build within the environmental zone all right the the other thing too is i had a couple parents call me um and i think i saw it on social media over the

weekend or three to four days ago it was about a um uh durfee some of the doors at durfee being locked is that um so there were doors so there were doors within the building that are locked during the day yeah um but they have one-way locks so they're not nobody's confined and and does not have an exit they may not be able to travel the route that they want to travel

because they don't need to go where they want to go um so they are where they need to be in the areas in which they belong in okay and those doors are fire doors um that would close in case of fire and not let students into the center spine of the building so to speak they are confined to their areas on each floor but they have full access to exits within that floor and full access to

everything they need to get around in the course of the day those doors are opened and closed after passing periods okay perfect i just wanted to clarify that so i appreciate it thank you very much are you miss laravey yes my question uh madam superintendent test and stay a question i had a parent reach out to me a little concerned i thought i would have the answer but i didn't so as far as transparency if a

student is deemed a close contact out of school and dissent to school parent gets a phone call throughout the day and says okay my son is at school my daughter's at school but i just got the call my they are a close contact available

out of school spread so if a student for some reason if a teacher or a child is positive and we do contact tracing and the nurse identifies for students who have been in the proximity of that student and are deemed close contact then if the parent gives permission we will test those children and they will remain in school and as long as they are negative a parent if a parent says my child was exposed

over the weekend because we have a relative that tested positive that child will have to quarantine at home that we we're not going to test students or you know as they if they are deemed close contacts i mean it would be unmanageable okay thank you anything further okay well we don't have a student representative here tonight for a report but i'm sure we'll get one next meeting we have a number of minutes that need

approval i'm going to ask for the first one approval of the minutes for the special ed alternative education early motion to approve second okay um deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes number 6.2 is approval of the minutes from the regular school committee meeting 11 8. mostly to approve 6.2 i have a motion second and a second

discussion question um miss laravey yes one question just on the um the minutes the cte program i just asking with the update i mean on december 7th was the the full launch correct was that that was in last meeting correct right so um mr damaris and uh they that they uh presented on i'm sorry of the ct after dark yes yes the cte after dark i know full launch was supposed to be on december 7th and

now here we are january just want to see where the numbers are okay the cte program after dark that's is that we can certainly give you that information on a friday okay so we don't need to discuss that okay that's fine okay i got approval of the minutes from six two i have a motion a second deb please call the roll just drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr yes ms laravey yes

miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes 6.3 is approval of the minutes from the facilities and operations subcommittee meeting on 11 23 motion approved second i have a motion a second discussion deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yeah yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes and 6.4 is an approval of the minutes from the regular school committee

meeting on 1213 emotional proof i have a motion second and a second discussion deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodrick yes mayor coogan yes item number seven uh is travel requests we have none tonight um item number eight is acceptance of donations motion to accept we have a motion to accept second and a second any discussion before ms uh ponce

fills us in um dad please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms larabee yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes mr mayor uh sorry mr again related to the minutes we got an email today about not uh proven minutes on time is that related to what's here tonight do you know that was the email tonight no no no no so it says did not accept approve the

minutes of the november 3rd meeting we already approve those you approve them uh just now right i'm just not matching up the correct they're on the agenda is there a subcommittee we'll just accept we just approved them yeah stagger the there was a letter that came in today but it's not on the agenda for tonight's meeting it would be an executive session right but it says did not accept or approve the minute

meeting minutes for november third meeting within three meetings but is that the subcommittee did we not have a meeting i don't know what to say i couldn't hear that he said he is not sure i'll get back to the other piece says under committee of the whole the chairman did not list the names of the people to be considered for appointments that's okay that's fine as required by the open meeting that's not required

so that's what i'm just saying like if we're here at a meeting and yeah but that's it or whatever yeah that's not required it's not required no i checked this day for you thank you sir yeah miss potts yes okay so from the clarman family foundation to the fine arts department um jackie francisco accepts twenty one thousand dollar donation from medi-tech to follow public schools on behalf of follower public schools um

fifteen thousand dollar donation and from cat studio to fall republic schools to be used for durfee cuss and spencer borden 1500 donation thank you thank you apron item number nine is approval of contracts motion tool proof i have a motion to approve second and a second any discussion on contracts deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor

cougar yes excuse me item number 10 is an approval of grants we have a few of them here um motion to approve the grants i have a motion second second any discussion on grants mr aguiar i see the first one says uh reimbursement and i haven't looked back to the backup to so does that mean we have 175 000 to spend right it's the grant itself is a reimbursement grant uh we we were notified about a

month ago about this grant opportunity to reimburse us for costs that we incurred this summer uh related to our summer program so it's just going to reimburse funding through the easter grant so we have 175 thousand dollars to spend no it's it's already spent so the money's already been spent so it's a grand opportunity for money they re they released these monies late the money should have been released

earlier and so what they essentially what they said was monies that we incurred for the additional summit programming that we did this summer uh we're getting reimbursed for now so these monies have already been spent in our easter grant so the money's just gonna be allocated to this grant this grant will be spent and it'll it'll free up money in the instagram so as i'm saying we freed up 175 000 somewhere yes

and that's is that included in the other spreadsheets yes of what you're expected to expend yes sir thank you okay i have a motion a second on krantz miss drag yep yes mr bailey yes yeah mr joharson yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes uh number 11 is the committee of the whole 11.1 is a vote to approve the election of a vice chairman of the four of a school committee

um i'll entertain a motion make a motion to accept miss laravey i'd like to make a motion uh to have paul hart a vice chairperson i have a second second i have a motion in a second any further discussion on vice chairman deb please call the role mr recky no mr bailey yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes miss rodricks yes mayor coogan yes congratulations um mr hart i know you'll do a good job

next i will read the committee assignments mr mr assad if i may with respect to 11.2 appointment vote to approve 2022 subcommittee appointments as presented by mayor paul coogan that is inadvertently stated there is no vote and no action that's necessary to be taken by the committee with respect to this pursuant to the charter it is the mayor's responsibility and discretion to name uh sub uh

individuals to committees both special and standing there's no action taken necessary by the school committee and therefore it is the mayor's uh uh appointments and he has the right to mention that uh at today's meeting thank you mr aguiar attorney assad can you do me a favor and just read what it says under 11.2 appointment and vote to approve 2022 subcommittee appointments as presented by mayor paul coogan

isn't that contradictory to what you just said yes that's correct as i mentioned it's inadvertently stated on the on the report however i did speak to the attorney general's office today and uh is mentioned to her what the charter stated and what the actual rules are and she mentioned that it would be fine to go forward as long as it was mentioned beforehand that the it was an error and that uh it

is basically for informational purposes and not for action by the uh the school committee yeah all i was asking was that it sounded like it was it shouldn't have been on the agenda my issue with that is we have agendas drafted and then we were supposed to look at the agendas and make sure that everything is accurate in the agenda before it gets finalized this is actually just asking for trouble from people

to from the community to say that we're not following the rules if we don't look at the agendas if we don't look at the agendas and make sure that they're scrutinized guess what this is where we're at but we're sitting here with something in writing that's opposite of what the reality is i don't have a problem with the i don't think it should have been on there in the first place but we need to

look at these agendas uh furthermore thanks additionally just out of respect for the vice chair we always give the vice chair a chance to be heard and uh anytime anybody's elected so i'd like to ask that you thank you please give mr heart the idea to say let's let me announce this and i'm going to let mr thank you thank you evaluation shelly pereira is the chair along with mimi laravey and sarah rodricks

facilities and operations paul hart's the chair along with mimi and shelly finance as we've done for the last stretch is everybody on it grievances bobby bailey kevin aguiar and paul hart parent and community outreach sarah rodrick's the chair bobby bailey and paul hart instructional mimi laravee the chair kevin aguiar and shelly pereira special education alternative education at early college

kevin aguiar mimi laravey and sarah rodricks and policy is paul hart kevin aguiar and bobby bailey of course i thank you all for your service and as uh mr aguiar pointed out i'd like to give mr hart the opportunity to make a statement yeah a quick statement and very brief i didn't obviously uh bring anything to the speech or anything like that but um this is my fourth term on the

on the school committee uh six years uh three terms on the city council and i think i'm looking forward to sitting on the on the school board for two more years and i'm very honored to get the vote as vice chairman and i'm going to do everything that i possibly can to move the district forward along with everybody here on the table outside out in the out in the crowd the administrators the superintendent and i

just uh again i just thank you all very very much i appreciate it congratulations paul thank you item 11.3 it's discussion and vote to approve the selection appointment of teresa babb nurse for the parves public schools is presented by karen long i have a motion motion approved by motion second second i have a motion a second discussion deb please call the role ms draghi yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss laravey

yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor cogan yes item 11.4 is a discussion and vote to approve certified nursing assistants contracted for covert 19 test and stay and contact tracing as presented by tom coogan human resource director and karen long nursing supervisor motion to approve i have a motion second and a second any discussion on the contact tracing mr again can we please hear from them okay um

mr coogan and this long good evening so the purpose of this request is really to assist us we've recently had a spike in a number of cases not necessarily positive cases but just cases and questions regarding home testing results of a positive test the dph has updated their protocol for a return to work scenario and for their quarantine or isolation scenarios and as a result there's quite a bit of

time-consuming management that's required anytime there's a result of either a positive home test or a request to do a pcr test this morning the person in my office who is handling the staff situations on this end of it ms long and her staff as you know have been doing this for several years now with students and staff but really the burden has shifted away from outside authorities like the cdc

or the uh board of health and it's fallen to the local districts and municipalities and in in this morning's case we had 140 emails with questions that had a positive home test i have a positive pcr test as of this date how many days do i have to stay out when should i return to work they're no longer issuing letters as they did during the first and second waves of the

covet pandemic where they would say you must now isolate and you may return to work on january 11th and giving specific dates so it now requires a conversation where you say is this the result of a home test is this a result of a lab test and within the state protocols they're looking for a pcr or an antigen test so confirming that is a you know it's a lab test that that is

identified the person is positive back dating five days from either the onset of symptoms or the results of the positive test the date of the test and then figuring out what the five days is that they need to isolate and then once they can return to work stressing the fact they need to be reduced symptoms absence of a fever etc all of that is time consuming in some cases in emails back and forth phone

calls follow-up phone calls because they're looking for information that guidance really requires some extra hands on deck for that i believe during the past year we had sort of either a line item as needed the request is simply to have somebody with at least a working medical knowledge like a cna simply to assist with the contact tracing and phone calls regarding the guidance around that and then issuing some some

sort of written form that says you may return as of this date under the following conditions that's really the reason for the request we we anticipate using contracted employees so that as the need diminishes the work would fall back to our internal staff and away from this but the volume right now of calls and the amount of time it takes to process each one of these individual situations is what drove the request

and i believe uh nurse long could speak to the fact that at durfee high school alone you could probably have one or two people that are just managing the caseload and the parent questions and everything else surrounding that so we have close to 2 000 employees and and contracted employee staff that they're all calling with questions and scenarios and when can i do this and when can i do

that and what does my contract cover as far as isolation or quarantine scenarios and we're just looking for somebody to assist with that volume

mr again so when i'm reading this i i'm not sure i think i understand but what i'm reading and what you're saying is i think are two different things is that is the cover 19 test and stay program for staff staff and students the test and stay program is for staff and students and i think what mr coogan's talking about is because we had talked about this a couple of times

similar to what south coast did with a or the covet hotline where you have this phone number out there where parents can call staff can call to get general questions answered quickly because the phones at the schools are so tied up that it's just impossible to get those answers out to the parents what they need to do with their house today what the staff needs to do today do i go to school tomorrow or don't i

and the emails are just phenomenal right now so to have that like couple people um just answering the same general questions because it's very repetitive would help cut down on some of the you know i i want to support it i just for one we don't know what there's no amounts listed that i can see but what i'm what i'm having a hard time understanding is is that when i'm reading it it says this nurse school

nurses will deal with all student cases and then we've at some point we've been dealing with the staff cases in some way you know i know i think you're saying we need some help potentially with that sure but i think that that looks like it should be a number we need to put x amount of dollars in to have an agency contracted agency i think that's what the the hope is

so is that what we're doing like an agency yeah and i would have to get i would have to get the rate from the agency on what that you know what that amount comes to and really i anticipate no more than one or two at the beginning and if we can manage it with that then we would just release them as soon as they're no longer needed um i believe

last year there was a number it was either fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars for quick response for staff needs as needed during the piece i don't believe we're going to go anywhere near those kind of numbers we really just need something to get us through this initial wave and the guidance around i have a positive test in my house is it a home test or is it a lab test oh it's

a home test okay so what i suggest you do is have a test get a pcr result you can go to you know they name a number of places and then get back to us i'm a close contact but i'm vaccinated i have no symptoms okay then you can do this and sort of guiding them through that protocol so uh if i had to guess at a number i'd say probably somewhere in the

neighborhood of 20 to 25 000 max but i don't know if there's any other need to go beyond that number um with any other needs that might come up within the system because this is like a period of education for staff and parents right now because things have changed and we have the spike so between both those things things changing and the spike it's really kind of getting uncontrollable for us to handle everything

uh phone calls plus scenes students and staff that have medical issues and every everything that goes with the the daily operations of your health office yeah but my feeling is that this should be coming from the nurse side not from the hr side the nurses are the experts and whether all of this dialogue and you know if you have the the details i think we should just put a number together and if the

nurse needs something for services in the schools if you have a contract why not go and get some support what if she has three nurses out that are coming up then what we're just going to say hope for the best why don't we just say we're going to put a number and then if we have a contract why don't we use that contract to support the nursing staff which could include the hr

but i think the experts uh should be the ones you know we hire an agency or ghost who nurse long so that we're getting the same information given to all of the people but i also think we should if we're going to take a bite at this apple now we should offer some support and k in the case of an emergency with a contract that she can go to them

uh as well that would be my uh thing we don't see i still don't see any number here so if we just approve this as is we would just be saying well whatever it is i guess i think we should put a number personally i'm trying to support you are you mr uh hart thank you mr mayor just a quick question uh karen how's the um i remember when the height of the pandemic

uh maybe a year and a half ago was going on i asked you about the communication between everybody uh city hall yourself hr and every and everybody else in that circle how's it going now with the uh with the with the spike we do still communicate i mean i speak multiple times with hr um i just had a meeting on uh last thursday i think it was with the board of health we plan on meeting

we do a zoom meeting we're going to plan on having that every other week now just to check in even if there's nothing you know new going on just to check in to see how things are going and if there's anything they can do for us um so the communications i think is fine right now it's working well i mean because i think that's really when it when when we're seeing these kinds of

spikes um and uh and also too how long how when do you think the height of the uh spikes going to go and occur has it already occurred or we're still at the at the peak i think yeah i mean i haven't seen it going down yet it's kind of hard to guess right now because i just think that the communication is is is the is the key uh between you know and with parents as

well i think that's very important things we're seeing in the schools with the increase is the same thing that they're seeing in the community you know the community is increasing so the schools will as well okay all right thank you mr mayor anything further just a quick question um nurse long i'm assuming that the protocol for staff is the same as students in regards to test and stay so they have to have

contact in the school building is that correct and then are we doing any pool testing or is it just individual testing right now test and stay for the close contact and we're doing symptomatic testing for those who become ill at school that are showing signs both with of course consent from the parent or from the staff member okay thank you anything further then please call the ball i missed you man i had a question

sorry oh i'm sorry sorry i didn't see you i'm surrounded please so i also have a i have a kindergartener at one of the schools as well and so we just received the notice about the test and say consent and then we received a second notice are those coming in are we getting consents from families okay we are getting them and and then i just to reiterate mr agar's point about

um obviously like this is necessary we need to have the support in there but i think having concretes as we need one or we need one person at x amount of dollars would be helpful so that way you can plan accordingly or two people and it's going to cost x amount of dollars because when you say set aside funding that's fine but how much funding what does that look like what is it that

we need that what can we anticipate that we might need depend on what the agency rate is right i know you can't answer that right now no i know but i i just don't know we'd have to check what the agency rate is right now and the availability we just thought we would start slow because hr definitely needs another person to answer questions and i mentioned durfee because that's just so many people

on the staff and so many families that we could probably use one person there as well so what does she want more than two okay uh mr again please so i think it's pretty clear we have a need you know and we have potentially a larger need in the next month we meet as a committee once a month the reason why i suggested trying to help was that i think that we need to provide

some opportunity for the superintendent to act on these issues if the need arises so with that being said i'd like to make a motion that we approve up to fifty thousand dollars in in consulting fees at the superintendent's discretion as needed for the rest of the school year i'd like to make that as an amendment to this motion because i think it makes sense and it's the right thing to do to

give you some flexibility in case things happen you can go out and get a retiree you can get a contract person whatever you have to do to make sure that our people are taken care of and our children are taken care of fifty thousand dollars i think will i say a good number i have a motion and a second a school yeah you you mentioned a consulting uh contract i believe you meant contracted fees right right

what you said up to fifty thousand dollars in consulting contracted services i would say we should leave it open to the superintendent right like if you have a nurse that may be retired that's very competent that wants to come in and superintendent says let's pull the trigger and get a person into the district that knows that i say let's trust her to do what's right but we need to give her some flexibility

we can't just submit things with no dollar figure i yield okay i do i'll do kevin's motion first to al um while the superintendent's fifty thousand dollars in discretion for contracting nursing services anything further i have a motion mr anger did i have a second second mrs laravey okay uh deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes ms hart yes ms laravey yes mrs pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor

coogan yes and back to the original motion of a discussion and approved the cnas we have a motion a second please call the role the uh amendment will attach to it mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes 11.5 is the discussion and a vote to approve a second reading of the budget priorities for fy23 presented by maria ponce interim superintendent

so what you have before you was the second the the budget priorities that were brought to you before last month and these budget priorities remain the the high priority areas that we're going to invest our money in obviously underneath each of those headings you have some examples of some of the investments that we want to make in those areas and as we go through the budget season we're going to be able to

quantify and actually name some of those investments like professional development what kind of professional development you know uh some of the out-of-school programming for summer planning etc for summer school so if those are the same priorities that were brought to you last month for the second read um on this i'm i'm glad to see the number of referrals to both digital and technological innovations in the

classrooms maria i know you and i have had our discussion on that in the past and i'm glad to see that's the way you're going any further comments on um mr aguirre yeah the um obviously we'll have another you know chance to talk about this at the budget time but i think what's been lacking for many years and i've said it over and over i'm getting tired of talking about it is

that we need to improve the amount of space that we have for programming we talk about it until we're blue in the face nothing happens so we need to actually put in writing that we're going to improve the space that we have for programs for children early childhood pre-k all that stuff we all talk about it during election time and then we put it we don't put it down here and i look

at minutes from 2020 where we would get talking about we're going to deal with this next month 2020 in case anybody wonders it's 2022. so as far as i'm concerned one of these things has to be very clearly that we are going to improve and increase the amount of space that we have for our programming because we're we can't create new things if we don't have the space so i would just

like to add that and highlighted separate together with facilities but i think that's the only issue that i see is really glaring and lacking in this document one we will be bringing as we get into budget season we will be bringing you a proposal for expansion of pre-k um i know that um mrs farias has created a committee where they're doing exploring some potential sites and opportunities for us

we are looking at some projections for costs and we will be bringing you a solid proposal for how we intend to um expand our pre-k incrementally okay anything further on the budget priorities deb please call the ball i need a motion oh i need a motion a second guys i'll make a motion second i have a motion a second dead please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss laravey yes miss pereira

yes mr rodriguez yeah mayor cougar yes 11.6 is a discussion and vote to prove spending 1.1 million appropriation is presented by maria ponce interim superintendent of schools so what you have before you is what we are proposing to spend the 1.167 million dollar money that was refunded to us from this city chile chile relocation and pump insulation at the nagel building we as you know we separated that

building from the old durfee high school we need to to install uh hvac system etc in there we also have wonders curriculum for k to five um to specifically earmarked for special ed students and l students and that is a supplement to what we've already approved this committee has already approved previously for our curriculum that wonders is our k-5 literacy curriculum and we have

money that set aside as you know for the durfee security system that we implemented we actually had it installed over break and is at the entrances of the three main entrances of that building and parent square is the digital tool that we're going to be using for communication with parents it will replace what we currently use school messenger that and that is what the total amount of that appropriation is

any discussion mr again yeah so i brought this up at the last meeting and i've had many conversations with the superintendent about this as well the wonders curriculum that we are looking at here the 591 thousand last month i had asked that this be you know tabled i'll put to the committee so we could get a presentation on exactly what that is we have a tremendous amount of curriculum that we're spending money on

across the district and i've spoken to the superintendent as i said in the past and i think we need to have a subcommittee meeting to discuss to discuss all of those programs so we can determine as a body what is actually what we need to move forward with this is a lot of money and this has never been before the subcommittee i said that last month it was confirmed today and i'd like to make

a motion that we refer just the wonders curriculum piece to the subcommittee so that we can vet the product go through the system we're supposed to vet things in subcommittee so the subcommittee vets it superintendent has their people there we talk about it's all systems go then we can bring it back to the full committee so i'd like to make a motion that we pull that out and i refer that only item

to the instructional subcommittee second again the motion is second miss potts so if i can just clarify that's absolutely correct we did not bring this through the processes that usually we vet it through the instructional subcommittee and then that's referred to the full committee um this that process started a few years ago vetting the wondrous curriculum for literacy we slow rolled it k-2 3-5

and part of that was before my time there weren't there was no subcommittee meeting for this particular thing i think it would be important for us to have a subcommittee meeting and actually bring the committee up to date on the current curriculum that we do use for literacy and for math i want you to know that this is curriculum that we did approve the the contract was sent forth to the full committee

without it going to the subcommittee to with the presentation without a presentation we are implementing wonders k to 5 in our schools we we didn't have we needed a new um updated curriculum for k25 for literacy this is these are supplemental materials that for teachers to be using certainly we will bring it to the subcommittee we'll talk about it and go through it with you but i i just want to say that

we've already approved the contract and we are implementing um wonders k to five in our buildings can i just ask a clarifying question on that so you're saying we already when you already approved the wonders curriculum we haven't approved the contract for 591 for this not for this you're right we i don't want people to get the idea that we approve the contract that we never voted on right you approved a contract for

what we already have in our buildings this is for the additional materials and just for the education of the other members i believe the number was 1.5 million dollars that's a lot of money so i appreciate if we look at this i'm not saying i'm opposed to it at all but let's do things the right way in the right system thank you madam superintendent all right so um we have a motion in a

second on mr aguiar's uh plan or idea that we should pull out the wonders curriculum from the money uh and even further discussion on that until we have a subcommittee meeting deb please call the role ms drag yeah yes can i just comment please i'm sorry i'm sorry so i could could we just get a vote to approve everything else 576 241 just so that i can begin spending the other shortly okay oh i thought we

were going to pull his out first and then do the rest i just know i just want to make clear that the total that's okay to spend is 576 241 at this time that's that's all next the rest yeah the rest is okay except for the one wonders committee okay uh we're doing the vote on um of the wonders committee to subcommittee i'm sorry can we please start again please yes mr bailey yes

mr harp yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes miss rodricks yes mayor coogan yes now on approving the other three uh components i have a motion a second already deb please call the role no i didn't have emotions oh you didn't have a motion i have a motion second second motion is second miss drag yet yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes

discussion item 11.7 is a vote to approve the cte advisory board as presented by cynthia silvia's cte director and matt damaris principal of bmc durfee high school can i get a motion in a second motion promotion second i have a motion a second mr damaris and miss sylvia can i ask you a question first sure mr again just my question when i first looked at this was is this something

that we normally do and this is new or do we have do we not do this across the rest maybe you can answer that at some point they'll answer it yeah this is something that's required by law every year so i can't speak to what's been done i can only speak to what we're going to do moving forward and chapter 74 regulation states that the school committee shall appoint and approve the advisory list for each program

and will meet with the general advisory at the end of the year to make to listen to recommendations to make sure we stay current to make sure that on the market demands in the workforce are being met and that these aren't glorified electives and to make sure that we are on point with the nine programs that we have so the way it usually works is we submit a list for our advisory membership for each of the

nine programs and they're given to the school committee school committee looks them over and either approves or not approves of the list i got to tell you in 26 years i don't think i've ever had a school committee not approve early list but that might change i don't know um depends how how intricate we get with who we bring on to our committee because volunteers are important and volunteers in the

right areas are very very important and making that community connection is paramount to what we do so we try our best to get everyone and you can see from i know you have the chart the state tries to get representation from all different subgroups in all different community groups so that we can have a very well-rounded advisory board but it really wants to steer away from oh this is my best

friend and i want them to be on my advisory board or this is my good friend who knows something about early education and care because she has a four-year-old who want them to be on the advisory board this is really trying to find the right people in the industry to make sure we are going in the right direction and that we're meeting the the demands of the workforce development

in those areas we also want to make sure that our equipment which is state of the art so i wouldn't worry about a lot of equipment issues right now but in other places you know there are antiquated equipment that do come up and we can't teach our kids skills that are not marketable and so the advisory committee comes together to make sure we're teaching our our kids on equipment that is state of the

equipment that is industry standard and say state of the art industry standard and that we are meeting the needs of our students when they enter the workforce if they choose to go in those areas so that's really what the advisory board does so in a nutshell this is how it works our teachers reach out and try to form an advisory we meet in the fall which they have already done they've already met in the fall

and they look over the program they do evaluation of the program they look at the equipment they look at the space they look at a lot of different things and then each program advisory they choose a chairperson that chairperson becomes the general advisory board that's the board that's going to meet with you that's the board that i am not a part of so you wouldn't be meeting with me because they don't

want me to have undue influence on that board they want you the board to meet with the general advisory now the general advisory will also elect a chairperson that chairperson will kind of run the meeting with you guys and it can be an open session it can be in closed session it doesn't matter but it does have to be with the school committee and um i know through going through cpr reviews in um my last

in my last school i know that this is an important part and i wanted to make sure that we laid the foundation for doing it right here at durfee and you know should the state come in we have all our ducks in a row when they should be so that's why you see something you may or may not have seen before and i'm here to answer any question that you might have regarding either the program

advisory which is very specific to each program the general advisory which is the chair cheer people of each program advisory that will come to meet with you in the spring but they have to meet twice a year by law mr can and i know you knew so i and this isn't really applying to you you're bringing forward what is the regulations in the law my question for the people that have

been here is where have these meetings been i haven't recall ever seeing this in my years on here and i can speak a little bit i know that they have been they have been having the meetings like the program advisory has been meeting because i listened to them in the fall meeting and i listened to the fact that they've been doing this for a while a lot of the members we had

we had a coffee hour so that they could mingle prior to the meeting and you could hear that the that there have been some advisory members that have been doing this quite a long time so i know that the program advisory meetings have been have been uh been conducted um you know through covid they became a little bit more tricky in that you couldn't have a lot of people coming into your buildings

from different places and a lot of places didn't want to come so i know last year i know my previous district we held ours virtually and this there's some merit to holding it virtually a little bit because of timing and you can really get some experts in the field to come out and do those meetings so um i do know they've been i know the meetings have been held i don't know if

the correlation or the connection with the school committee is really what you guys seem to have like a disconnect with because it looks almost foreign but that's just to bring you into the partnership because the law or the regulation does state that the school committee shall appoint the general advisory committee and when i say a point that means approve the list of names that we have submitted

i'm looking at the highlighted list you have it says the general advisory committee shall meet at least twice per year provided that one of the meetings is with the school committee correct and they should apply open meeting law whatever and then it talks about the chief administrative officer of the school committee or designation i'll be the facilitator of the committee that's exactly what i'm asking not you i'm

asking for anybody else that's here that's worked for this district for years can anybody present when that meeting happened any minutes or anything i can attest in my role as principal this year five so in the four years prior um mr medeiros did make me aware of the meetings that happened twice a year with the full panel and then the subcommittees that the smaller advisories that happened within each

program um they certainly happened i was unaware of this piece of the law i'm thankful that ms sylvia's pointed it out and that's that's that's my answer that's fine that's all i'm looking for is that it says clearly the scope we meet with the school committee if we didn't do it right it just that's a fine answer we didn't know we're going to do it better that's logical thank you i yield thank you hey further

miss rodricks i just have two two comments and this isn't about approving the list of names or anything but in there it says that members of those advisory boards um should include females racial linguistic minorities and persons with disabilities and individuals and occupations non-traditional for their gender as i look through this there's not one person with a disability so i'm just pointing

it out because if we talk about being a district that supports inclusion supports belonging at all levels then we really need to be able to model that at these levels as well so it's just a point that i think we just got to take that into consideration so if we're going to talk about that we should do it and they also say that we should make every effort to bring in those sub those groups and um

and and just by way of disabilities um i guess too it would be what you consider the disability to be because there may have been some people on this list that have disabilities right and the person has to just be willing to disclose and be willing to disclose it absolutely but i'm just pointing it out that if we talk about this is our role then this is what we've got to do too you are absolutely right

and this is our role to try to fulfill what the state is asking us our best ability to do now i know that it's very difficult to get every single solitary person on this list here i get that but it doesn't mean that we should not try our very best to try and form this kind of advisory board for our programs and that's what we're going to do moving forward my other question about that was

it does say that people on the board cannot be people that are employed by the district school personnel or anything but there's a couple of farver schools email addresses on there and they're not listed as facilitators so i'm just wondering how those folks fit in those could be students but there has to be there has to be students on there right but the ones that say their students are identified as students but

then there's a couple of other email addresses that are fallordschools.org but they're not identified i'll have to check it out okay oh sorry yeah thank you anything further dad please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mary cogan yes 11.8 it's discussion and vote to approve the addition of two pre-k classrooms with staffing two teachers for paris as

presented by kristen farias director of early childhood education i have a motion second and a second any discussion on adding a couple of pre-k classrooms miss various you want to tell us a little bit about it

sure good evening we have reached a point this school year where we are closely approaching full capacity in our current preschool classrooms last year our capacity was our enrollment was a little bit lower with covid we had some families engaged in remote learning some families who opted not to access preschool programming that those children's return to school this year combined with a significant

spike in referrals this year has put us in a place where we're approaching capacity much sooner than is typical for us um so with that we have looked at a couple of different options for space that would be immediately available to us and we're projecting the need to open two additional classrooms to meet the needs of our students with disabilities ages three to five that we would need to

serve between now and the end of the school year any discussion on adding the schools uh classrooms mr again where are they to go we are projecting them right now to go to the boys and girls club so there are um there's boys and girls club has space in the lower level one of those spaces is already set up by a cl as a classroom for early childhood we run play and learn groups out of that

room right now and then there is additional space there that we would need to outfit as preschool classrooms so we have a contract with them or we do not yet mr pacheco is working on that um we've been working with mr kylie over at the boys and girls club so if we approve this we can't start till after the next meeting for the contract we don't have a contract

we do not have a contract yet so this honestly um this initial approval would be the positions i'm anticipating it's going to take me a good amount of time to fill these positions and get everything else ready to roll while mr um pachico works on the contract yep you know just point out the obvious that we gotta wait till the contract comes before we go right fourth i didn't know if it was something quicker but

no it's definitely needed and i think the key to this discussion is that it's the law it's not this isn't an increase of uh pre-k this is what we have to do by law correct let's not confuse it with the need to increase pre-k slots across the district this is the law correct these are our students um with identified disabilities ages three to five great thank you very much are yield uh mr uh thank you mr

mayor uh i know okay so that's good we haven't got the contract yet but we're eyeing the boys and girls club and that's fine how about any of our property are we is any of our property available is it um is it something that we're targeting uh kenny um instead of maybe a boys and girls club is there something maybe at another school where we might be able to find some space we don't have anything currently

available none at all some of the access issues uh would be holding us back we do have plenty of space in in a couple of our buildings however they're above the level of which we could put students of this age so um that that's the big concern the the um the boys and girls club piece will work for us but the ideal situation is ground level um so that students are not climbing stairs

no i agree with that so that's our our issue within the district currently yeah and i think everybody on this uh on this board on the committee is uh obviously wants the um expansion of the pre-k uh city-wide but we all know too and we all mentioned it uh time and time again that the uh the space that's gonna be our number one obviously priority and it's kind of kind of disappointed that we don't have

anything available within our district in our schools i understand it but i think we've got to maybe do something about about that uh i don't know what we can do uh maybe look at other schools i know we looked at before you were a superintendent um ponce we looked at other schools on uh north main street and other locations but that's going to be our that's going to be our most important uh piece is is

the space and we've got to we've got to find that it is and working with some of our local partners um because we the need is also there so we don't want to create a situation that we are over taxing those groups also so we're trying to do this in a sensitive way so that we will be able to service as many students as as we need to service as a district without actually

flooding the market with a space that we may not be able to service and other groups may suffer for that so i got you yep okay thank you miss laravey all right thank you mr mayor just quickly uh while we wait for the boys and girls club contract and see if that will continue and succeed um is there anything else out there on the plate as a as pertaining to

more space i don't need names of places but is is there any for the immediate need term long term like what you they said that you're out vetting and looking around anything else available for maybe short term next year or space wise because they said you were out looking around and um so we do have a couple of pieces that we're looking at okay some uh some rental pieces okay um a property that we

do own however would need you know to have um some portability added to it so we're kind of looking at at some options that would provide us with that expansion that we know we need in a way that will allow us for further expansion okay um as we need it so there are some rental pieces and and some pieces that we own okay all right i yield thank you uh miss rogers um so

realistically how long would it take to get just say we move forward in the boys and girls club becomes our option how long would that take to get those classrooms ready to receive our kits so i think if the contract once the contract is done the positions are posted my goal would be to open them one at a time focus on opening the first classroom where i know we already have furniture and equipment it's just the

contract with the space and the staffing so my hope would be that once the positions are posted i can actively work to fill them while we work on the contract with the boys and girls club so then once that piece is set i'd like to see that classroom open by like right after february vacation and then we would move into the next one as quickly as we could okay because if we're talking about

identifying about five students per week for that are in need of classroom placements how are we going to manage that between now and the time that these classrooms are ready because we know that it's not it's not the kids problem it's not parents problem that we don't have the space for them you know that's our problem so we've got a what are we going to do with that so we do have some classrooms where

we've added additional staffing and we may need to temporarily over enroll those classrooms while we work to get this set up some of them some of our projections to include children who have been determined eligible who we've developed ieps for that have been accepted but whose birthday has not come up yet okay and so they would start services on their third birthday so we do have some

children included in our counts that are awaiting placement because they have not yet turned three so we've got a little bit of wiggle room with some of those kiddos as they're not quite ready to start yet okay i just want to be keep that at the forefront because i mean we know that this is going to become an issue and it's not again our kids problem it's not our parents problems

that we don't have the space and so we've got to make sure that we have a solid plan because we can never tell a family that sorry there's no room for your kiddos so you gotta wait so i just wanna make sure that we're keeping that at the forefront thanks mr bailey um i know space is an issue um one of my it's more of just a comment one of my things is uh

you know we haven't reached the contract phase yet but uh when we do get to that point um how long is it going to be because we talk about space but is this going to be something that's a year and we're moving and we're jumping around that's just one of my things i i kind of want to know so our immediate conversation was for the rest of this school year through the

end of june while we continue to look at what our options are moving into next year and subsequent years so short right now we're looking at the short term and so we would do a contract through the end of this year not to say we wouldn't still need that space but we're not quite there yet to say that we do say are okay anything further deb please call the ball mr again yes mr

bailey yes mr har yes miss laravey yes miss pereira yes miss rodriguez yes mary coogan yes yes mr isaac as the chair might i just uh give some exp i have a lot of experience on this board and i want to give some advice to miss laravey that i think that she might want to abstain from this vote because it is about the boys and girls club and i think that if they gain it

you don't want to get yourself in trouble with it so as a an experienced person that feels like he's a leader on this uh committee i would like to personally ask or maybe to the lawyer to make sure that miss laravey is covered because if we never talked about this today and this is on the agenda and she votes yes it's going to be a conflict because they already had discussions about the

contract these are the things that need to come up ahead of time so do you mr chairman i'd like to ask that we reconsider this vote so that ms larabee can take the more appropriate vote to protect her in the future make sense let's go again deb please do i need a motion a second a motion if i need a motion and a second to leave hold please motion to rebuild motionary votes second second

dead please call the roll for re-vote on item 11.8 mr agate yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss laravey abstain mr pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mary coogan yes just me with a make emotional comment i'm sorry can i just make a comment go ahead i just i i didn't realize we were as close as we were because i have been staying out of it on the boys and girls club

side so if i knew what was coming up tonight i would have um abstained but thank you mr again thank you mr mr again i don't know if we have to make another motion but i'll make a motion to approve go back to the original motion proof i thought we just did that with the revolt we'll go no we we're going to re-vote it so you might as well just revoke the whole thing

i need a second second second deb please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr har yes ms laravey abstain ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item 119 is a discussion and vote to approve the addition of one physical therapy assistant one speech language pathology assistant and two pre-k asd paraprofessionals at henry lloyd community school motion to approve i have a motion and a second any discussion mr loesch

good evening uh coming for tonight to do the staffing request of the four positions uh requesting the physical therapy assistant um this is a position that if we had been in person last year we probably would have been requesting it then or as a part of last year's budget however due to not having a significant amount of there's our students who require physical therapy in person there was definitely reduced service

needs across the district opportunities for more virtual groups but it was much more manageable at this time of the year both of our assistants are really over their capacity we have bristol county rehab services providing several days of services for us and really looking at it long term this position is more more than needed to serve the district in terms of the speech and language the pathology assistant

looking at recent evaluations over the past five months of the school year we have a significant amount of increased services especially in speech and language area we attribute this as well as some of the pg services due to delayed reevaluations and initial evaluations that resulted as a result of the pandemic we had a lot of parents who were refusing to send their children in person in order to be evaluated

and over that time we accumulated about 51 delayed evaluations all which parents certainly agreed to but now has resulted in a significant service increase need for this school year itself lastly the two power professionals for the pre-k asd classrooms at henry lord these classrooms consist of nine students each with with asd as you can imagine three-year-olds are challenging in general

especially when they're not able to communicate their needs effectively at times and they just require a very high level of attention and especially this is one of the most critical points where we need to dedicate that high level of tension to ensure that they get off to the right foot and are able to be you know stay in our home schools and also be in their least restrictive environment any questions mr osh

mr aguilar just i support these clearly there's a need but in reviewing the language that's in the request it talks about bathrooms not being located due to an elementary versus a middle school i'd like to ask you and the super superintendent or whoever to come back to us with recommendations to straighten that issue out so that we have children that have the needs we should have the

appropriate services for those children whether it was a middle school or not before it's not our problem we need to figure out a way and if we can't then we're going to come up with something because when you read the fine print on some of these things you you you want to be supportive but it makes no sense to have a say sorry it was a it was a middle school now it's elementary yeah

that that doesn't fly in my opinion so i'd ask you to come back to us with a recommendation to fix this issue thank you i yield certainly completely oh i need a second second no you made the motion second can't do both thank you please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes ms rogers yes mayor coogan yes item 11.10 is a discussion and vote to

approve the second quarter revolving fund as presented by kevin almeida do i have a motion motion second i have a motion and a second mr almeida so this is our quote uh second quarter update on our 14 revolving accounts we have positive balances in all of our accounts our total balance at this time is about 8.9 million dollars across the board uh with this transfer you'll be transferring 27 000. 27

of overtime for outside overtime associated with custodians sounds light and tech for the auditorium as well any discussion mr again when i look at the school lunch line where it says the balance does that mean that's the amount that's expected to be expended or is that what we have left over that's the current balance at this time in december uh we're still waiting to get reimbursed

for our claims in november and december so the balance will be higher and then we sort of uh we get expenses and then we get revenue so that's a real number yes it is okay so with that said i'd like to ask the superintendent to look into i made this recommendation three years ago that this account needs to be self-sufficient what that means is that we don't currently take the benefits out of this account

and that affects the actual school budget several years ago this was what was brought up in a meeting at that time there was a motion made in past to move towards self-sufficiency i'd like to get a report within the next 30 days of where we're at with that particular issue for the full committee with that i yield thank you anything further then please call the rule mr again yes mrs mr bailey yes mr heart yes miss

larabee yes ms pereira yes miss rodriguez yes mayor pogba yes discussion item 11.11 is a vote to approve a year-to-date budget report as presented by kevin almeida can i get a motion in a second second i got a motion in a second discussion then please call the roll nope oh i'm sorry i was just waiting to see if anybody had questions sorry uh mr almeida you had mentioned in here

the note i think we just didn't didn't get it attached the matrix of uh services um across the administrative support i don't see it on our school brains if you can send that to us at at some point i'd appreciate it it should be there i'm looking at it now and it says like you're talking about the thing that goes across the x amount of schools and it just should be there yeah it's just

not in my uh budget thing that's no big deal i kind of know what's in there but um we can have it sent this friday with friday's email the question i had was it looks like that we have money that outside of esser is actually available to be spent is that accurate or is that a false statement what are you referring to if you don't mind me asking myself is it like that

first page where you said uh if we spent this down if we spent that down uh we have x amount of dollars uh uncommitted so at this time we the report that i have is just the monthly report with the update of where we what we've spent to date and we've spent 47 percent to date does not take into account um you know our salaries and remaining contract negotiations that we have in place at this time

yep so i'm looking at the page where it says balance after 4 12 20 21 1.8 million yep that's the combination of all uh grant funds asset funds that type of thing that's the essence yeah and if i had to guess we have some money that's outside of all that other stuff we still have money left in the regular budget as well yes so every meeting we come here we keep saying that we need services we

hear it in the community we need more counseling services our counselors are not doing their jobs right now they're actually doing teaching and other things so our iep's not getting serviced properly related to the counseling piece so with the fact that we have a presentation here with 1.8 million i'd like to make a motion that we hire 10 additional school adjustment counselors immediately for the district

and i make that in the form of a motion we have the money we have the need and it's time that we get some services for the children all right if you're if uh you know i can clarify just on that motion is there any any particular schools we're putting these sacks out superintendent's recommendation okay thank you hearing no second back to the original you don't have a need i'll second i'll second that yeah

i have a motion in a second can i clarify go ahead mr if we look on page one of mr almeida's uh or page two it's highlighted in yellow highlighted in yellow says the balance is one point eight million three hundred sixty thirty six dollars or one point eight million dollars we have talking 60 or 70 grand per per so we're still going to have in those funds unaccounted for 1.1 million

never mind the fact if we get look at the real budget we still have money within the real budget that's not talking about what we have in essa ii and sf3 so my feeling on doing this is because we have the need now let's wait to talk about essa 2 and sr 3 and all this other stuff i'm sick and tired of hearing people say we need more counseling services in the schools

this should be a recommendation coming to spend this money on these type of services nobody can stand up at that podium and say that our kids are getting the proper services that they should relative to counseling nobody can say that we need to do this we need to do it now and we need to get the kids the services are yield well mr hot okay oh thank you mr um madam superintendent um when the

recommendation was to uh throw it over to you and decide where uh you know these additional stack positions should be um can you off the top of your head think of where they where they could where they could go right now i mean do you need some time to yeah meet with uh you know your your team and to determine where uh where those uh particular sacks might be well uh uh where they might be needed

uh absolutely i do think that i i think maybe that's probably what you should well that's probably what you should do um as far as i'm concerned is maybe meet with your team and decide where um these sacks uh would be uh you you know utilized better so i yield i i would i would like to say one thing then i'll go to ms rogers i think that that recommendation should have been in the form of

asking um the superintendent and her team to come up with a plan both where they want to place additional supports if needed and what they're looking for if needed it might not be adjustment councils maybe it'll be guidance maybe it will be a behavior therapist but i don't have a problem with letting them do it but i don't know if it should be done off the floor like that i

disagree with mr aguiar i think we have a number of students in our schools that aren't getting the services they require i don't i don't i do believe since i do still get into the schools that people are getting things is if there's additional requests from the superintendent and her team and her principals related to personnel they should bring forward a plan i'm not saying your plan is not

something they could bring forward mr aguiar but at the same time coming from us i think it should come from them i think that's how the rules are written miss rogers i appreciate that that proposal though because i think it does highlight the fact that we have a significant need in our schools and that is not a secret i do agree with the idea of allowing the superintendent to take a look at what's

necessary by speaking to her her folks because maybe it's not a permanent sac position i mean we all know the background that i come i come from a counseling background so of course i'm going to support count more counselors in the school but maybe we have to look at this short term what are we going to do to support our kids and then long term what are we going to

do because this money isn't going to be here forever and so we've got to think strategically about that but i do appreciate mr iger bringing that up because i think it highlights the need we have a need i do agree like i said i do agree with mr aguiar's point of additional support but i do believe that his motion should have been in the fact of come to the next meeting with

the plan for where you need the additional supports what school and how many mr again so we're talking leadership here that's what we're talking about and the fact of the matter is is that we have consistently for years now we've put on this agenda so that we get a matrix that looks across all the schools it just so happens that it's not here today but we get it every single month

we had budgets that came before us and people are saying well i would need another counselor i'd need another counselor we get it every single month this full committee does the new people this doesn't apply to you but we've been getting this every month i had to work to con to make it actually clearer and talk to the superintendent about it to make sure we can see how many students are at each one of the

schools how many councils they have and there's inequities across the whole school district about it we talked about it last month if we had enough counselors at henry law school or durfee we'd have 33 adjustment counselors comparing to other ones are you kidding me and we can't take a vote here today to say that we need 10 more counselors are you kidding me to think that we don't need it point of

order there's a motion on the floor in a second so we are going to vote on yeah we are going to vote and i'm advocating for the vote because people aren't going to step up and say yes i support it because we got to wait because let's see if the superintendent can come up with it i trust this lady as a superintendent to do the right thing for equality across all schools look at the matrix

it's not rocket science the case loads should be 160 or 150 to one it's 250 300 to one across the district are you kidding me and we got 1.8 million sitting here to be spent and we're going to wait that's not leadership waiting we have a need we take the vote we get it done and the superintendent hires 10 counselors to give the kids more service if i'm passionate about it so be it but i've

been sitting here watching every single meeting we don't look at the information we got to look at it we've got to show some leadership this vote today is about real leadership and giving her the authority to hire these people immediately because that's what the need is by yield any further discussion that please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr no miss laravey yes miss pereira yes miss rodricks yes

mayor coogan no no passes he amended the emotion kevin you amended the budget report to add 10 counselors correct correct okay so let's go back to the vote on the discussion and vote to approve the year today i have a motion and a second do you have a second second i have a motion a second deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss larabee yes miss pereira yes

mr roderick yes mayor coogan yes um we have a number of things for your information some retirements some resignations um i need a motion and a second to place them on file motion to place on file okay i get a second second okay call the role please question oh mr again i'm sorry just the question and if it just uh superintendent when we i see a lot of resignations on here are we

still doing exit interviews and trying to get a feel for like what is happening yes you could just kind of summarize some of those just uh i see the list and it's lodging there's a ver variety of reasons i'm just curious thank you are you do you want me to put that on friday that's fine just some we don't we don't have the right to see them all but if you can kind of summarize what's

happening that would make sense thank you i have a motion um and a second to approve the uh notifications deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mrs rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes any new business to come before the committee hearing none is there a request to go into executive session there would be um that would be

can i get a motion a second to go into the next session i could give the reasons oh you want to do that first go ahead mr sign national launch chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes for december 13 2021 regular school committee meeting national law chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all

civil clerical employees throughout the school system represented by the foreign department of civil service clerical employees associations the chair has determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all paraprofessional

employees of the florida school system represented by the forum of federation paraprofessionals as the chair has determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to litigation as we got the massachusetts commission against discrimination complaints as the chair has determined

that open session may have a detrimental impact on the litigation position of the committee mass general laws chapter 38 section 21-83 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all professional teaching employees the forward school system including coaches title 1 teachers nurses occupational and physical therapists and specialists in the teaching profession

represented by the florida educators association as the chairs determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and or to conduct negotiations with non-union personnel including dawn moniz family support specialist pace center that's

also section 21a2 we will reconvene the main may or may not be stable at that time can i get a motion in a second to go into executive session please motion to approve i got a motion second and i got a second deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss laravey yes mrs pereira yes miss rodricks yes mary cooney yes back in session deb please call the role

ms drag you yes mr bailey yes mr hart here mrs yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes do we have anything to come before the committee mr mayor a motion to approve the executive sessions for december 13 2021 regular school committee meeting second i have a motion a second discussion deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes ms rodriguez

mayor coogan yes one more uh mr mayor to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and or to conduct negotiations with non-union personnel including dawn monas family support specialist pace center secretary and to accept the contract i give a motion a second mr can we just clarify that because i think that was the whole reading yeah i just wanted to read the last part

to accept the contract as negotiation yeah that's it okay oh did not hear me no the last part was a little muffled just read the last part okay to go to uh conduct negotiations with non-union personnel including dawn monas family support specialist pace center to accept the contract okay but we're not we're not voting to conduct this strategy that's we're just negotiating a contract with don monas

to approve the approval yeah yeah yeah to approve the contract as negotiated as negotiated yep all right i have a motion a second second who met who seconded that mimi mr ago yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yeah yes anything further to come before the committee i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved motion second deb please call the wall

ms drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes