10.17.2022 Fall River School Committee

I'd like to call together the regular meeting of the Florida school committee for Monday October 17th and Deb would you please call the roll Mister here Mr Bailey Mr harp yeah Miss laravey Miss Pereira miss rodericks here we're also joining us tonight is our student delegate Samantha aguiar hello welcome um important okay so just to make sure we do announce it because uh I don't want to do

something wrong I'm believing that Shelley Pereira will be joining us by Zoom um shortly let's do a salute to the flag

open meeting law pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meetings through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings of Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible citizens input we we have one gentleman with us tonight

John Silva Rock Street Fall River hello hey um here talk to talk about the parent tools that we no longer have um for the last couple of years we had Aspen uh which we were able to see the assignments the grades um so you weren't surprised at the end but we don't have that right now this year you know I used to live in Google classroom and Aspen and pay attention to

what was due what was turned in what was not and for the first path term here flying blindly so my grandson's in eighth grade this is a crucial year with grades and I stay on top of it my both my husband and I stay on top of his education and you know to walk in and wait until you get a progress report is not acceptable when you're really trying to keep on top of your grades um

I guess for the last uh message came from a music teacher saying hey you know great to do this assignment's due so I talk to them do you assignment all set no what's the matter um for five weeks I've been sitting in the wrong music class the classrooms are right next to each other and I'm like what do you mean he's like yeah I've been going to the wrong

class just today they told me I need to go in the other class I was frustrated I'm like I I said they must take attendance so um I emailed the teacher and she supported it because that's correct the other music teacher is going to transfer the grades and um you know going forward I guess would be fine but obviously if I didn't know this at first the grades weren't transferred

and what I expected you got an F in that class because he wasn't in that class that's disturbing you know I could see being in the wrong class the first week or so but the term snap over and if I had access to the parent tools then I would be on I mean say do you get this assignment we would have picked up on it beforehand um so I'm just uh I got to reach out to

the school tomorrow to you know make some adjustments here but not having access to these tools because he's also on an IEP you know it's uh frustrating when you're trying to be on top of stuff so I just felt I needed to I'm sure he's not the only one I'm the only one here speaking about it so um that's my input today okay thank you Mr Silva thank you superintendent okay Mr Silva I just want

to respond to you I I first of all I apologize that um your son was in the wrong class and we didn't note that so we will get that fixed immediately but as far as the parent tool PowerSchool is supposed to go live this week for parents that it's taken longer than we anticipated but that is supposed to go live so that parents can have access to their child's grade I will I'll follow

up with you but that is supposed to be happening this week great thank you so much okay recognition Awards on that same note I believe the gentleman mentioned Google classroom as are we not using Google Classroom anymore right um what what he's referring to is Google Classroom when we were hybrid or remote that's where teachers would post the work through Google Classroom so we're not we don't

we're not doing remote learning so they're not using it as they did last year right what is what I was told is not all the kids have their Chromebooks so you get a mix in the class so they're not posting everything in Google Classroom so at one time we'd be just as you said it's assignments in Google Classroom then you can match it up in Aspen so you know when it was if it was

turned in what the grade was things like that so not everything's in Google classroom today so Aspen would have been the main tool for me to live in to make sure his assignments are done yeah so my feeling on it is we should be using Google Classroom that's a good tool to use it's not we don't just use Google Classroom because there was a pandemic we use Google Classroom because it's a

good mechanism to get the parents and and students on track keep them on track so this is alarming to me to hear that we're not using it or with whatever that excuse was whoever told you that please let the superintendent know because anybody in this District should not ever be telling a parent a guardian or anyone that we don't have a Chromebook for every student that is not accurate

that's not right and please pass the information on so that superintendent can correct it because we've spent millions of dollars on technology and Mr Cabral is in charge of that we've been assured that everybody has a Chromebook we have loaners available when they're not so the systems are in place so whoever told you that please report to the superintendent so she can report back to us thank you thank you thank you

we have a few recognition Awards tonight uh should we go down to the podium um superintendents yes student recognition act student recognition are you sure

foreign

good evening everyone so tonight we're going to award three students an award that the mass Association of school superintendents has designated this award for academic Excellence the award goes to students who have chosen shown distinction in the pursuit of Excellence during their High School careers the number of awards each district receives is based on the number of anticipated

graduates follower public schools has received three Awards to present this year the Criterion for the award is as follows three-year cumulative average rank in the class personal selection by the superintendent or designee the superintendent has leeway among the top five percent uh for his or her personal selection the three students being recognized tonight are Brady Lavoy Brooke macito and Amelia Dyess they have

been identified and identified using the criteria above its intentional intentionally been designed to make these presentations at the beginning of the school year so that they can use this citation as part of their credentials so tonight I'm going to share a little bit about each of them familiar with them so first off we have Brady Lavoy Brady has been achieving academic Excellence

since entering the gate program in the fourth grade he's currently ranked number one in the senior class his course load has been rigorous as he has taken multiple advanced placement courses he completed all AP math courses at Durfee and this year is attending Bridgewater State University's dual enrollment program to take discrete mathematics he further his um he further his working on a project concerning High

performing Computing which is current currently in its infancy but showing promise as a potential school project Brady is actively involved in student government serving as a student body Treasurer he is a varsity Athlete on the cross-country winter winter track and volleyball teams and is an MIAA Sports Ambassador Brady hopes to attend MIT or WPI to double major in computer science

and Robotics engineering for Brady come on up

so our next recipient is Amelia dies Amelia is currently ranked third in the class Amelia has been the captain for the Durfee girls soccer team for the past two years she has an adamant dedication to her academics as well her successes on the field she plans on pursuing the college education in neuroscience and becoming either a lab technician or research scientist Emilia is also a dedicated member of many clubs

here at Durfee some including National Honor Society the Sixth Man Club history abroad and the ski snowboarding Club um at the end of the June of her junior year she won the Harvard chapter book award an outstanding student in World languages she is also proudly an active worker and volunteer for the Fall River Youth Soccer Association coaching and roughing youth players in our city to

strengthen the love for soccer in our community come on up Amelia congratulations

and I I'm not sure if Brooke is here um third recipient uh Brooke macito is ranked number two in the senior class she is an early college scholar who has been excelling academically since freshman year her course load has been rigorous as she has taken eight advanced placement courses and nine dual enrollment courses through BCC she is not only a leader in the classroom but outside of the classroom on the playing

fields and in the community Brook is president of the National Honor Society captain of the varsity field hockey team and has been a manager at two jobs that she has held she furthermore has chosen was chosen to do an internship over the summer with Johnson and Johnson as part of her biocompatibility team these accomplishments only highlight a snippet of various clubs activities and

employment opportunities that Brook has dedicated her time and energy to she has also done well over 100 hours of community service helping the the homeless and doing her part to keep the environment clean Brooke would like to attend Boston University and major in chemistry or pre-med track to becoming Dr Brook macedo anesthesiologist congratulations Brooke congratulations to the recipients and their families

thank you

um subcommittee reports we have parent community parent and community outreach we met on October 5th we had reviewed an update on parent Square it sounds like that rollout has actually gone quite well we had Mr Brock probably speak better to this but we had about 94 of our families enrolled on parent square and that was as of a couple of weeks ago so I only anticipate that that number is higher

we had an update on the community facilitator position where most of our positions are filled folks are getting acclimated to those new rules I know that there's been a lot of getting them familiar with the resources out in the community and getting them familiar with the culture of their individual schools we highlighted some of the prioritized needs for this Academic Year which

included I mean we always have a lot of things that we're prioritizing but we really focused on parent-child um parent School engagement and we had focused on creating a culture of inclusion and belonging through a lot of the anti-bullying practices and initiatives that are going on throughout the district that played into the last component where we had really looked at some of the components the initiatives

that we really need to look at throughout the community in terms of combating some of that conflict and understanding of what bullying is and and what it's not so we anticipate that we'll meet in another month and check in to see where we're at and develop next steps thank you sir superintendent's report yes so um first of all I would like to do just a quick data overview certainly we Our

intention is to come back before this committee next month with a more comprehensive data report by school Etc but I know that I sent you all some information and but I think that the public also needs to know the information that's out there as well as to where we stand so the data was released and is now posted on the deci website our parents will be receiving their child's results this week as we

receive them and sent them out to schools to be distributed our Fall River Public School data is consistent with Statewide data in that we have a very long way to go in our recovery process on in a typical year we struggle and we lag and after two and a half years of disruption it is no secret that that would have an impact on our kids all data is to be viewed as Baseline data

across the states all of the data is this is year one as the state is seeing it our 2019 was the last time where there was a full MCAS Administration 2019 because 2020 no tests were administered because that was the year that we shut down 2021 only half of the test was administered and that was also administered in various ways kids took it from home or they took it in school

so that was different and in 2022 this is where we resumed back to full MCAS Administration one thing that is glaring a piece of data that is glaring at us is that student absenteeism remains a huge challenge across the board urban districts report a 39 chronically absent average wealth Fall River Public Schools is at 48 chronically absent those are kids that are missing 10 percent or more

of the school year 18 or more days our kids need to be in school they can't learn if they're not here and we need to work with families as well as well as with students in order to bring them into school average days missed and followed public schools in 2022 was 21 as compared to 13 in 2019. the percent of students missing 10 or more was 48 as I've just said

as compared to 25 percent in 2019 25 double um Ela grades and grades three to eight we had 22 percent of our students who met or exceeded expectations um as compared to 34 in 2019 the urban District's um we compared to the urban districts because it's important for us to look at like districts 27 we still lag behind them 27 percent met or exceeded as compared to 38 they also we saw significant slips we saw

significant dips in meeting and exceeding in grades three four five and six grade three the first time they took the MCAS kindergarten was their typical year grade one was shut down grade two was their hybrid year and grade three was the year full return that they were tested all of that we had to take into account right our kids our third graders took MCAS for the first time and really

had disruption in the most uh formative years that prepares them for reading to learn grades 10 Ela 34 met or exceeded as compared to 38 in 2019 only a four point difference there in math grades three to eight only 20 percent of our students are meeting or exceeding in 2022 as compared to 32 percent in 2019. urban districts right along with US 23 percent as compared to 34 in 2019.

um like Ela we saw significant dips in grades three four five and six grade 10 math 24 are meeting and exceeding as compared to 29 in 2019 um starting to close a little bit of that Gap and in science grade 5 23 percent met or exceeded as compared to 26 in 2019 and Urban's was 26 as compared to 33.

um science grade 8 we saw 14 that's a huge concern meeting and exceeding as compared to 25 percent in 2019. our student growth percentiles which is one of the things that we really should look at closely to see if our kids grew even though they may not have met it but we need to make sure that kids are moving along 2022 our mean SGP or student growth percentile it was 45

in in ela grades three to eight as compared to and 41 percent in grade 10 and in math was 43 and in grade 10 math it was 36. the the range the typical range is 40 to 60. and if we're going to move our district and and move our our kids we need to be we can't be in the range because to be between 40 and 60 SGP we're just maintaining where we are

we need to work harder and be above 60 in order to start closing some gaps for SGP so we have work that needs to be done I'm never going to stand here and pretend that it's all good it's not good and it just highlights the work that needs to be done so we do have some the school percentiles our schools are ranked uh by percentile I will say highlight Spencer Borden continues to

lead our district in the 53rd percentile so great work being done over there and Henry Lord community school exit at the bottom 10 percent and is now in the 12th percentile and that's huge because going up any point it's hard it's hard work and you really have to bring a mass of students so um and I know that they had been working I was there when um principal Bernhard spoke to staff about that certainly we

know that 12th percentile we have a long way to go but moving out of that bottom 10 that's a huge huge accomplishment Watson also went from the sixth percentile to the 10th percentile which they're still at the 10th but it also signals to us that they're getting ready to exit which is also great news for us we know that we've seen some good stuff happening there we do have some concerns in particular

cuss dipped from the 14th percentile to the eighth percentile which is is is is a concern so we have some work to do there during dipped from the 31st percentile to the 20th percentile I have met with those principals Sylvia dipped from the 38th percentile to the 17th percentile so we've been doing data Dives at the schools each week we target several schools and we've been going in there meeting with their

instructional team with the principal their department heads our team digging into the data making some assumptions observations and then figuring out how do we problem solve together and how do we support schools in moving forward so we are continuing to do that we have three this week we're continuing to do that through the month of October and when we come back we'll have some next steps as to what we're

doing as a result of the meeting short-term goals are being planned as a result of the findings and we'll have the comprehensive data presentation at the next month that's it for data why do we hold off on that because there is a question data I just want to remind people that Shelley Pereira has joined us by zoom and I see her on the screen there hope you're all right shell any questions on data

well it's not specifically on data but um or it could be but Madam superintendent you mentioned the chronic absenteeism um what I want to know uh because it's been an ongoing problem before you uh the superintendent and before I was on the school committee and many many members here what um and it's a me it's a major issue so what others what are we doing to to combat that and are you

going to get your leadership team together to maybe come maybe look at things that aren't working and maybe we can come up with other Solutions and that's what we've been doing as part of our data Dives talking about all data not just we we um I I let's look at 48 is a huge number and we had made strides in in attendance uh decreasing those numbers over several years and certainly the pandemic is

highlighted we also let's not forget we told people if you're sick you need to stay home right so that's factored in but we have to get kids back into the routine of being in school every day we have to like every school has a student support team that they review and they've targeted kids who are on the cusp of becoming chronically absent and that they're working in small group with

and working with families we also have resurrected the attendance task force Miss Kudo and I met went over the people that were inviting to be on that team to to involve the community also so we'll have some uh specific information and next steps in regards to the data when we do our next more comprehensive data presentation and are there any like cities our size or Gateway cities that are that have that

that are doing something right and that have a good absenteeism rate or is it across the board well I think that as I shared with you the urban superintendents I'm part of the urban superintendence Network so you have urban districts Chelsea Lynn you know Brockton New Bedford Etc and the the average um chronic absenteeism for urban districts is 39 and as we're doing if all the other data we're lagging behind

we're at 48 that's not um an area we want to lead the pack in right we don't want to be ahead of the pack here so um we have to learn best practices from one another and we have to put some systems in place to support students being in school we can't do the work we have and I will say I'm not going to we're going to talk more deeply about

data but I'm not going to sit here and say you know yes the data is not good but the data we we have to support our we've invested a lot with curriculum we've invested in building capacity of our teachers we have incredible incredibly dedicated uh staff that come to work it's not easy to work in an urban District they come to work every day they want to do what's best for kids

we need to support them in doing that work and we need to to prepare our kids our teachers have to do the the content piece but they also have to work in preparing kids socially and emotionally we have to make sure our kids are ready to learn and in many many cases our kids are not coming to school ready to learn so it's a it's a twofold thing that has

to work hand in hand no I agree and just one other thing that I emailed you maybe a few days ago about the really bad weather we had with the rain and there was an issue at tansy where a couple of a few parents called me about being out in the rain before school and I think the teacher or the principal didn't let them in until it was too you know until

everybody got really wet and it's going to be this is going to want this is going to work it's going to happen during the winter season whether it's raining or cold is there and I'm sure it's across the district it happens but can we make sure that that doesn't happen again well it's a supervision right right because then it will become morning daycare um where we will have to have staff

assigned to those schools if we open once we open our doors kids are going to come so we have to decide if as a district if that's what we're going to do and open it because then if parents know the door is going to open at eight o'clock they're going to drop their students off at 8 o'clock right now we don't open the doors until we are staffed the last thing we want is to

open our doors and have kids someone get hurt something happen and we're responsible for them so we'll have to put a system in place um and we'll have to see if that's um you know no I understand you have to do it across the district yeah I know I understand it's not going to be something easy but it's something I think that we probably need to do because this happens every year but that

that's all I had to add so thank you anything further for anybody Miss projects so two things um one I just want to remind folks that our kids are not data points right so our numbers yeah they're not good we know that they're not good and we know that in comparison to similar districts they're still not good I get that but our kids are not data points so just because we see that yes things have

dipped and you know I have strong feelings about standardized testing but that is only measuring one aspect of a kids development and so when we're looking at that data we're not looking at the whole child and so those things are important right because we need to get our kids academically ready to handle the world but there's so much other stuff that goes into getting our kids ready that is not reflected in MCAS

data so I just want to make that point the other point about our third fourth and fifth graders I think those numbers show us that those Foundation years are so critical to getting kids ready to learn right so we're measuring what how they can process information how they can synthesize information all of those things once they hit third grade and so those crucial years those kids missed

out on and I think when we're looking at those numbers I know you mentioned it but I just think it we have to highlight the fact that they really miss those Foundation pieces and we've got to go back to how do we recreate that foundation for them right and so what efforts do we put in place to support our third fourth fifth sixth graders moving forward and then also our incoming K one and two kids

right I could not agree more because those numbers those children will be with us year after year so they miss those formative Years and we're going to have to put some systems in place to not only um give them access to grade level curriculum but um they also we need to also intervene and and plug in some of those gaps so so I'm not trying to make it sound like it's you know oh it

doesn't matter because it does matter those numbers are important and they help us make plans um you know moving forward but they're not everything and that's what I'm just trying to highlight so before folks kind of jump down they're like oh my goodness our data is really bad yeah it is but that's also not the entire picture one indicator one indicator so with that ideals Mr agya just to talk

about the the scores and superintendent said that we have a lot of work to do I would definitely say that is the case and this is not just because of that pandemic we've had work to do for 10 years where scores are flat our achievement levels are flat and um what I'm looking for is what are we going to do different that's going to help us because we've been doing the same thing here since

at least the last 10 years that I've been on and we keep on saying every year we have the same presentation our way of doing this we're doing and I get it that people are working hard but we're just not doing something that needs to happen in order for these scores to go up and for our percentages that go up when I read those scores and we have schools in

the bottom 10 5 or below and I've sat here on this stage like everybody else and after millions and millions and millions of dollars in resources that we never had before keep getting pushed into the schools and then when the results come out we're the same there's just no way around it that's that's got to change because we can't keep doing the same thing and everybody gets you know raises everybody gets

promoted and we're not seeing the achievement at some point we have to say enough's enough and we're going to recognize those that are getting it done and we're gonna have to make some changes with it where they need to be because the scores are beyond flat in my opinion and I've been asking for data uh last instructional meeting six months ago to look at our int um our own assessments to see how that

matches up we still don't get it so a lot of the stuff that we ask for is not necessarily there so we talked about it at the goal meeting for the superintendent we need this committee needs to see what's happening because we handle the uh go by what you tell us and what's in front of us the attendance piece is there's really no excuse for that in my opinion that we

have to figure out what's happening and we've got the resources in order to do that so why we have some schools doing one thing and others doing another is not a good system if we're doing something right it has to be across all schools I've said over and over and I've said this personally to the superintendent our attendance officers in my opinion should work for the principal because the principal of

the school needs to raise their attendance and they have to have control over the people that are in their buildings that's a that's something that should have happened a long time ago and I I think it should happen again because we shouldn't have one group of schools doing it one way and another group that went in another way I've asked meeting after meeting are we following the the

chain of exactly what's happening across the district nowhere still not doing that so these are all things that need to happen in order for us to create the system to change but I'm just tired of okay we're going to work on it we're going to work on it you know the river meets the road sometime and we have to do it my last comment is on what Mr hot was talking about if if any child is

getting dropped off at the school they shouldn't be dropped off until they can come in the building so whatever school that is they whoever that person is needs to know we're not saying that we're going to leave them outside but if a parent's dropping off a kid 20 minutes before the school opens that's not on the principle or the administrators or yourself a Madam superintendent so we

got to figure out where these are coming from and if they get dropped off early that's you know what are we going to do open up at six o'clock so I just can't stress enough that we have certainly plenty of issues going on there and I'm looking forward to the data and then data yields anything further I I would I would like to say one thing on this um obviously

I've been fortunate enough to be in a number of schools this year um I'm again disheartened by the scores but um this conversation went on last year with the number of Mayors and the lieutenant governor that you know coming out of a pandemic is extremely challenging for every city in the Commonwealth and uh I don't think you know other than a select few anybody's seeing any big jumps in scores so again

I don't disagree with Mr aguiar or anybody on this committee we have a lot of work to do and I'm hoping that uh that we can turn this around because that's one of the things that weighs on me is the scores in our schools and uh they just can't keep going like this that's all I can tell you superintendent but I appreciate your efforts Mr aguio sorry just had another request I know I

brought this up in the past so if we have students that have however many percentage is chronically absent and I know the floor and the law that you can't take its child to court or family to court but I'd like data on exactly what's happening with those children that are that are in that category also with those children are they are some of them making progress is it just all automatically that they are out you

know I'm sure there's some students that are out that many days that are still making progress but that's the data that I think we need to look at so we can see what's happening if they I've said this over and over we're not using the tools that we have to let parents know that this is important students need to be taken to court if their behavior is out of line and if they're absent for too

many times with the law this has to be it can't be well one school says oh I don't want to do that or oh we don't discipline kids that way or whatever it is it has to be the system and if we have to debate that and make this motion to go in and manage it like that I'm ready to do it because I've been saying that for several years

now and it's well some did some didn't all this other stuff the excuses need to stop if kids out that long let's file a CRA let's get them into court with the family get them the services they need so they can show up to school for you I mean I think it's more than that though sometimes a student might be chronically absent because they were in the hospital or they were

actually legitimately sick so we have to disaggregate that data and split it up and make sure that we identify the kids who actually were truant and the kids who were sick and were out for a reason but were because excused or non-excused they all get reported once you reach that threshold so you know I I think that you're right we've made a lot of Investments I truly believe that we are

on the right track we will do what we need to do but we also need to to engage our parents and for parents to recognize that kids need to be in school we're not going to go get them they need to come in school so that we can do our job so we have to do some communication with that with our families to impress upon them the importance of kids being in

school let them get there so we can do what we need to do once they are there yeah I I don't I think we're saying the same thing I wouldn't a student I had a legitimate uh illness or whatever you know excuse that's fine but I haven't seen any documents from this Administration this year or in the past that says here's all my students here's the ones that had were chronically

absent and here's the ones that were excused here's the ones that had that data has never come before so that's kind of what I'm looking for at the same time I do think that we need to have the debate over who do the attendance officers report to because right now they're reporting to no one because we don't have an assistant superintendent you know for that department totally different issue but we don't

have that so in lieu of that they need to work for the principal in my opinion and that's an administrative thing but if we have to put it on the agenda and deal with it we'll deal with it but I who's watching them to make sure that everybody's on the same page the principal is going to be responsible for their attendance at some point you're going to bring back the goals and

you're responsible for the attendance so it we need to have a chain of who actually is in charge of what they're doing what they're not doing to make sure we have consistency and right now nobody is watching that whole division because we can't hire assistant superintendent so I think that needs to be addressed I thought under red reform that a principal was responsible for everyone

in the building we do but they share what Mr agyar is is alluding to is correct they share multiple schools so if I'm an attendance officer I might be assigned to Doran and Morton for instance so I report like I work with those principals those two principles and they do they work with those principles principles But ultimately he's right that they come under the umbrella of the assistant superintendent

of student services but that's something that we are looking at so um I I do think that there's some changes but but my question to follow up is if I if I'm a torn officer and I go into Doran where you were principal you don't give me a list of students that are on your heart well there's a team got to report back to you on what's going on with those kids no

they're they report to they meet with the principal and the student support team Etc so the the if I'm the principal and I'm going over my list and I'm saying I need you to go do these home visits or we need to work with this family Etc so that does happen at the school level but ultimately they answer to their direct supervisor which is what Mr agyar is alluding to is has been the assistant

superintendent of student services and in a while back it used to be the answer to the principles then it was changed and now um it's something I think it's the difference between working with this course versus for the schools and what I'm trying to do is if I'm a principal of a school and I have to and the attendance officer works for me two days per week my impression is that person

reports to the school and works for that principal whatever that principal needs them to do to help get the attendance up is in that school for the entire day what we have currently is they're working with the principal former boss who doesn't exist and hasn't existed for two years that's some of my concerns so I think that's things that we need to correct as a system so we get everybody

on the same page we talk about the cost who's driving the cars who's getting the kids if you work for the principal the principal can direct them for eight hours a day here's what we're going to do and I think we'll have a better look I don't think that's a bad lift yep okay anybody else superintendent Ponce enrollment yes so our enrollment uh just uh pulled we pulled the data today uh

our current enrollment stands at 10 631 students district-wide um Jeffrey High School is a healthy uh 2464 students 2464 and our kindergarten enrollment is up it's at 873 so um our enrollment right now is in a good place we're finally getting accurate enrollment data and finally we have an update on the fields the athletic complex at Durfee the varsity baseball fields contract has

been signed by the rad Corporation for the Reconstruction of that field the submittal process is underway along with the contract the beginning the mobilization process the excavation equipment will be arriving for the next two weeks and the anticipated completion date for this project is expected to be middle to late April we also have the soccer practice football fields hockey

Fields the artificial turf Replacements will begin in March of 2023 minor grading of drainage materials the insulation of turf will follow with the completion date of mid to late June so that will be happening and then we have the Varsity Softball field and football stadium um the r RFP will be out for bid by November 1st The Varsity Softball field has been a challenge from the start with the

discovery of large ledge formation on the northwest side of the intended area adjacent to the old Durfee Auditorium building the cost of the ledge removal was estimated at 500 000 or higher we sent an area back we sent the area back to landscape architect for small redesign the field was moved to further further north on the plateau and minor ledge removal would allow the field to

be built with all the amenities of the original design lost in the design was the area for the track and field events which will be relocated in the Outfield of the Jade softball and JV baseball field which will also be renovated soon the second half of the RFP will be for a new artificial turf for the football stadium and this project will be a March start date with an anticipated completion date of mid to late June

that's all I have any questions on anything else Mr agya I would just asked the superintendent to report back on the financing of protect so I know we had had some I gave my own opinion on how I think we should pay for it but that is important because we have to complete the project so I think the missing link to that report is how we're going to pay for it to come to

fruition funding and I do think that we need to I don't know what's taking so long in the negotiations with the city on how do we get us bonding ability but maybe that's we can put that on the agenda for next month Maybe to talk about where we're at with that because uh we're going to have to pay for these things on our own in my opinion and soon no evidently with that ideals

anything further okay um this time we have the student delegate report um I'd like to turn it over to um Mimi laravee to introduce our new uh student delegate thank you mayor uh just quickly introduce uh Samantha here we're supposed to have two delegates here but uh our second delegate will be from RPA they will be here next next month but uh sitting to the right of me is Samantha aguiar uh Fall River resident

Jeffrey High School 12th grader she is the president of student government in National and Honors Society she former student of Sylvia Elementary and More in middle school so without any further Ado this is Samantha ragia hello guys um so from the student's perspective we're also like really big on like the attendance and getting kids involved so our main focus and like the student

government is doing what the kids want and getting them involved and like actually want them to come to school so that is our main focus right now we've been um making like tick tocks because like as like the parents must know like all the kids are on Tick Tock nowadays so we found that that's the most effective way that the kids are learning and um finding more events out from posting on like their social medias

um so from the students perspective we're also looking at attendance and like I said getting kids involved but um my main focus as the student body delegate is seeing what the kids want so when I go into my semi-government meeting next week I'm going to be asking each president to ask their class what the students want so I can come back next month and talk to you guys about

what the kids want so we can help them change and actually want to be in school and hopefully that will help with the attendance like you guys want thank you uh anything further okay item number seven we have a series of minutes that need approval motion approved approval of minutes from 7.1 to 7.8 do I have a second second and discussion on the minutes Mr agya yeah so this is something that

bothers me it doesn't sit well with me hasn't sat well with me for a long time so I think an explanation is needed because what's happening is we are going to we received their notice from the attorney general dated October 7th after attorney Assad recommended some things on we had some late minutes so we thought this was was done the conclusion reads we find that the committee

violated the open meeting law by failing to timely approve many meeting minutes we find that the committee's failure to timely improve minutes was intentional we order a muted in future compliance with the Law's requirements and we caution the similar future violations could be considered evidence of intent to violate the law future intentional violations for failure at a timely approved meeting

minutes may result in a recommendation of a civil penalty and that civil penalty is going to come to this committee that is major major concern for me because I don't know how this happens that we now have 18 sets of minutes here today 18 sets of minutes is it's inexcusable how this even happened but we've been given responses I think to the attorney general they're not really um accurate because the ones that I read

from attorney Assad make it look like as if everything's all set we've got it done this and that I I just don't know I'd like to hear from somebody as far as how is this even possible that we're sitting here today with 18 sets of minutes knowing that we just got hit saying it was an intentional violation of the law and anything in the future so you're going to get a civil penalty so

on October whatever the date is we're going to submit 18 more we're going to get a civil penalty and it's unacceptable oh superintendent Ponce so certainly I can respond um to that uh we I did read that letter um certainly right after that I we did meet we went over all the outstanding minutes and put systems in place so that it doesn't happen again um as I shared with all of you we have a

system in place where and we also we have had many more meetings than we typically do but we have put a system in place so that we are not getting fined and we are we are in compliance we have no intention of not being in compliance moving forward anything further on minutes Deb would you please call um yeah just a comment got Mr anger so well I can't accept the idea that we got

to do better at some point the rebel meets the road and with approving minutes today from March 9th if anybody on this committee is not embarrassed to shame on you because we shouldn't be having this discussion right now March 9th March 16th there's only one set of these 18 minutes 18 sets of minutes that are actually within the 30-day window so I get it I'm not looking to I just don't like the answer because I think

I've already been told answers before that this was all set we have been we're telling the attorney to send letters up that an error so now he's given on the information we're giving them now he's going to look like a dummy sending these things up now because what saves the response to this yes you're right you told us if you do it again you're going to get we're going

to get fined and by the way now we have 18. we have 17 more that are in violation I just don't think that sometimes things happen mistakes happen or whatever but there's certainly breakdown in systems of what people are doing what the systems are doing full-time people that work all day to figure out what are we going to do here and I I just don't I can accept the superintendent sanity

isn't going to happen again but I've heard that before and I'm telling you this is an embarrassment to me personally and the school committee and when we get fined it's going to come civilly to this committee are yields larvy just to respond uh quickly but like superintendent just said and and mostly to you Kevin because I disagree with you a little bit I mean the superintendent's trying to put uh

you know the systems in place we've never had as many subcommittee meetings that we've had this past year okay so putting the systems in place we have one person taking care of all this I yes full-time but she's also taken care of a lot of other situations okay she takes care of all Communications with us she's setting up more and more subcommittee meetings she is setting up these meetings she's now back to making

binders there's a lot of responsibility on this one person um I wanna take the superintendents she says systems are in place and this isn't going to happen again let's move forward is this do we ask does this one full-time person need maybe a part-time person to help with some of the the responsibilities on on their plate I mean the open law complaints the the minute all of it it's a lot of work especially with the

systems that we are asking the superintendent to put in place and that's more and more subcommittees meetings so I mean I'll accept the answer and hope I mean are we all caught up right now yes that is superintendent and that's why you have 18 sets of minutes in front of you because when we got that letter we sat down looked at all the outstanding minutes and I wanted to make sure that

moving forward after this meeting we would not be behind so ultimately that person answers to me so if anybody's going to be embarrassed it should be our system I'm telling you moving forward we will not be late with minutes so I'll take that responsibility but I'm telling you that we will be caught up moving forward thank you I yield Mr Hart yeah just real quickly I just agree with that

I get agree with Miss Larry um but Madam superintendent is there a way somebody else can help in that in that particular office right I think that when even adding a part-time person I think that when we we part of our system is when we have multiple meetings in one week in order to get them done efficiently and on time we're going to have to have someone help out okay that's all you

know thank you Mr Egg yeah yeah so I disagree with both uh miss Larry and Mr Hawk so when you look at these minutes I don't work every day in there how long does a sediment take who actually did all these minutes so like my question to you today Madam superintended via email was who actually did all of these minutes so we could see because that's how you do a check in a

balance you can see when somebody started a menace and how long they take for a meeting to happen in March and we have to get them done within 30 days but we don't have them done in 180 days I'm not so sure what kind of message we're sending to people in the school department that this is okay we wouldn't accept this when it's a principal or somebody else we're trying to get whole people accountable and we

got 17 sets of minutes that aren't done on time and the answer is we're going to do it I get it we're going to do better but how the heck did we get here and what happened because of this we're talking about meetings in March we're not talking about outside of a window of one week and when we look at the letter that was October 7th I'd like to get every copy

of every one of the letters that attorney Assad responded it's from the entire 2022 because it's going to say three months ago four months ago that if we are systems in place I have it in my head A System's in place if they're getting behind this was three months ago now that it says we will have other people do it which shouldn't be nobody else should need to do it but we've

we've said that to them three months ago and now we're still doing minutes from now if this doesn't tell you that there's a there's something else wrong and poo pooing it to me is just not not okay the answer that we're going to do better is is okay but it's not going to address how the hell did we get here and that's the problem that I have with it and uh I disagree with anybody else on

this committee that doesn't think that this is a problem and we will get a complaint and we will get fined by the uh attorney general and and it's there's really no reason for it so I yield anything for Miss laravey yeah I just want to respond to that I didn't say I didn't think it was an issue it is an issue but I am going to take the superintendent's word

for it that it is being addressed and we're going to move forward it absolutely is an issue I yield okay let's call the role of that Deb Please Mr Dragon no Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laraveen yes Miss Pereira I can't hear you can't hear yourself are you muted you're muted shell we can't hear you Scott Scott's coming now give us a thumbs up if you say yes thumbs up yes okay thank you thank you

no American yes approval of travel requests we have a number of travel requests tonight um motion to approve do I do I have a second on travel second on this motion a second any discussion on the Travel Deb please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey Mr harm yes Miss larabee yes per hour

yes on next item up is acceptance of donations can I get a motion to accept a motion to accept and a second on the donations thank you I have a motion a second but we call the role that Miss bonds can explain them to us Mr agya yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Ms larva yes Miss Pereira I'm assuming can you just show us a picture there also she can give us a thumbs up please

thumbs up okay yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes Miss Ponce please so on behalf uh from Whirlpool uh to Henry Lord Community School on behalf of principal Bernhard uh ten thousand dollars from Whole Foods to Letourneau Elementary School on behalf of principal Simpson three thousand dollar donation and on from Stonehill alumni to Henry Lord Community School on behalf of Dr Bernhard backpacks with school supplies

thank you to all item number 10 approval of contracts we have a number of contracts here can I get a uh a motion in a second unless someone has some specifics as we always do towards all the facilities I have a motion I have a motion can I get a second second a motion a second now Mr Aggie which one please all the other facilities once all the facilities ones at the tops that's one

two three four and train and which one I'm sorry train and teach for America train and teach for America so excluding facilities Teach for America and train uh could you any discussion on the others Deb please call the roll Mr Huggins yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Mrs Pereira thumbs up okay thanks Roderick yes yes okay and Facilities first one city-wide glass Mr Aya I just would like to have

Mr Pacheco just explained to some some of what these are is the first time I'm hearing about some of them they said there was a memo and each one that you asked for before in the attack at Mr eggier yeah it is around 85 pages that I believe Mr pachico put in for change orders and the like but I think he could summarize it probably a little better sure so um first we'll be the glass

Citywide glass so that the design of uh Durfee the designer Durfee is um kind of an open bathroom concept so it's movie theater for lack of a better explanation the problem with that is that it doesn't allow us as we opened and ran the building for a year it doesn't allow us much control it also doesn't allow us the ability to shut a bathroom down if there's an emergency or if there's something else

going on in that particular area um so we started looking at changing that design to a glass a glass store front and installing those glass storefronts in the bathrooms which would would be twofold obviously we would be able to lock bathrooms down but we wouldn't lose the idea of the open concept of the uh of the bathroom it doesn't restrict any of the airflow but it does allow us to lock those bathrooms down

so we did 12 12 setups we will be doing um hopefully another 12 it is working in the building it is doing exactly what we needed to do and when we need to shut a building shut a bathroom down for repair for anything whatsoever we can do that again the design is not a concept that we came up with but it was the concept that seems to be a trend in high schools

not so much in Middle Schools or elementaries but in high schools so we went with that Trend during design and it's just not working for us yeah my I totally agree with you what you're saying I heard that at the school I worked at and it was the dumbest design I've ever seen that you can't lock a bathroom you can't control what's happening so when you it you say glass it's obviously going to be

protected it's not uh so it's glass doors that you can actually lock them nobody can go in or out no so once the door is locked it's it's on the inside obviously because of you know fire laws and things like a fire codes and stuff the inside is is non they can't lock it the outside is locked and you mean right on the on the um so basically when you're in the hallway

right yeah when you look in the bathroom we're not closing off the entire two bathrooms and two single stall bathrooms what we're doing is locking the individual bathrooms so um a boy's room can stay open while a girl's room is locked and vice versa the other bathrooms are still accessible so it's individual doors in these um in these stalls oh see I thought you meant so when I'm looking down the hallway you

shouldn't be able to there should be a way that the administration can actually not know that nobody's walking in or out of that so I think the door should be on the outside so that we shut the whole thing down as we leave for executive session the bathroom's around the corner here are done and basically what it allows us the control of what bathroom we want to open the other way we close the entire four

bathrooms the two full gang bathrooms and then the two single stalls that was in our opinion and there were a few people who were in this conversation um that was an Overkill of what we were trying to do because the chances of an entire bathroom being closed down for any kind of repair is going to be slim to none however there could be an opportunity for one bathroom to be down and it may be for

general maintenance it may be for an emergency call it may be just because we're having activity in that bathroom that we don't want to have yes and the funding of this is going to come out of the dirty project no no this is not eligible the school what we're trying to do is liquidate as you know what we're trying to do is liquidate the project to fund other projects which is the uh

the fields and finish that up so the residual funds that are left in the project we're using on on the the field projects so this is being funded through facilities and operations it seems like this is a dirty for lack of a better way to screw up in the design whoever this thought this was a good design so I think it makes more sense to take these type of things out

of that and then obviously we can't get money twice and then we got to figure out how we're going to spend the money on the fields uh you know later on I just think it's it's fifty thousand dollars and but definitely it doesn't make sense how they designed it so I'm going to support this but I also think we need to look at all of the funding sure put it out where it came

from what that are you any further discussion on that one um you want me to go through each one individually you want to go through the whole group no I'm going to ask the same basic questions so that we just so you want to run through them all for him sure sure so um the uh the second one is the Henry Lord drainage improvements there's 83 000 of of additional costs some of the costs were um

they weren't foreseen and some of the costs were add-on the add-on ones were on the Henry Lord project rubbing and cleaning the entire area around Mariano Bishop Boulevard so we wouldn't have a corner that people could get hurt leaving the site there was a lot of trees brushed all the way down the side of the road that we took out we grubbed out the Culvert to be sure that the drainage

wouldn't be an issue over there we part of the project was a retention pond on the opposite side in the wetlands that was expanded because the flow that we created on one side was going to be an additional flow on the opposite side we also had some emphysine issues on the soil the compaction we've had to bring in more soil than we thought we needed to that's all also in here and then the configuration of the

curbing we changed to capture another four to five parking places over design so those are your changes on the Henry Lord already that sounds like that already happened that's finished yes yeah so that's the the issue was is we were we were as we were coming back to the project we had some credits and um we were trying to maximize those credits in all of these spots and this is as

close as I could get to the uh to the final number yeah just that this already exists I thought it was a like a project a new part of the project it's not it's the same thing it's the same project they got to get paid trying to finish it could have been to be totally honest all the things that I did could have been made a separate project but they wouldn't be for this number right they

would have been much more for another mobilization I understand thank you the the next item similar at Talbot so we had some ledge issues that we ran into and that created a problem for us in the drainage getting drainage from on the east from the West to the east side of the building to um to hit the um to hit the drainage going into the uh Northwest upper I'm sorry we also have a

fire hydrants we had three fire hydrants on the property that weren't functional so we replace the piping and the fire hydrants to be sure that we had coverage throughout the the back of the parking lot and there were some added drainage I think we added drainage about 45 feet worth of drainage to get it further away from the building so we create we've stopped the flooding in that parking lot and uh

hopefully the asphalt will last a little longer than the last one did when they approved the projects though is there a contingency in there because that the contingencies were very small the project came in higher than we thought so the contingencies got eaten up almost from the get-go and uh as I said on the on the Henry Lord project more than the than the Talbot I didn't have the um

as much contingency because the project was valued much less yeah I just think in the future it might be better to just come ahead of time and say we need more contingency or something so that we're not doing it after the fact just my own personal opinion anything further uh the next item Miller Miller building is there anything else you wanted Building Systems yeah the Miller building is

basically on the field that's going on the um on the stadium and that is to put all the track and field mats we don't have a building big enough that stuff used to stay outside um it's going to be going into this building along with other matting and Lodge items that we normally would just cover on the field so this is a building set up 20 by 40 just for track and field

and large items is that out there now Kenny it is not it's not and would just alleviate some of the storage problems in The Snack Shack exactly there'll be nothing in there right everything will be in these buildings moving forward and all of the new construction um all of them have uh building storage buildings built in to the project and further um depending on that building where it's going to be located

near the shack it's in back of the um ticket booth near the Old Clock Tower oh okay right in back of that okay thank you anything further on them for facilities my only question on train was if we could possibly get a either a one page or something explaining why we're going certain ways like I say train I see any I see things like we're using proprietary here not there and I'm totally confused I can I

can tell you and I can give it to you in in a memo but the the issue is is um Sylvia Spencer Borden and green are all trained schools so unless I can totally change everything in the building we're going to do some work with the BMS the building maintenance the building maintenance systems and we're going to do some work on chillers but if unless I change every piece of equipment in those buildings

um train as a proprietary so in those buildings when they were built train was the low bidder and train systems are in there so I have to go back with train and I'll have three um three schools that will stay under the train uh systems so that's the only reason is to get a summary of what happens absolutely I certainly appreciate it and Madam superintendent my last one was Teach for

America just I think it's the wrong year but how many people do we have currently and it says forty thousand dollars I'm assuming that's basically just consulting fee but it's not actually paying people right right that's not paying salaries but they their coaching comes as part of that but that's part of our partnership with Teach for America we have um Henry Lord probably is the biggest uh

school that has the most uh Teach for America candidates yes that's correct there's a fee per participant from uh Teach for America they're typically a two-year commitment on the part of the participant and um what happens is after the two years they relocate to here most of them are not from this area uh and we have retained some over the years but we currently have three alumni with us

um but it's always it's been a good partnership and that four thousand dollars per person that we pay them goes to their support that they put in the training up front the support during their time here in the first and second year and then at the end of that we decide whether we're they decide whether they're staying with us or not so we have 10 is that what you said we

currently have ten that's where you get to forty thousand and it said 2022 but I'm assuming that just means current year yes agenda but I was just curious how many people that is if it's one two or whatever and they typically cluster them at schools so that their support can go to one building and and provide adequate support at those buildings I'm good thank you motion approved

I have a motion a second tip please call the roll on the other uh six items Mr again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes item 11 approval of Grants we have a number of Grants again if anybody had any they want to take out can I get a motion and a second on the grants motion proof second I have a motion a second any discussion on the grants Title One and

Early College so we got two that uh for discussion Title One and early college Deb could you call the roll on the others Please Mr Dragneel yes Mr Baylon Mr harp yes Ms Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes um discussion on Title One Mr agya so as uh I've asked this for the last several years to see where the actual funds are being spent and I didn't go through the whole package that we have here but when

you look at the big budget which is now in cost centers I I'm hoping that it's identified as which one is Title One and which ones are not because uh in the past what it what it's been is more identified for the last four or five years under the previous administration it was sort of a we're gonna we're gonna pay where we where we have to and things like that so I'm just looking to drill down

the title one budget and which positions we're actually funding ahead of time so that it's not at the end and we say oh we're going to take some of these and some of those so I'm not looking for that answer now but that would be something I'm asking putting them all together in the early college question I had is we just approved I think a position to help with the expansion

can that position be paid for out of this grant

Mr Woodward good evening yes we have one position that we can fund through this grant of the recently approved Early College expansion so it's paid for from this grant not the budget it can be we we put it in uh in the springtime before the budget was uh fully approved so I thought was either now that once the budget was approved to either convert it or fully fund one of the positions

so we have a fifty thousand dollar savings in the budget correct thank you can I get a motion a second motion of proof promotional proof I'm second second I have a motion a second uh Deb please call the roll Mr I guess yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss Larry yes Miss Pereira thumbs up Miss Rogers yes mayor Coogan yes Committee of the whole item 12.1 is a vote to approve the selection an appointment of Laura

Collins nurse for the forward Public Schools as presented by Karen long I have a motion second any discussion on a new nurse hearing none dead police call the roll yes Mr Bailey yes Miss Larry yes Miss Pereira thumbs up Miss rodericks yes yes 12.2 it's a discussion and an update on PowerSchool is presented by Scott caball Chief Information officer are they coming in Mr Cabral yes um John

Paul is here he's the regional vice president and we're going to have Alex turn on the zoom he has a bunch of his team members that'll be present tonight while Alex is doing that I'm just going to give you a brief update we are moving forward you know I've been up here for the last year being as very transparent and truthful as we can with you this has not been an easy project this has not

been an easy Road as soon as we check off one issue concern we bring up others and up until that point Central Administration we felt that some of the communication may not have been there with PowerSchool um we were a little lost um the last three weeks we've had many meetings with PowerSchool John Paul's team our project managers have been excellent there have been some things that we didn't know how to ask it's a

new you know a new program for us we didn't know that we could ask for strategic support while we were in the implementation process so when we met a couple of weeks ago we had some demands and some major concerns um how do we maintain accuracy with our data we're bringing over 20 years of data how do we maintain that accuracy with attendance and enrollment if you look in one window the numbers look a

little bit different than they do in another window we didn't realize that we could ask for this type of support we were asking for support sending some emails and they get lost in translation after a series of those meetings John Paul and his team we've been working since Thursday I've been getting emails all weekend so we're moving in the right direction with some of those concerns we

have some other concerns in the special programs piece Kristen Farris has been amazing on that side on the district side we're working through those hiccups Kristen identifies an issue we're working through them some of them not easy fix some of them take some time it actually has taken PowerSchool some time to look at them but we're moving in the right direction quite a few concerns in the nursing side

and the nursing module again we didn't know that we could have strategic support for some of those issues strategic support tickets have been opened and we're now starting the dialogue and stuff is being corrected where can be corrected there are some pieces in the nursing side that are still not going to work like internally Karen's team would like that's something that now we have a wish list and once we

can get through all of our internal hiccups and Technical hiccups it's something that we can look at a central Office Team and see if we want to customize pieces but again we've said from the beginning we don't want to be doing much customizing right now we've bought the standard base model and we're adding as we go because we don't want to get ourselves into where we were with X2

where 20 years of customizations kind of backed us into a corner and we couldn't do things during covid when we had key staff members out sick and people that just didn't know the system we didn't have those capacities within to work us through that so by doing this with PowerSchool and starting with the base model and working in these extra pieces is we're confident that we'll have those

capacities within multiple people in the district will know how to do these things so we never get to where we were before PowerSchool another huge issue for us and we heard about it tonight were at parent access the problem with Parent Access which we didn't know and after having a conversation last week with parent Square I'm sorry I'm sorry PowerSchool is they have some best practices we're a

ten thousand plus student District so 14 000 parents on record that want to know what's going on the district has to create an individualized code for each parent to be able to log into PowerSchool so right there we're still on the parent Square side trying to gain email addresses and contact information and when the two systems don't connect with the information that we need we can't get those codes out there I can

tell you as of four o'clock this afternoon The Sims team internally was able to produce those codes and we are working with PowerSchool a matter of fact John Paul on his right down here was in an email chain they have sent us some information we're anticipating that by Thursday afternoon those codes will be out district-wide to the 12 000 plus parents and then they just simply sign

in and they'll be able to use the app they'll be able to use the website they'll be able to see student grades and such moving forward this piece has been the biggest lift because of the way the information was coming over from Aspen in order to make sure that everything matched up correctly so students were getting that in you know students and parents were seeing that information but

again something that we didn't know we had strategic support John Paul got his team involved I guess for us a learning moment was maybe I wasn't asking the right questions but now that we've had these meetings we have some we have a new customer support manager that's basically going to be with us now through the Long Haul and we've been assured by power school that we also have the support of Danny Davis who is

our sales rep we have the support of John Paul and his team so as we move forward if there are issues it's going to be a little bit easier for us to digest and to resolve in a more timely manner um two of the pieces that we are realizing were not in our original scope of work when you think student information system you think a student's data is going to follow from one system to

another but attendance in historical enrollments were not part of the original scope of work so basically they show you how to do it and that is now on us internally to do it that's been basically put on hold at this point because in order to get a student information system working for attendance for grading for State reporting that's been put on hold that information has been pulled out

internally by us from X2 and we are going to begin the process to upload all that information so again like I've been saying for over a year now we're getting there we start to see the Finish Line a bit and then we come back a little bit because we've created another issue I've had members of the committee reach out to me on the weekends we've had some issues here and there I just need to

hear about those issues and I'll give you a great example some of our buildings have been excellent to work with principal Damaris saw something on PowerSchool that said tardy kiosk and he said I would really love to be able to use this well we're not ready on that piece with PowerSchool yet but we asked some questions this afternoon and John Paul and his team got involved yet again

and we're going to actually be able to roll that out a lot sooner than we thought we were going to be able to so these are the pieces where the buildings have to be able to send us the information so we can work together to make this work like we wanted as a district I have John Paul here and his team I don't know if there are any questions that you have of them while they're here

um anybody have any questions about the update Mr agya yeah so I want to thank the folks from PowerSchool for coming down I've been very critical uh over the last six months based on we when we were presented uh some information in order for us to decide to turn over and change from uh Aspen to PowerSchool it wasn't an easy decision we had basically we approved almost a 400 percent increase in price

when we went from what we had to now PowerSchool so we're now spending 175 000 a year by my recollection for a system now when I made the motion I made the vote back in the spring I was using what the folks from PowerSchool I'm not sure if it's you sir or the people on the line came before us and said you would converted systems we're going to make sure everything works great

we're going to have dedicated people just for Fall River and this is going to be seamless and we'll be ready to rock and roll right away that's how I took the the discussion from you or your company I haven't seen that yet and even to this day it's in the middle of October we've been to school for six weeks and I'm hearing today that there's systems that you all have that we don't

even know about or didn't know about whoever's fault that was from this committee member's perspective we shouldn't have been having these discussions over and over so I don't think that you delivered what you all said you were going to deliver but I wanted to have you here to ask you questions relative to is it something that we did is it am I totally off base did you go back and look at it and say

well maybe we shouldn't have said this or that but I'm giving you an opportunity to make your company look like you were responsive because quite frankly I don't think you were responsive like you were in the video that Mr Cabral said he sent to you what you said we were going to have everything worked out so I don't know who wants to respond from your company but I certainly would like to hear it

yeah I can certainly start um with some thoughts uh we do have a lot of the folks involved in your implementation on the zoom meeting so they can certainly layer in with any additional uh detail they think might be helpful they are certainly closer to those details than I am uh I think Scott really summarized it uh pretty well um an implementation of a new system is a massive project

there is always a plan that gets put together at the outset of that and I think we had a good plan I think when you get into the reality of the project it's sort of like getting under the hood of a car you don't know what's under there until you get under there and I think that certainly it presented some challenges along the way in terms of data migration um when you move from one student

information system to another it's going to expose any fundamental issues you have with the data that you had today and as you go through the process I think you put it really well you don't know what you don't know uh you're moving from something that was very familiar to something that is unknown so no matter how much due diligence you do up front going into the process you're going to discover things like the

capabilities you mentioned um uh that you can move forward and Implement with so I don't know if any of the folks on the line want to chime in in terms of their experience with the project um I do think that we had a plan that we followed that plan that our team was dedicated uh to Fall River to help them out and I do want to ensure everyone on on the committee that you have our pledge

to make sure that we help you get through the rest of the initial steps get through a successful first year on PowerSchool so Joe Ray Bob anything you'd add if you can hear us now this is uh this is Bob JP and uh you know I think you've summarized it well um certainly there's some things that uh came up during the implementation where we had to Pivot a little bit I think we

worked together with Fall River team to to address those but um you know I feel like we're we're close to resolving all those and we'll continue to provide whatever additional resources at a time needed to make sure this is done and and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna step in on the district side we're getting to the point now in the project where we've talked at the central office level that this will be where now we

start to have some internal focus groups right because people are using the product and we've said Maria and I have said from the get-go we are not customizing anything at this point but there may be things that Karen and her team really would like to see there there may be things that Kristen and her team would really like to see there there may be things that principals would like to see for reporting that's

something now where we're not just going to say hey we're going to do it we're going to sit down we're going to digest it we're going to discuss it and moving forward if it's something that we do want to change the bones and the background of PowerSchool to do that's going to be a consensus type vote it's not just going to be how we did it in the past with X2 where we just did it

we're not going to do that anymore we're in the business to make power school hopefully last 20 years of 20 years of consistent data consistent workflow and that relationship with the vendor that we didn't necessarily have with that to in the past so when you when you say like I think it was mentioned by somebody that you worked with hundreds of systems uh you've converted hundreds of systems

to something along those lines in in the video when you first came I believe that that was me because one of the things I regularly tell customers that is CIS implementation is not easy it's hard work but we have and I think the sentence because I've said it about a million times successfully migrated hundreds of customers from dozens of different student Information Systems which systems have you in Massachusetts

have you worked on converting that are larger than four of them uh Springfield Public Schools and they uh so any others uh Lawrence couldn't he Lawrence Public Schools uh probably a couple others I had to put it back and look but those are the two that leap to mind so one of the questions I have is when Mr Cabral is saying that now we we learned best practices that you have or things like that

along the way through this process I've heard things that just blow my mind as far as if you've converted systems that are larger than Fall River even smaller um I guess there's no there was no online uh conduct referrals from teachers or something along those lines that we had to make some sort of Corrections so that's not just an automatic in a system of uh PowerSchool so the conduct

workflow that we had in X2 was a customization so if you look at a lot of the other systems out there it doesn't necessarily play that way so there are conduct pieces in power school but again we've bought that base model right so now we're at the point once the data is in there to create these workflows that's where we have to now sit as a district we have to talk about some of

these pieces because yes there were pieces in the initial implementation that we thought were there they weren't however we're working through those hiccups now so you are familiar with X2 we were all familiar with X2 a lot of what was in the FRP sx2 was all customers customized I understand Mr well but the question I asked that the PowerSchool folks was in 2023 2022 you're going to tell me that PowerSchool

doesn't have an online discipline module across any of your systems before no we do we have the ability to submit teacher referrals in a couple of ways typically in Massachusetts the way that you would want to do that is through a tool we call Incident Management within power teacher Pro there is a teacher referral capability if you want to make a referral that goes to the office you check a box that says escalate

and that referral is emailed automatically to the building administrators so what is that now Mr well keeps saying the base model oh so just what I mean is what what the T what our staff are used to our customizations from X2 it looks different and it's different verbiage and it's a different it's not conduct referral it's in power teacher and those were the trainings that were offered via

video via PDF before the school year started they're ongoing they have been all summer so I think I think pieces of this are just miscommunication slash not necessarily they're looking for what they had in X2 as opposed to what we have now and that's an ongoing piece with Brian and his team is to create these trainings and to create these one sheets and now we're using PowerSchool they're involved

and they've they've started to help us with that piece with the Strategic technical support that's where we are now so and I think even for me like I'm looking in PowerSchool now I was very versed in X2 and there are pieces and I'm like well that's not where it should be it's there it's just in a different spot and it's called something else so what are we going to do we're going to

use the one that comes with the system correct and and they have been the buildings have been so no it's not a matter of being a base model it needs to oh so I guess the PowerSchool comes with all the pieces in it right and if there are additional pieces that we want to change so like in power teacher Pro if there's something in the incident referral system that needs to be changed

that then becomes a customization but we're using the base model right now Maria and and the central office team we have that's where we have told the line we're using the based what's under the hood right now because we don't want to do any customizations because John Paul and his team will tell you as soon as we customize they're not necessarily responsible for how the system reacts or

maintains the data at that point they won't do it PowerSchool also does something where it's all plug-in based so there are third-party applications out there that you can put plugins in but a majority of those are not necessarily approved by PowerSchool they have a list of if you use this one and there's a mistake we can help you but if you use that one we may not be able to

help you so what we're trying to do internally right now is not create any of those major issues and use what we've purchased right now get used to using what we've purchased and then again look at the bigger picture as we move forward and if they believe it's in our best interest to change something we will but that will be discussed internally before we make a major change so that we're not back to

square one with X2 so I guess live IEPs are not part of the base model for PowerSchool no that's included in what you have yes I couldn't hear you so sorry yes that's included in what you have in the special programs uh product okay so why did it cost us thirty thousand to implement that it was to import additional data so former Administration wanted to import more data than was discussed initially in the original

scope of work so in order to do that there was the lift for data but as far as the live IEP the original scope of work stated 18 to 24 months of live IEP data and that's the piece that Kristen and her team have been working tirelessly on because in order to get things to match up and we're close we're close we're getting there every day we get closer but the original scope

of work was for 18 to 24 months of live IEP and then the former administrator in charge of that area wanted more and that's when we decided to do PDF versions of anything historical from that point on because it was going to be way too big of a lift to get all that information into that system so when we paid thirty thousand dollars to PowerSchool that was for what I I still don't understand now

uh that was for the migration of additional years of historical data so how many came with the package how many how much data were you going to take for free as part of our package as the original scope of work we had two years of IEP data live IEP data anything else after that would have been historical PDF what do we have now right now we have two years of data in there live IEP

data and we have the historical PDFs coming in but why did we pay thirty thousand dollars then if he's saying it was free because saying it was free and we paid thirty thousand dollars the two years was part of the contract anything else other than that when we decided as a district to bring in arrest as PDFs that all had to be the data had to be manipulated it had to be matched

up so that those PDFs could get into the system that has been the biggest lift so the power school in Lawrence Springfield they chose not to have IEPs in this system uh powers of both of those districts don't choose to use our IEP solution they use something else but anything we do in general is defined right up front uh to Scott's point in a statement of work it spells out exactly what we're going

to do exactly what the district is responsible for doing and what the Milestones are that we mutually agree upon need to be checked off in order for the project to be considered successfully closed if something is outside of the scope of that to Scott's Point whether it's a customer request that you know we thought we wanted two years of data but we really want five now then we either develop an additional

scope for that additional work or we have a change order process for modifying the scope that was agreed upon in the first place yeah I I just took it took you all at your word when you said to us in order for us to pay four times as much money as we were paying was that everything that we had was going to come over smooth and I took that to mean odd

data was going to come from the old system into this system without additional funds so you can go back and forth all we want I think we got the short end of that we were promised that everything was going to be included and then we paid 30 000. my concern is that we're going to pay more in future we're going to continue to keep paying more because that's just what in my gut tells

me that this is what's going to happen are you here prepared to tell us that we're not going to get charged another dime for anything that's going on with this full conversion um that's a very difficult thing to commit to because I can't predict what kind of request you're going to make and what impact that would have on our services team well if we don't ask for anything other than what you you sold us on

we shouldn't have to pay any more if we have no further changes in scope then yes you shouldn't have to pay a penny more I just think that I for one it just keeps on coming more money more money more money and I'm not so sure it's working out as well the only other question I had is Mr Cabral mentioned something about Consultants like third parties have we used any third-party uh people on anything

regulated to PowerSchool yes um so we do have uh one of the trainers um that came in from power school is a consultant on the side and we used her a team to do some of the data exports that we had brought out of X2 for our clever upload for the beginning of the school year because we just did not have the capacity within the Sims team to complete that we have four members in

there and they've been going 12 13 hour days so in order to get that piece done they they did use a consultant for that um at very short money um it was a couple of thousand dollars I believe for that person to run the report and they paid or we paid we paid for that because that was something that we needed to bring in contracted per diem support to help the Sims team so we

didn't have clever last year and under Aspen say that I'm sorry we didn't have clever you said it was so we did but again X2 spoke to clever differently and when the data came in we're getting to the point now where we're understanding the data flow when the workflows associated with it so we're able to clean up these processes now internally but it was different for all the members of The

Sims team and that information that was coming out of X2 came out a little bit differently for PowerSchool in order to be able to talk to these things our next big piece is going to be running a nightly export from Power School into Nutra kids right now I'm doing that manually daily that'll be our next thing yeah it just points to the same thing and you know my point I think we sold a bill

of goods that you know we just keep on paying for so I'm going to end my question on that all I can tell you is that I will not spend one more dime PowerSchool for this conversion period I don't care what you tell me about it I'm not voting for it no matter what that I use anything further if I can just clarify for a minute though superintendent Ponce um Mr agyar the the

part part of our issue where people are used to Aspen as it as it is 20 years later when we first purchased Aspen it didn't look like the Aspen that we have now there were a lot of customizations a lot of add-ons that we added to create the product that we became familiar with and what we're saying is we don't want to go down that road yet because we want to

see what the product looks like how it functions first before we start tweaking and adding and customizing because once we start doing that I don't want to go down a road where we're going to create a product that we don't recognize anymore either so we're talking about a 20-year conversion is something that got to where we wanted it to be comparing it to a model that we were starting from scratch year one year

one to year 20. there should be a difference and and we're used to it I I myself I was used to Aspen absolutely it's going to take time to change but all those customizations that we made with Aspen we paid for also in addition to what we paid I just want you know like I'm not going to I'm just saying we're just looking we bought the product we have to test out the product before

we start changing it and we have to we there were things that we wanted it for we want to make sure that that it delivers and that it it's a more efficient system for all of us but um I think that if we're going to customize in the future we might say hey we want to we think that this customization will work we'll make some this Pro this report more um for discipline for instance if

somebody if we look through it and say you know with buying customizing this report it's going to be more efficient for us that may come down the line but right now we want to see what it does as it is before we start tweaking and and changing it and adding on and going through all that stuff and we had the parents like just as an example we're seven weeks in and we

still don't have the parent stuff up yep that's not that's not acceptable I don't understand I get it I get the reasons I all that stuff as far as I'm concerned those are excuses the fact of the matter is is that we were told back in May and June that this was going to be up and running one of the better systems we're going to be for parents to see so the

parents could have a better interface we were told by all these gentlemen showed us nice pictures that said this is how it's going to work we're seven weeks in and we don't have it yet so that nobody can deny that and we're paying 100 400 times more than we were paying before that's sort of my frustration I'm willing to let it try and work but it gets tiring because gentlemen come up you can't see the

stuff how does that happen seven weeks in I yield Mr Hawk just real quick just following what Mr Aggie I was saying um Scott and uh personal school when when do you think that the parents are going to be able to so as of four o'clock this afternoon like I had mentioned previously The Sims team here has been able to pull the 14 000 Plus codes that we need now what we have to do

internally is we have to encrypt that PDF we're working on that now 14 000 sheets of paper it's then going to be sent out via parent Square to the parents and then they'll have their six to eight digit code and they'll be able to download the app and put it on their phone and they'll be able to see everything and I anticipate hiccups when we rolled out parents where there were hiccups but

what I need to be able to help the district and to work with PowerSchool is we need to hear these you know we have a technology line we have emails we have buildings we need to know these these issues so as the parent codes go out parents please contact technology we'll put some stuff out on Facebook so they know where to contact because we can fix these issues and relatively most of the

time seconds because there's a couple of clicks of a button within the PowerSchool side or the parent Square side but I need to be able to get those fixed and I can't fix them if people don't tell us so we just need to have with the buildings and the parents that open line of communication so we can assist at that piece so when when's the when's the cut like the date well Thursday Thursday afternoon parent

square is we're hoping fingers crossed that it's going to start sending out those emails to parents we're going to start at the high school level because we have the most emails and Mr Damaris and his team have done a phenomenal job here of getting that contact information into parent Square so we're going to use that as the test bed and then we'll roll it out from there if the high school works and we see numbers

start to increase in the power school side we'll roll it out to the rest of the district hours after okay thank you very much anything further okay that's an update thank you Scott thank you power school thank you very much item 12.3 discussion and vote to approve the second read of the school committee superintendent's goals as presented by Maria Ponce superintendent of schools superintendent Ponce so as you have my

goals on front of you that you referred to the committee last month I do want to bring your attention to the attendance goal that I went through this multiple times and still have an error in there so the attendance goal reads by June 2023 in order to promote the learning and growth of all students the district chronic absenteeism rate will decrease and then something's missing there that

should say by 10 percent from the most recent measure and the daily attendance will increase from 87.6 to 92 percent so I will make that correction and upload it in there I want to make sure we are still awaiting our targets from Desi um to fill in that data from the first goal and the rest we just made sure that we had specific by November by whatever using the feedback that we received that

I received at the meeting any discussions uh Mr agya I just think uh I I thought we talked about at the meeting waiting until the numbers could come in for um the data to be plugged in yes the the student achievement numbers are in but the the deci sets targets for us as a district that may not be here for at least a month or two so certainly we can

wait until next month to bring it back again and wait and see I have absolutely no problem with that but the target the targets have not been released by deci yet yeah no I just thought we went getting this until then the most important piece of this in from me would be that information so if we're going to do some goals they should be around the data so I'm not ready to support

anything at this point until we can get um if those numbers aren't in then you could have come up with some other numbers to I think measure by that would be my personal opinion so I'll make a motion the table till next meeting put table until the date is in one second is that all right yes okay uh Deb please call the roll on the table Mr agu yes Mr Bailey Mr harp no Miss laravey yes

Miss Pereira Ms rodericks yes mayor Coogan uh yeah another month

12.4 discussion and vote to approve the central administration's salary ranges as presented by Tom Coogan

good evening uh the document you see um there were several documents within the packet the one is the original from the year 2021 when we did the principles Matrix there was no specific Matrix set up for the central office salaries what they were what that those ranges that you see was what came off of the original job descriptions as they were approved by the school committee so um

that's where those ranges were what I did was I updated the salary structures for the people that hold those positions as well as the fraa ranges for the people below them or in some cases they were frea members or S nons so that you could see the salaries of the people that were below those positions and then created a couple of scenarios similar to what we did with the principles Matrix

one was a five percent scenario one was a 10 scenario just for your consideration at this point we're not really recommending one or the other we're really more just going through what I would consider to be a a first read in your feedback on what direction we should move those in any discussion on the ranges uh yeah I'll yield if anyone else has anything I don't want to I don't want to be the only one talking

if anybody else has anything I'd yield to them okay I've been trying to make sense of it so I don't know if it's just um the page three that's on here I got the highlighted proposed five percent yes foreign I'm going to take a step back and I yield for a moment

oh Mr anger I'm sorry so I think it was two months ago we had a debate over um salaries for our principals at that time it was discussed about we have some other administrative positions that make zero sense related to how many days the person works and how much their salary is and I've said it publicly I'll say it I've said it privately and I'll say it again

we have a mess on our hands as far as having a true rationale for who makes what when and how many days they work and the level of importance in the district so while I don't necessarily have a problem with some of what's being requested here I think that we we need to take a step back and and look at this across the whole District because we have things that just don't

make sense and what we have been doing here is okay we'll just keep on adding and we'll keep on adding and we'll keep on adding instead of saying we're going to address the issues sometimes we continue to hire positions that we know are going to make the problem worse we don't take a step back and say wait a minute we can't have a situation where somebody is making a hundred and twenty

five thousand dollars in a union that makes 215 days and we have somebody else such as the Chief Information officer who makes 109 for 230 days like it makes no sense the order of responsibility the level of responsibility it makes no sense so I I don't see this particular piece as a problem in and of itself but I think we need to look at the whole picture and figure out how are we going

to get this right once and for all because we've hired three different assistant superintendents at the present time already they advertise the job people applied for the job based on a current range as far as I'm concerned you've got to live within that range for those people we have the time to look at something like this and say you know what we've got to look at it so that we can recruit the best and

brightest across the Commonwealth across the country we have to increase the salaries the time to do that was in March when we knew we had three assistant superintendents opening so we would advertise looking for the best and the brightest potentially because people look at the salary only so I think that this is something that we need to go back to the table we need to look at it and we need

to fix some of these problems that on this list of the highest earners in in the school department like I said the most glaring ones a union positions that pay 215 days per year and they're making a lot more money than those that are making that are working 242 and 242 the principals were 242 days a year it defies logic why we have this best and it's been like this for year after year

after year and we never fix it but we want to add another 10 another 10 grand another 15 grand and I just think it's making the problem worse instead of better so I um I think is this the first read Mr Coogan is that what you said so yep that says discussion that's fine so my my comments are related to that I can articulate that as much as anybody would

want to know but I do think that we have a major problem across this District on who gets paid how much they get paid and how many days they work it's in it's not equal it's it's not sensical what we do and we just continue to do it and I'm at the point where I don't want to do nonsensical things like that anymore without a yield so this is it says discussion and vote to approve that's

just the first reading

do I have a motion a second on there was a motion there was was there a motion was there first reader yeah I'm confused it says discussion of vote to approve yeah I'll make a motion second I'm going to motion a second okay I'm with you though Mr Aggie are we giving this one read tonight and then it's coming back or what are we doing because it says discussion and vote to

approve I just don't want to do something and then find out we did something well I'm assuming it's coming back that's why I made the motion we wanted to come back you can't make a motion to approve that's what I'm saying I know but I can only go by Mr coogans here to present and I took him at his word he said it was the first read yeah so how that's at this point okay he's

here presenting saying it's the first read and then on the agenda that gets approved by multiple people says opposite of that I'm not sure how but I gave you my two cents I think everybody else should weigh in and we should have the superintendent take what we said and come back to us all right let's do that um so then we'll do the same thing we did with the last one since it doesn't say

um first read let's go with the uh uh the table Yeah entertain a motion disabled I have a motion a second Deb call the rolling table yes yes Mr Pereira thumbs up Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes all right so we got the same situation again discussion and vote to approve is that what this is an additional scl position at town this is an additional ft okay go ahead uh Talbot Middle School currently has

two uh scl Liaisons the request from the principal is to have another SEL liaison that would be dedicated to the sub separate strand there are currently six classrooms in that building in approximately uh 70 students uh between 70 and 75 students in that strand he's looking for some directed uh response sort of a first responder type position to assist with that there are sacks within the school

but again the sacs are delivering Services over a schedule as opposed to responding he's looking for the additional support in the form of an FTE you got a motion a second on this one motion approved with a question emotional approve of the second I got a motion to second question question to our superintendent just uh when we get stuff from only one school there's probably more to the story than what it

looks like so my only concern is that what does it look like at one school versus the other looking at equity and that shot that missed Almeida makes with um the um School adjustment councils and the like I'd like to get the support staff on there as well so we can make a an informed decision but please tell us why you think this is needed there versus that nobody else is asking I

guess is that what I'm gonna get well I mean I we take requests as principals bring them to the Forefront I think fear is not equal um there are some very high needs students at Talbot there are some very high needs classrooms that principal proposal is advocating for um certainly we this committee and us we have not turned down um when a principal comes to us requesting support um I are we going to say that every

single school has to have two scle Liaisons or three I think that depends on need because the school may not have the same population and may not have the same need principal proposal came to us he advocated for that position there are some you know he's got some serious SEL concerns there with students that are that need support and he's advocating for an additional position I I certainly

I I can give you a breakdown of how many out of our each School each school but I would caution you to think that we need to have the exact same number at each school because the needs are not the exact same yeah I would think that the rationale would be something along the lines of the population the needs and exactly what you mentioned and I'm not suggesting that Mr proposal can't

justify that I know if it came before us that he recommended to you he has the need I'm not suggesting that he doesn't what I'm concerned about is does every other principle have that same ability to say to you or to say to this committee I have that need and I have this or I have you know that's what I'm looking at as Equity so when we see something only from one principle it I

it begs the question of is is there any other positions that have not been brought forth or do people know oh maybe I you know I could use another one of those two because I have I'm not questioning him or his that position right but I think we just need to know that that's open to everybody in any principle any Department that is in need should come to you and say I'm requesting an extra support

and yet I think you're saying that that's okay yes but we haven't turned we haven't turned people down um I I trust that the principals know their schools the best and they know exactly what they need and when they have a need they come to us and then we come to the committee and ask for it like if I can just clarify what I'm saying you're saying that you haven't turned anybody down

and what I'm suggesting is have all the principals and directors of programs are they feeling free that if they have a need that they can bring that forth to you so that they can bring it that has not been the case here in this District that is absolutely not been the case so they have been trained not to do such things as advocate for the need this and that so rather than say to them I

haven't turned anybody down is I make sure I tell them if you have a need please bring it application point last year when we did the Paris for the uh bilingual students we didn't know it brought up from the floor that shouldn't happen it should come from the people that are working out there to say we need extra support and here's what it is and why I'm asking for the spreadsheet is because we should know

we should know how many sele Liaisons he has versus the other middle schools versus you know it's just a comparison for us to see there can be a comment on it at the bottom that says because I have this population I have that population so I'm not questioning the Talbot one trust me I think we should support it I just want to make sure everybody knows we have money we should

get the support right okay and I I believe that they know but I will reiterate we have a principles meeting Thursday I will reiterate the principles created that job description together we we created it together they they I asked them what they needed we created that position based on what they felt needed to happen so I will reiterate that um the last thing we want is people to be

afraid to come and say I need this in my school this is not the time to do that sounds good thank you can I get a moment I have a motion second Deb call the roll please Mr right yeah yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira thumbs up thumbs up Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes 12.6 is the discussion of how to approve the usage that Durfee

High School for the class of 1997 reunion as presented by Ken pachico Chief Operating Officer motion approved with a question motion approve of the question can I get a second on emotional proof second I have a motion a second discussion Mr comment or request the last time this came before us I know I asked for something related to that we're covering all our bases with the liabilities and

the like I don't believe we've seen that but I'm just once again requesting that so that we know what we have uh everything's covered but I do think it's a worthy organization and I want to support it so we can get that I'd appreciate it we got all the liabilities in place there Dr pachico the doctor says yes the doctor said yes okay the uh the the on off side of of um of this where Leasing

space renting space for the amount of time that's requested um the the renty is looking to use that with the with a vendor who will assume the liability on the um alcohol side so a agency will be doing the the serving and taking care of that piece they're responsible for the liquor license they're responsible for the police officer and that piece will be responsible for custodial services and security the area is um

is the first floor as we walked in tonight using that area the cafeteria will be available in in that surrounding area for the hours that's requested and we do have Representatives here from the class of 97 if you have any further uh questions yeah it's got an early ending date time too at 9 9 30 so that's not going to be a late night so that's good anybody have any other questions on the

event just one Mr Huntington will they be able to walk into the um uh what into the gym with it no no so basically what I've offered ahead of time is that if they're willing and they agreed we were we were talking about having certain areas on a tour um that they could do their suggestion was better than mine and that was that we will set up an hour ahead of the

event if people wanted to do the tour okay they would be escorted to areas of interest and we would take care of that before the event started and then basically roll it into the event the building will be for lack of a better word locked down to the area and then they would be you know confined to the lodge Atrium and uh and this section of the building okay thank

you anything further uh we have a motion a second um Deb please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hall yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira thumbs up Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes and just to that end though I was here on Saturday for the 60th the class reunion for the whatever that year was the 60th reunion of the class they used the Granite Grill and the lobby

they took them for a tour of the building it's Manny pupula's class they were all there there's 120 people the kids in the um Granite Grill The Culinary kids all got a a paycheck out of it they served them a buffet it was really something to see it was a very good time and I'm glad they came here discussion 12.7 vote to approve the first quarter revolving fund is presented by Kevin almino Chief Financial Officer

so in front of you you have the update on the 15 revolving funds that we'd have they all have positive balances as of the end of September right at 11.7 million dollars across the board and our evolving accounts with this transfer as we normally do there are no expenses in the use of school account you'll be approving a transfer of eighteen thousand dollars in overtime eighteen thousand one fifty six

ninety one for the overtime for the sounds light Auditorium use and for the overtime associated with security and custodians for outside events uh bringing that balance and the account down to 416 477 dollars and two cents emotional proof I have a motion second Deb call the roll please Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes 12-8

is the discussion vote to improve the quarterly budget update it's presented by Kevin Almeida the Chief Financial Officer so here's uh here's the quarterly report it's uh been updated by cost center uh for all of our accounts within the operating budget um for a lack of better words this is the first shot at this so I'm actually looking for you know some feedback from the committee as to additional

information you're looking for um and um if you know as far as the cost centers go I've broken down the cost centers to what I believe they should be and what I believe is acceptable I'm not sure if you want to break down the cost centers any further um but we've I've broken it down you know all the way from art the art Department all the way down to Watson I

did it in alphabetical order so that the school committee could have it in in order to see what all the resources are in the operating budget broken down by each line item so you can have a gander at this time we've spent we're at 23 just over 23 spent through the first quarter um at this time I'm monitoring transportation we haven't really paid any transportation bills yet so to speak we've paid some but not many so

um I'll have a much further uh update and overview of Transportation come December or earlier if we have any issues so to speak but at this time I have nothing to report in that end other than I'm monitoring it now and I will have a further update for you at a later time anything on the quarterly report Mr agya so on Transportation you have listed that it's 2.3 million in the whole

on the report so are you saying that's not accurate No so what I'm saying is that I have other funding sources that are going to fund portions of that of that bill so we've got the mckinney-vento money in addition I have money in circuit breaker for transportation to cover some of the audit District transportation and so because we haven't paid any bills yet because we haven't pay any bills yet

that I'm going to transfer over yet that's not a true you know balance as to uh you know what it's potentially over by so and in addition to that you know as we always do every year we encumber all the POS it doesn't mean that we're going to spend all the POS Downs so until I get like a good couple months of bill paying I really won't know if we're

fully utilizing all the POS that are in place yeah so when you when you refer to a PO I'm assuming you mean like uh you have 180 days of Transportation you're gonna have a PO for 180 days yeah and so we have a given route and we so we have correct we have POS for our specific routes specific vendors and in some cases we end up having less we end up

using less less bill you know less buses or less fans or whatever the case may be with specific vendors so there are changes that happen over the course of the year and until we know exactly what it is that we're riding you know I I don't want to just speak out of turn and say that you know it is what it is at this point yeah I would um

I mean it's logical that if we had 20 buses 180 days you know the PO should call for 180 days correct not so sure that's accurate but that's you know it's hard to get if you don't have a PO for the right number of days we had this issue come up with I had to have a meeting with the superintendent Mr pachico and Mrs Cabral about it that the

POS are all over the place and it was agreed to at that time that we were going to make POS for the whole year because it makes no sense otherwise but I think we're still doing the same thing that made no sense no no we're not doing the same thing we do have POS here for 180 days what I'm saying to you is that it's potent there's potential that these these POS are going to be reduced

because we're not using all of these vehicles and what I'm suggesting to you is that we have POS that are not for 180 days that's all okay um one my suggestion would be to add a cost to complete line at the end so we can know where we're at with the budget I think that's an important piece for us to know whether we have some you know extra funds or or the like and

my other comment is on the um net School spending so I it made him some requests as a superintendent that we're not July 1 came when we're supposed to the city is supposed to fund us at a certain number that number is not being is not in our side at the present time including the nutrition account which you said was around 600 some thousand so at that time July 1 when we approved a budget based on

not having a nutrition account to me that six hundred thousand dollars off right off the bat so that was July 1. we also got to know right around the budget time that there was a problem 1.3 million or something like that so that's almost two million dollars that we don't have current in the budget I asked her to be an agenda item so that the committee can know what's going on

with it because it's the middle of October we knew about this in July and it's still not in I just don't understand so we're working with the city the city is putting forward a transfer for the October 25th meeting for the 1.3 million dollars so that's moving forward in addition we are I am in the final stages of the end of the airport I plan on submitting it by the

end of the week so we can get a clear picture as to exactly where we stand and next month I will have further update to the committee as to exactly where we are prior to you know to submission prior to the descending us you know their update in February so you the school committee will be updated within the next month but the nutrition account was off by six hundred thousand so the health care

account is going to be off by 600 000.

why does that have to wait for the end of the year report because because when the end of the airport's done balances change and actuals are all updated for you know the 22 year and budgeted figures do change so it's still a work in progress so so you think we're gonna oh we're going to owe the city money do I think we're going to hold the city money no no I don't

believe so but we still haven't finalized the end of the airport so but when we get the budget until I finalized the end of the year report I will report it out to the committee at that time so we have to wait until March to figure out that there that they owe us 600 000 and then you're not you're not going to wait until March Mr you're going to know

within the next month my plan is to have the I've been working on it I'm finalizing it with the city um because I need their their figures to finalize the information uh and once we have it finalized I will submit the report and the plan is submit the report by the end of the week but I thought you just said March that's why I was getting no no so what I'm referring to is I'm

going to submit the report we'll know based on our figures where we are at that time I'll report it out to you as a school committee at that time the desc always finalizes what the figures are usually in the February to March time frame at that report at that time that point in time the number will change as it always does changes in the assessments for the charter school and all that those things always always

happen so the numbers will change at that time when you when we present the budget in June or whatever to them don't isn't it the law that we have to put an honest budget of what we actually know at that time absolutely so what was the healthcare number that was put in how much was it you know I don't have it in front of me right now but it was it was

without the 600 000 coming out yes correct that that's so that's my point you're right so if the law says we have to create when we do a budget the honest budget with an honest assessment and after that was already submitted in July we knew that we took 600 000 off because we didn't want to have it last year which we should have but that's another story why would we not change that in July

like so we're sitting on a budget that we know is six hundred thousand dollars in healthcare off and since July 1. Mr aguir I don't disagree with you I wish I could have the money day one I don't have the money day one so I I agree with you so Madam superintendent Do you have a comment on why we waited since July without that number well we're waiting for the city to um we've met with them

about that that money the money that's owed we met with them last week and they assured us we're going to get the money we've been asking for it absolutely so you asked the city for the 600 000 in healthcare they are very well aware of it yep in the 1.3 so the city administrator would know that there's two issues going on yep 1.3 million and 600 000. yeah they were they were at the meeting

because it it to me it just is we should do it and for the committee members that means that we have six hundred thousand dollars that we can give more support if you wait now until March we're going to say well we can't spend it at the end we're going to play games with it so to me the sooner the better so we can actually put it into resources like Mr

Raposa came down for for others so and and for other reasons it makes it much easier to spend when I know I have it so yeah once again let's put that on the agenda for our meeting next please sure thank you anything further just a quick question Miss Rodricks it could just be me but do we not have nutrition on this as a cross Center no because it's a revolving fund okay I

was just double checking like I just want to make sure like I wasn't missing something business bringing that up okay with that I yield all right can we get a motion emotional proof in a second second I'm full please stop Mr I can yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes we have a number of items for your information some retirements some

resignations and correctly some of our former staff passed away could I get a motion this second to place on file so moved okay I got a motion in a second Deb please call the road Mr argue yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Mr Ferrera thumbs up Miss Rodricks yes mayor Kruger yes any new business to come before the committee hearing none we have a request for executive session it would be a need

there will be a need um do you want to read them first sure okay uh first Mass General lawyers chapter 38 section 21a7 to review and approve the executive session minutes for September 12 2022 regular school committee meeting Mass general laws chapter 38 section 21a7 to review and approve the executive session minutes for the September 29 2022 special meeting of the school committee

Mass general laws chapter 38 section 21a1 to review the old committee law complaint dated October for 2022 filed by Patrick Higgins began to September 29 2022 special meeting the school committee Mr Higgins alleges the chairman violated the open meeting law by not announcing the members who are participating remotely Mass General lawyers chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss the threat to discuss strategy

with disrespective litigation with regards to Russell Costa versus the city of Fall River School Department Department of industrial actions Board number 040295-20 is chair is determined and the Open Session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee Mass general laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective bargain relative

to all administrators and employees represented by the Fall River administrators Association as the chair has determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the city National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all Civil Service employees in the former school system represented by the forward

Department of Civil Service clerical employees Association as the chair has determine the local session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee with respect to the litigation matter I mentioned the chair is the term there's no procession May have a detrimental impact on the litigation position of the city and the school committee National laws chapter

38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective bugging relative to all cafeteria employees of the Florida school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 Local 11 18 secures determined a local 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 maintenance employees of the Florida school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 Local 11 18 has to chose the two of the local section may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National Law chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all

custodial employees of the Florida school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 Local 11 18 as it shows determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the city of the school committee national awards chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collect the bargaining relative to all Safety and Security

employees the former school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 local 1118 is a chair is determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee National laws chapter 38 section 2182 to conduct strategy sessions preparation for negotiations with 99 percentile and or to conduct contract negotiations with

non-union Personnel including crystalline I was sorry about that human resources coordinator Laurie obachane assistant superintendent of special education we would reconvene they may not be statements at that time can I get a motion a second for executive session second I got a motion second debt please call the roll yes Dragon yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira

thumbs up yes yes in executive session an executive session again yep

yeah Miss Roderick here do we have any further action to come before the committee Mr hot thank you Mr Mayor a motion to approve the executive session match on September 12 2022 regular school committee meeting give me a second second Miss Dragon yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Ms rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes Mr Scott another motion to approve the executive session minutes for the

September 29 2022 special meeting of the school committee I have a motion a second any discussions that please call the lawyer yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Miss laravee yes Ms Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes Mr Hunt a motion to I'm sorry motion to approve uh and accept the uh as negotiated the contract for uh they seen the grassa human resources coordinator it's called a roll

yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes and one more Mr Mr Hart a motion to approve as negotiated and accepted a lawyer you mentioned contract the assistant superintendent of special ed can I get a second so I got a second uh discussion Deb please call the roll Miss drag yeah yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira

yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor Kruger yes a motion to adjourn still moved I have a second and second question yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss larvae yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes