11.14.2022 Fall River School Committee

like the call to order the Monday November 14th regular meeting of the farthest school committee Deb would you please call the roll Mister again here Mr Bailey Mr Hart here Ms larvae here Ms Pereira here Ms Roderick here mayor Coogan here uh salute to the flag

and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign to the open meeting law any person would make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are there for advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those

present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible citizens input we have a number of them tonight Deb if you be so kind to read them the first one is Melissa Machado Bay Street in Fall River good afternoon I am writing today to provide input on the topic of funds to be dispersed to the judge Rottenberg Center I oppose the city funding a location that utilizes anti-addequate or torturous treatments

on their students money would be better spent at a facility that works to care for these students using methods that are not abusive or harmful electric shock treatment should not be used on a human being ever I do not want my tax dollars contributing to such ill treatment to people thank you in advance for your consider considering my input Melissa Machado 1025 Bay Street next up we have Colin Dyess Ray Street

Fall River good afternoon members of the Fall River school committee I am most ashamed to once again see on the agenda that on the agenda that the judge Rothenberg Center is on the agenda I believe for well that at a previous meeting the school committee made it clear that the direction they want to go in is to never support the judge Rothenberg Center or provide them any Fall River dollars

that point was made loud and clear I must ask the administration and ask the superintendent why this is on the agenda once again after a clear Direction was sent by the school committee at the last the at the last time this was brought up for discussion and for a vote now members of the school committee think to yourselves would you rather support a contract obligation that shouldn't have

came about in the first place or would you rather vote to send money to an organization that engages or torture this shouldn't be a tough vote this is an easy vote I couldn't see in anyone's right mind why this would even be considered I would vote not to send any money to that despicable organization as the mayor would say in a quote it's a no-brainer and I must ask you mayor

Coogan as you crafted the agenda and put this item on set agenda you were an educator your whole life why do you personally support an organization that engages in torture of individuals and why do you Mr Mayor wish to see the city of Fall River become a state sponsor of torture by sending funds over to the judge Rothenberg Center I believe the city in the public interest would rather see the school

committee not send over money to this organization than to fulfill a measly contract I personally believe if you vote to send funds over to this organization you are contributing to the issues over at the center and that is something I would simply not be okay with let's not be a part of the problem and I hope we do not hear the argument that these funds would not fund their torture techniques only housing I do not

believe that it is adequate and adequate argument any funding to this organization should not be supported finally any school committee member who supports sending funding to this organization should look in the mirror tonight and ask themselves did I take a vote that is best for this community vote no on the judge rothenburg Center vote no against funding the judge rothenburg Center in

any way shape or form voting Yes means this city will become a state sponsor of Terror ending with the Grove ending with a quote from one of the mayor's biggest supporters if you don't move forward you're moving backwards Colin dies 560 Race Street Fall River Mass uh next up Nelson Vasquez Sunset Hill Fall River Fall River school committee I understand Paul has put on the agenda a vote to

send school department funding to the judge Rothenberg Center in the amount of 176 thousand dollars this is after the school committee said loud and clear that they do not support the judge rothenburg Center I know you will hear the naysayers on the Committees say they have to support a contractual obligation however if you use your moral compass you should know not supporting an organization that

engages in torture is a no-brainer as Paul Coogan said recently about our movement that we were way out there I can say personally he is way out there on this issue we should never support an organization that engages in torture Paul if you support their policy so bad resign immediately and become an educator there Fall River school committee members do not send money to the judge rothenburg

Center no matter what here's a better idea that I have on this topic together let's send a message to the school department letting them know that we as a community do not support this organization to the superintendent and school department why is this even on the agenda after the school committee did not support it the last time wasn't this tabled the last time it was on the agenda basically denied I hope the

school committee does the right thing tonight and vote no on the judge Rothenberg Center Nelson Vasquez 210 Sunset Hill next up we have Jeffrey gadrow Palmer Street Fall River good afternoon members of the school committee I wish to stay as I do not want my tax dollars to go to the judge rothenburg sent judge Rothenberg Center I would also I would ask my school committee members to use your moral

compass should we vote to fulfill a contract obligation to the center or vote to not send the jrc money this organization uses Antiquated torture techniques this is something the city should not support I do not want to see the city of Fall River become a state sponsor of torture it's a no-brainer not to support this lastly if the school committee does vote to send jrc funding the Fall River Insider will bring this

matter to the city council and we ask and we will ask them to pull the school committee funding as punishment for supporting a deranged organization please school committee members do not support the jrc or send one penny to that organization Jeffrey jundrum 229 Palmer Street Portland mass and finally we have Sheila Dias Ray Street Fall River good afternoon members of the Fall River

school committee I am writing to you today to respectfully ask you to vote you not to vote to send any of my tax dollars to the judge rothenburg Center despite any contract obligation city of Fall River money should not be sent to organizations that engage in torture any money sent to the jrc is seen to me as support for their methods even if the monies are not directly used for the torture methods

we should better use taxpayer funds to support our students in-house that should be the goal of the school committee let's use our moral compass and vote no to send jrc any Fall River money thank you Sheila dies 560 Race Street thank you Deb um we have no recognition Awards tonight oh go ahead if I could just respond to the citizens input um that is uh an existing contract for our cost share of the education portion

of a student that was placed there we have we have not placed students there this is I don't have the power to decide whether I'm going to pay for a contract or not I need the school committee to weigh in and to make that determination so it is back on the agenda because it's an existing contract for a student that one student that is placed there that was placed there and we are being asked

to pay for the cost share for the educational part of of the placement so that's why it's on the agenda thank you madam Mr Hagia so who made the placement then I didn't hear sorry that was through DCF so DCF made the decision to place a student at that particular facility that child is placed there they looked and searched for a suitable placement and that child has very high needs and that

was the place that you said and you said it was for the educational companies that we are obligated to pay for wherever our children are placed to pay for the cost share for the educational portion so what is the percentage of the share if it's a cost share for the educational um I would have to ask Mr Almeida but that that is for the year for this year

um and then we owe for this year as well as for the child was placed a couple months prior to the end of the year is he not here is that word he's he's on his way he had um no problem so when I look on the agenda it just says it's 176 thousand dollars and when you say cost share I'm wondering what is that percentage of that so if it's a 50 question then

that's that particular educational component if what you're saying is 350 000 right it's a student with very high needs I don't know if Miss Ferris has any information on that but it's a student that has very complex High needs and um needs a placement that isn't not very that was not very easy to find and they placed him there and this is our portion it's an outstanding so we have zero say so we're paying

but we have zero say in where the student goes there's no meetings that would get take place where we can weigh in no there are I think that um at the time Mr lotion and the person went back and forth looking for alternate uh placements they searched for alternate placements and held off um as much as they could finding a suitable placement who would be the person working on that wouldn't that be the art of district

coordinator for us like who Mr Lush is gone so right we can't go back to him and say who was at the meeting but he was here when that was when that contract was but wouldn't it fall under the coordinator of some type I would assume so the auto district coordinator participated in the IEP meetings and determined the services that the student required in the IEP not the student was placed residentially and

DCF applied to the district for a cost share so DCF funds the residential portion of the bill for judge Rottenberg Center and we fund the school time portion and you tell me we can't find for 350 000 another cost another placement for this individual's needs is what you're saying correct this was the only placement DCF was able to find that could both meet the students needs the student has significant needs and also

had availability in their residential program for the student so by that answer I'm assuming that you mean there is other placements it's just there was not availability there was not another placement that accepted the student there were packets sent to more than one place there are we look at places both in Massachusetts as well as I mean they've looked at places as far as Texas for certain children there was

no other facility that was able to accept and meet the students needs right part of my my concern or just trying to be truthful and tell it like we see it if we had no if we have no say then we should just say we have no say if the DCF is making this decision to spend this kind of money if based on the needs we need the public to weigh in the

Public's weighing in on this because they see it here I don't think we've pushed back enough publicly to say why should a school Committee Member take this vote to pay a bill that already exists that we had no no say in that if we wanted to say and we had to say we would shoot down that Center because of their practices whatever it is we haven't pushed back I don't think enough so that

we're sitting here saying oh what do we do now would we pay this bill we don't know we're not part of the day-to-day operation but it's almost like we're part of it but we're not part of it and um so there was pushback there there was I know that Mr losh uh worked with them trying to find an alternative placement and there was no other alternative placement correct I'm sorry I don't know I'm sorry I apologize

I don't want to interrupt I'm just a little confused right now because I thought this was citizens input which is fine if the superintendent it's going to come up wants to respond but this is an item on the agenda I agree with what my colleague is saying actually but we're going to be discussing it when it hits the agenda and I think we should just kind of like wrap it up and we get to

the agenda unfortunately so well no no I'm saying it I'm not I'm not blaming you Kevin no I hear you but I'm saying I'm agreeing with what you say I'm just saying let's follow the agenda where we'll take in time here we're going to have the same conversation when the time comes when the time comes so just to save everybody the time item number three recognition Awards we have none Tonight

subcommittee reports we have three subcommittees that are going to report out first Mr aguiar technology subcommittee so yeah I think we had a very successful subcommittee meeting uh Mr Cabral and his team were already with data points and charts graphs and basically presentations that were very very thorough and we were very impressed what we're looking at is being able to hold staff accountable to make sure that we

know that they're using the we're spending a lot of money in programs and we're actually being able to see how much those things are being used whether they're effective or not so the technology aspect of that is going to be much improved going forward we talked about Chromebooks we've spent probably Millions I guess on Chromebooks and in the past we haven't had a mechanism to make sure that they're

getting replaced and repaired and that students are being held accountable if they break them and they don't treat them with the courtesy that they need to so Mr Cabral was able to articulate that as well and you'll see later on on the agenda there was a need for a new position that the commit subcommittee unanimously forwarded that's going to make sure that we're up to date on all

our Communications and speaking with one voice and I think it was a very successful meeting so kudos to Mr Cabral superintendent Ponce and the team thank you thank you Mr aguio facilities and operations subcommittee Mr Hart uh thank you Mr Mayor the subcommittee met on Tuesday November 1st at six o'clock on Rock Street the facilities and operations plan was the only uh item on the agenda the Chico discussed the need

to reorganize the department as it has grown and is made up of various subcommittees such as security nutrition custodial maintenance building and grounds and transportation discussed at the meeting was that the department has grown in personnel and responsibilities and there's a need for systems to be put in place that would support the appropriate management of the department this is an agenda item tonight and we

will hear from Mr pachico that in order to create an efficient Department that is supervised and has the attention it deserves there will be a need for additional supervisory positions these positions will allow Mr pachico to subdivide the subgroups into manageable subgroups that are supervised by a leader under Mr pachico Mr pachico went into detail as to how each subgroup would function and tonight

the subcommittee referred the Rio to the full committee which is on tonight's agenda thank you Mr Hart uh instructional subcommittee Miss laravey thank you Mr Mayor on Monday November 7th the instructional subcommittee met at 5 30 at the administration building on Rock Street there were three items on the agenda it was a dual language an update on and discussion on SEL curriculum

implementation and presentation of frps current data who's on the agenda also the Dual language update was provided by principal witty Miss witty stated the student transitions were changed for moving classes one today to remaining in English class for two days and then switching to Spanish class for two days this was to help increase learning time and decrease daily transition disruptions for our students dle has

three new teachers from Spain who are making a big difference in the program next year there will be an additional second grade class for the third year students Miss witty invited all school committee members to visit the viveris who observed the program Claudia Costa gave an update on SEL implementation Miss Costa stated all students in middle school and high school participate in a small group

based advisory for approximately 20 to 30 minutes two days a week and wind blocks three days a week elementary students have what they call Daily morning meetings during advisory morning meeting students are able to get extra quality time with a teacher in a small in groups smaller group setting advisory and morning meeting is time focused on forming positive relationships age-appropriate goal setting and the

much needed SEO work with our students Dr Curley presented our current uh Forum Public Schools data it was a very lengthy and detailed presentation covering school performance percentiles absenteeism subject data graduation rates as well as the district's plans for moving forward and so much more Dr Curley's presentation was emailed to all school committee members and can be made available to anyone upon request she

will be representing tonight as well thank you thank you miss Larry item number five is the superintendent's report she has three things to report on tonight uh superintendent Ponce thank you Mr Mayor so tonight I wanted to share Stop and Shop food partnership the status of that on Wednesday November 2nd we held an event here at Durfee High School we're Stop and Shop in Unilever partnered to

donate personal care products along with food items for our children and families additionally Stop and Shop has partnered with the Red Sox in a multi-year campaign to strike out School hunger in a partner in the partnership they pledged to donate thousands of meals to students facing food insecurity the Red Sox Legends Manny Del Carmen and Sam Horn were on hand to help with the

volunteer efforts to pack over 575 cases of food and personal care products in all 150 bags of food and products were prepared for distribution to our families on Durfee High School school here serves as a hub for the Stop and Shop Food Pantry in Fall River that's where this all the food and personal care products are stored packed and distributed to our students in need across all of our schools on a monthly

basis the food pantry was created to limit barriers that can impact the students ability to succeed and the Durfee food pantry was launched in 2019 just prior to covid follower Public Schools was the first Stop and Shop food pantry program the partnership with Stop and Shop Unilever lever and the Red Sox is critical for our students and families and we are grateful for their generosity and will continue to

collaborate with them as together we work to combat hunger also um just like to share a hiring update as of for since the last time we met so for the last month we have hired 54 employees 16 of them have been teachers 19 paraprofessionals two administrators seven educational support positions and 10 Operational Support positions conversely we lost seven teachers three paraprofessionals three educational

support positions and three Operational Support positions we continue to work hard at trying to recruit staff we still have some critical areas such as special education and ESL where we are struggling to hire we're not alone in that but it is something that we have to work on every single day and finally I have enclosed just like we did in in the spring last year towards the end of the

year shared a calendar for your planning purposes with the holiday season coming and just as we did we are sharing with you various activities district-wide so that you're able to plan accordingly some of you have asked for information so it's by school with the logistics date times of when those things are happening so that you can have information in your free to join any and all of them thank you

thank you superintendent item six is our student delegate report um welcome Samantha adiar fill us in hello so um I like to First plan out some positive things that has been happening at Durfee the first one is the AP cap Zone ceremony and that is a ceremony slash celebration for the students that passed the um AP seminar and AP research exam and at that celebration there were college officials

that spoke to the students and over 200 kids were invited to that ceremony um also I'd like to point out the one goal celebration that will be happening next Friday um I am one of the students that are going to be there I am enrolled in the um one goal program and it's a celebration for the end of the first semester for us um college students that are involved with BCC UMass Dartmouth and Bridgewater

also our pep rally and spirit week is coming up our first spirit week day is Thursday so we're getting excited for that also our pep rally starts Wednesday and I'd like to formally invite everyone in the school board that you are invited to the pep rally also this is the first pep rally in three years so we're getting really excited I actually just came from a meeting with my class we

were working on skits and props and all that and I also visited the Freshman sophomores and juniors and they're all getting so excited we have our music we have everything ready we're all so pumped up and excited to have a real pep rally again so I cannot wait to see the outcome so those are some positive things that are happening and also something that we're working on Mr Damaris and I are working on

helping kids find better ways to access water around the school because one problem that the school was having was the ways that kids can access the water and Mr Damaris and I worked with Mr cutting today and we had a meeting about the water bottle situation and Mr cutting informed us that we are currently um our our prices for our Waters and like everything that we is being sold at

lunch is at the lowest it can be right now so there's no way that we can change that because he's already doing us a favor by that so we're working on ways that we can help kids get like use a bubblers and we're trying to get Gatorade jugs in the cafeteria with water so kids can have free water um so I mean me and Mr Damaris are working on that so I can't wait to give

you guys an update next school committee meeting thank you thank you um we have a number of minutes for approval tonight um I have a motion a second second uh any discussion on the minute we have November 14th the regular meeting of the school committee November 14th the regular meeting of the school committee I'm sorry um a regular meeting on the 14th the 14th and the regular meeting all the minutes any discussion

Deb call the roll please let's drag him yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes we have two items for travel tonight um both um from Durfee High School can I get a motion in a second unless there's any discussion to approve second second I have a motion a second any discussion on the Travel Deb please call the roll Mr Dragon yes

Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes Mary Coogan yes um night item nine is the acceptance of donations motion to accept donations second I have a motion and a second uh we'll call the roll and then we'll have the uh superintendent explain them um Deb please call the roll yes Mr Bailey yes Mr yes yes Mr rodericks yes yes yes supersonic Ponce thank you from Pell Industries

um on behalf of principal Damaris to Durfee High School 456 dollars and four cents um on behalf of Ohio pile prints to principal Damaris in Durfee High School 284.99 from Blue Triton brands on behalf of Dr Liz Dunn to Green Elementary School 15 cases of Splash blast 10 cases of Pure Life and 10 cases of Poland Springs and from donors choose on behalf of principal Lisi to Fonseca Elementary

School flexible seating sensory items craft items for Hands-On learning experiences thank you to all thank you superintendent item number 10 is the approval of contracts and obviously we have a number of them and anyone that wants to pull any out uh tell me now and we'll vote on those separately uh Miss Rodricks hello Apollo safety jrc and then um the smex so Southern Massachusetts educational collaborative

and if we could just do smack completely separate from the others southern south coast educational collaborative no the one above it the one above it Schwartz okay no hold on southeastern Mass educational okay that's the one anybody else have any others yeah Mr agya ene what where's the second one and the second one in second one in okay and then there's one I just have questions on the sheriff's department one

sheriff's department but I just ask a general question maybe that'll help okay so in that packet we have all this information for all of these contracts what if we're voting for the contract wouldn't we therefore vote to initiate the um program like I'm a little confused on some things I like the maintenance and things that just happen but when we're implementing a program for the first time

I'm not sure it's the best process to just say we're approving the money but we never approve the information so in here I'm looking at a a program that I never knew anything about and I'm the chair of the alternative subcommittee so we're paying a bill we got a program implemented paid before by a grant that I never well my colleagues on the committee and the full committee never

even saw so some of these questions are I think some of these things are contracts and some of these things are programmatic that we should probably treat them a little bit different so in essence I could have a lot of questions but maybe if you can weigh in on what the thought process is so that if that's the case maybe we pull some and get a presentation first or if we've already agreed and other things

have happened we always agree to things and then we when we signed a contract three months later around here too so that if that's the case then so we're giving you back up for the contracts are you saying that this committee wants the information prior to us putting the contract some of these are continuations of contracts so are you saying that to inform the committee of because we any grants we're telling

you ahead of time that we're applying for Grants but um we can certainly are you saying that you want that information prior to coming to the school committee and pride I can only speak for me as one member what I'm suggesting is though if if I can't if I can speak really quick not to not to interrupt I I completely agree because um sometimes when some of these things

come in front of me like Miss daggy I was saying I would like a little bit more information on just um to know what's going on so completely agree with your time are we already I I'm only my question is is this one already up and running like you said are we already into it for some of them we are like the sheriff's one I think I believe that the sheriff's one

was training that they did certainly Mr oh okay go ahead just the sheriff's one though we'll take care of that one there's nothing to do with training right are we on a different practice service the one I'm looking at is not training Yep this is this is for the RPA rlm RPA yep yep so the uh the sheriff's department uh uh program is not up and running yet the

goal is uh if it is approved tonight or at a later date to get it up and running uh semester two at the end of January um so this is a program in collaboration with the Sheriff's Department to support students at RPA specifically ages probably 12 through 14 grades seven eight and nine there's intensive wrap-around supports there's mentoring there's outdoor experiential learning for the students where they're

developing leadership skills Etc and it has a good track record of building leadership qualities in students yeah so like I'm not saying I'm opposed to this by no means but the process is screwed up so that if we have a grant that says we're going to create and we're going to go to a program there's a process that should go to the subcommittee first to potentially say this is what we're thinking about

for alternative for the reasons that you said then at that point we read it we would say I read it today it says there's two ftes that are going to be here working whatever what does that mean are they going to be here full time are they only going to be here part-time I saw them in there today that is only for 20 students 20 students to seventy thousand thirty five hundred dollars a

student is that something that's valuable like to weigh in on it is I think a role of the school committee so now we're getting this approved here we don't know half of these things and there's not a mechanism for this committee to me other than at a subcommittee meeting or in a regular meeting so I'm not trying to stop some of this it's just procedural it gets tiring after a while if we're not having any say

as a school committee on what we do so I'm not trying to uh you know stop the program but I think we went about it the wrong way in general so if you want to just we can go individually we can go to all of them but I know we're trying to move this along well we got a discussion on this one right now Mr ago do you want

to vote on this one since uh Drew yeah why don't we pull why don't we just at least pull that one okay but I think philosophically if we're not going to say what we what is the superintendent's Direction on what to bring we look we just looking at a list of of so many things I think we got to agree philosophically whether we're going to have these things go before a subcommittee or not

that's not a decision that one member can make I agree um so when looking at it how many of these are brand new uh superintendent or continuation do you know I I'm not sure we'll have to go through each one Mr Almeda um I well like look at the tuitions I'm pretty sure those are continuations um well well I don't we got we got the first two of stops anyway so why don't we go uh

Apollo safety um we'll go one at a time guys we'll vote on them all well unless we get to the group The groupings um miss rodericks you had questions on Apollo safety yeah I just had a question about that um this is the first time that I've seen it on the agenda but this was something we had talked about like a year ago or so so I was just curious this is the

final purchase for the dispensers okay um to be sure that now we're covered in all of the schools okay because we had dispensers already in place High School right and some middle right so this is finishing the entire District okay that's my only question thank you uh any further discussion on Apollo how long ago was that like I recall hearing a discussion on this yeah a year ago last year right about a year ago and

the product the product is 10 to 12 weeks for delivery each time so we hurt we ordered waited for delivery installed and this is this is the same thing we needed more they didn't have more at the time they only sent us what they could possibly get their hands on at that time once they were able to get more that's what this is the final count of what we need across the district so we didn't

order and if we needed 400 at the beginning we didn't order them because they couldn't get their hands on them so I didn't we didn't order them they wouldn't take an order they didn't have product for because they wouldn't be able to hold the prices so it's a year old but we're going to get it it's less than a year old yeah I just want to have any questions on

that Apollo Deb please call the roll oh I need a motion a second motion approved second I have a motion a second dad please Mr Reagan yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harm yes Miss laraveen yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks yes yes yes um the second one that we were asked to hold was ene systems uh Miss Rogers no that was this Dragon oh I'm sorry Mr agya just the same question as I believe

last month or the month before I asked for some sort of um summary documented nowhere that we're spending a lot of money with the ne and doing all different things and I don't recall ever seeing it but is this just a this is a contract extension so we put ene out we put services our HVAC BMS and and control services along with labor contracts for the heavy um large quantity Lodge

description items out to bid and usually every three years this year we're gonna it's going out to a five-year contract those documents went out there was a floor in the document and a couple of pieces um that required us to do a re-bid those bids will be opened um if I'm not mistaken next week so this is a a three-month extension to hold us over for the previous month this month and

next month so that we're sure that we'll have a contract in place to cover us for any emergency work this is not work we can do inside the house this is a work that's never been done in-house we don't have the capacity but it's not done in-house it hasn't been in the past either no it has not it has not and it won't be in the future it's it's a different kind of work that

we're not equipped to do yeah so my question is just enough I'm assuming that you're probably working on getting whatever like a summary so we know what is ene and these other companies so we can get a an idea of what they well the the the document itself the our the RFP document itself is is very descriptive as to what this encounter this includes so it tells us by school what it

includes and what it doesn't include so it's it's it's already a printed document right it's big money it is it's not a small it's 66 roughly 66 000 a month we have two people on site every day doing work for us yeah but how does that my question is on how does that fit into the it has nothing to do with this necessarily but the big picture of how does this fit into

proprietary Services what they're doing what they're not we need the summary version that's what I'm asking for so I can give you the RFP because that's the summary version that's exactly what we put together so that we know what they're working on and what's included in the bid and I can get you that document yeah and it tells you what they what they're supposed to do and not do exactly and then is there

other companies that do similar things for other building that's why we bid no well we have two other companies we're truly we're slowly trying to phase out some of these other companies because they're much more expensive and the proprietary work that they do Locks us out of our own systems and yes just because they've gotten the contract all the time they're not proprietary and they don't lock it the equipment the

equipment is proprietary but there are other companies there were there were probably three to five companies that could bid on this work that have access to the same access as ene so it's proprietary to us because we're trying to keep our systems like so that we're not dealing with three four five seven companies um and again it's not the school Department's fault when we put out bid for buildings

on the other side we're putting out bids and it's a little bitter I guess I'm just looking for for you to explain to the committee in a quick way sure but to the superintendent of why this is a good a good thing and why you recommend it that's basically what I'm suggestion because it's like eight hundred thousand dollars a year or whatever that's a lot of money so you could probably justify it to us but

that's my only word I'm looking for basically motion to approve second I have a motion a second any further discussion on ene systems Deb please call the roll Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larvae yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes okay so in the next group we have um Grant contracts we had one poll I think the uh the others are mostly existing

unless someone uh has one that they want to pull out I know we have one already um I believe it was Bristol County Sheriff which we just talked about um and that'll come up in the uh in the tuition special education contracts so why don't we take everything up to the special education contracts can I get a motion in a second I'll make a motion second I had a motion

a second on on the grant contracts up to where we hit special education contracts any discussion Deb please call the roll Mr again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor Kruger yes now when we get to special education contracts we have two that have already been asked to hold Justice Resource Institute and Southeastern Massachusetts educational

collaborative does anybody have any others I'm sorry I'm sorry I circled the wrong one the one above it okay now others can we get a motion in a second on approving the others make a motion second Dad please call the rolling let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Mr Rogers yes mayor Kruger yes first one up for discussion is the judge rotenberg Educational Center

I know exactly what you're saying but I thought you were we were holding the sheriff's department one since that was on the first page yep but we're going to go back to that one the way we're doing the second part first uh we can go back to that when it isn't it did have a hold on it um I thought we finished it but why don't we do that one first because Mr magia is

corrective out of order Bristol County Sheriff Mister there was no vote on vote there was no vote on it I'm sorry do we have a motion a second on the Bristol County Sheriff do you have a discussion point yeah this wasn't part of the regular motion we just because I voted yeah so that's what I thought but it wasn't part of it we I thought we pulled it okay so

let's go to let's go to Bristol County so I'd like the superintendent to weigh into I'm not trying to be no against this particular program but I think we have to get this the system in place of what we put on the agenda and not do you want me to weigh in on the system or what this contract is for on the system just so we know like what right I

I would like to be clear on it also because the last time we had all these contracts we were asked to provide uh backup uh in the agendas which which we have as backup information for all of you so uh what I'm hearing is for us to provide it ahead of time prior to the meeting so that you can get some information prior to if it's anything new that we're entering or going to be

asking you to enter into contract with is is that correct yeah okay basically that's I think a good practice so that we're we're not having a program but then we're like oh what was that program we shouldn't have that so in my opinion so in this case I'm assuming you somebody must have added this somebody must have presented this to you the vet so that you said as a superintendent yes this is where we want

to spend 70 000. yes this was part of this was part of a grant um and part of the work that's being done at um the Robert almedaris RPA so um certainly I think that we can we didn't have an we haven't had an all subcommittee meeting um so we haven't had an opportunity to discuss that work so but um usually and I think that we've done a pretty good job at having regular subcommittee

meetings where we're bringing anything forth so yes you're right we didn't come before the subcommittee to talk about that was this in the grant we keep saying it was part of the Grant in the grant it says we were going to go to this program for the Bristol County Sheriff's Office that's the piece that was chosen to do that work with our kids correct it was part of the SEL mental health and behavioral supports Grant

through deci we're currently in year two of that Grant but we didn't have in the first year year two we entered into year one um and we I think we received the Grant in January or February of last year um so we did a lot of planning and research in terms of what supports uh that we wanted to bring uh to our schools that would impact student outcomes and we identified true course

as a potential partner for us through some conversations with the sheriff's office right prior to the summer those conversations so we identified them on the year two Grant as a contractual potential expense those conversations continued over the last month and we're here bringing it to you today did you say before summer you had this conversation with them we we had initial conversations in June right before the

summer when did the grant go in can you repeat that when did you submit the grant that had this company in it the year the year two Grant was uh in uh July that we submitted and it's November 15th so The Pride prior to submitting grants we notify the school committee what we're applying for wait I'm just wondering it sounds like as if this has been studied we're going

to go through with it then why is it not implemented in this November 15th so now if I say let's table list to get more discussion we're now going to be another month behind so to your point you put it in there so we come to the committee then instead of the coming to the committee after but now we're going to make a decision to wait another month I don't want to

wait another month if you think it's a good program and they run in a good program it's going to help 20 kids even if it's expensive let's try I have no problem with it but it just it doesn't it's theological in my mind to just be doing things backwards so I'm going to make a motion to approve but please let's look at a way to do it better in the future okay

um I have a motion for Mr agyar second I have a motion a second uh this is on Bristol County Sheriff's Deb please call the roll Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Ms Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor yes now back to the holds under special education contracts the um judge Rottenberg Educational Center any uh discussion on that item Miss Rogers so when this came up back in June we had

talked about Mr losh was supposed to go back out and resend out packets with DCF collaboration in my experience when kids go and this is just my experience negotiating from the residential side what typically will happen is the school department has to agree to the placement in addition to DCF so it's not typically and I could be wrong in this particular case but it's not typically that the school department

doesn't have a say usually that's a conversation and both have to agree to that placement if this is a kid who already came in with that placement like was new to us from the district then that puts us in a little bit of a different situation but we can still denounce that practice the other piece I have a concern about is that in the information that was provided with the contracts it says that

jrc does not use electric shock therapy on their school age population so school age population is typically up through age 12. so is this a student who's over the age of 12 and because that's a very vague statement to make and having worked with them before it's typically just their blanket we don't use this on students that are school age this is a program that's been denounced

by the United Nations this is a program that the FDA has denounced the use of electric shock therapy it's been held up in court which is the only reason why they're still allowed to do it and whether or not our student is allowed or is they're allowed to provide that kind of I can't even use the word treatment but regardless of whether or not that's the case they are still witness to other

students and so I'm not in the business of pro of agreeing to trauma upon trauma because a kid goes into residential because of trauma so I understand that maybe we agreed to a contract whether or not that kid came in with that contract whatever but that doesn't mean that we couldn't push back on it so we did agree to the contract the contract was signed the cost share request was signed prior to the

committee's concerns in June Mr Lewis did go back to DCF they did explore alternative placements for the student and have been unable to find an appropriate placement that is able to take the student so I can appreciate all of that but typically too when a school department disagrees with the placement especially a placement like this this is not their first rodeo they've been down this road

before DCF often has fully funded a placement we don't necessarily have to agree to that now unfortunately that contract is signed we did agree to that but it was an agreement prior to any discussion about such a high profile setting like this um you know I I go back to we I don't really have a question just a statement about it but we promote what we permit so if we are allowing a student to be

there and in this case we are and we've got to own that then we're promoting that that's an acceptable use of strategy and I I can't support that again I don't have a question it's really more around a comment um yeah and to your point we we do own this we have a signed contract with DCF for the cost share we do own this I will tell you we have had a request from DCF

for request share for another student for this facility that we did refuse um student is currently still in a hospital placement waiting for to step down into an appropriate residential facility to date this has been the only one DCF has been able to find for that student so the student remains in a hospital setting because we have declined the cost share for that particular student which to be fair jrc

is really not going to look any different than a hospital setting foreign

okay you went it's a little hard to hear sometimes when you're sorry down there over there so if I repeat a question so we do sign off who's responsible for signing off on a referral such as this so if DCF or a parent if a child needs Services the school district can't provide like this scholar they come we're responsible for paying for that but who here is responsible for signing off on them

special education no for these for cautious with DCF it's the assistant superintendent of special education science off now if we said from in and out or even for this child if we said we are no longer we're going to make kind of a standing statement we are no longer going to um and this is for whoever has the answer to it um we're no longer going to send our Scholars there we're just never going to

sign off on that if there is no other placements like do we hold any legal obligation to eventually have to do what the parent or the guardian says or can we just say no or DCF yeah whoever's Whoever has custody of this child whether it's DCF whether I'm sure there are times it's it's you know they're still in the homes with the parent with their parents so if a parent

is coming to us saying this is where I want my child placed or DCF comes and says this is where you know this is the only place that can service my child right now who is at dire need um of any kind of services or care I'm sure it is similar to a hospital the only thing is hospitals often don't have the level of supervision as some facilities if this is a child who self-harms what whatever

it's really hard to discuss this when you don't know the child you don't know the circumstances I think we can all agree that place is gross it should be closed down but I think the way that's going to happen is if you know we talk to our legislators to make this to ban this this treatment which for you know lack of a better word but the reality is this is what we're in right now so my

question is are we allowed to refuse like can we say going forward we're not working with this place if DCF or a parent comes to us and says this is the only place are we legally obligated to pay for it anyway so I would want to consult our attorneys but my best response to that is they would have to take us to hearing okay to force us I'm sorry they would take us to hearing

um to get the placement determined by a hearing officer okay look into that just because I think that's information that we need to know going forward clear I'm getting I certainly know my opinion and I I know the opinions of my colleagues this is the second time we've had this conversation none of us are for funding this school um but I want to make sure that we're doing what's what we're legally

responsible to do because at the end of the day I wasn't elected to create lawsuits for the city of Fall River no not what I want to do but I also want to make sure that we're putting kids first and we're doing what's right by them so I I would personally like to see us not use that place again now is the student still there right now yes okay so you've just been there since May

okay and this student um the funds that are requested here are these like Services already rendered like this is tuition from last year this is current tuition I believe a combination correct for this school year so already rendered so basically September now already here okay um and there's no thought process from DCF obviously because they're still referring kids to this program there's

no thought process of maybe still trying attempt to find this student we have asked that they continue to look for an alternative placement for the student um there just aren't any okay because residential placements right now are extremely limited we have a few students that are waiting residential placement that we have sent out several packets to a variety of schools here in New Hampshire in New York we've

been unable to identify appropriate residential placements for a few kids so this child that's in the hospital how long is he was she going to be able to stay there before the hospital says okay you've got to go I do not have a timeline on that I'd have to check with you I imagine there will be one I would imagine so it's no longer the level of care the student requires

so if we said no to that child going to this you know if you said no we're not we're going to stick our our ground what would happen to that child the student remains in their current placement awaiting an alternative placement but if the hospital kicks them up they have no placement well there there's some grounds to have them keep them as they stay put while we look for Alternatives okay that's what I want to

hear okay I do realize that it's hotter and harder to find placements for kids with these needs but I struggle with it's not just about finding a placement it's about finding a safe place and just because it's a placement doesn't necessarily mean it's going to improve the life of that child whatsoever and I think this this place is one of those those places um so if we don't pay this bill what happens

like we just say Nat we're not giving them the money we don't approve of this what happens are they going to legal action they're going to keep sending us a bill they're going to kick the kid out what's um imagine multiple of those that legal action and action to try to terminate the placement do we see anything and I know you you're probably not privy to all the information regarding this child but is

there a thought that this child's just going to be here this year no I do I know the student well and that is not that's likely the scenario okay okay I mean unfortunately we're in a situation now where we have a bill that if we don't pay we may suffer legal issues we may have a child who isn't and maybe a worse situation which quite frankly I I don't know that I can

imagine because my colleague is right whether probate law has allowed them to use you know um GED treatments treatments on him or not if he's if you're in that environment it's a very um we did reach out to them specific to the student and the concerns that have been raised and their compliance this the response they gave us was that it is not a treatment used in their school age program he is

over the age of 12 but the inquiry was specific to the student and they provided us with their updated program guidance they are they continue to be an approved School through deci yeah except last year the FDA banned the use of this and had to go back to court twice and now they get to use it again so I don't have much faith in in in their board or anyone that runs that school quite frankly

um but I appreciate you letting us know what you know what they uh what they said I mean I think it's important too and the amount of constituents you know citizens that reached out today the concern is valid you know we don't want to be funding something like this um as far as this build you know today I feel like we're kind of stuck because if we don't pay it then we're

gonna cost the taxpayers more money um and I don't think it's gonna be beneficial for that child because it'll probably still remain there and we'll just rock up the bill for the rest of the year um hopefully if maybe we articulate that Fall River is not a place that this is going to be easy to come by we're not going to sign off on this so if you have a DCF worker or a guardian that's saying

this in fact is my only option then I'm fine with saying okay then take us to call for that let's advocate for these kids but that's a little different to me than just paying a bill I think that all the people that wrote in today as well as the school committee I mean I I think there's no reason we can't um get a letter together and send it out to every state rep and Senator because

that's this it has legislation that has to be changed to protect these kids that's the bottom line um we can't expect a business like this because it's a business they're making a lot of money as as Kevin's like 176 for part of it yeah it's crazy so this make no mistake there are people making some good money over there on the backs of of our kids so I think we need to go forward we need to

I don't know kind of think hard and find a way to navigate this so that we potentially can just always say no and never put a child in that in that situation again until we feel comfortable that they actually have stopped using these therapies and actually are operating in the best interest of of all of the kids there which if this was again if this was just controversy 20 years ago and I could be

convinced they changed that's great but they've been having complaints like a couple months ago it's continuous um so I know that this committee doesn't feel comfortable with having children placed there so I would hope that we can work in a direction that that doesn't happen because if this does pass tonight it'll probably be the last time you see us giving money to that that Institute so

that might be one of something you want to tell the DCF worker as well yeah I'm happy I'm happy to circle with that yield thank you can I get an answer to that percentage question from before 176 thousand dollars what does that represent so that represents the School portion of the program and so each day that the student is in school student also has a one to one Aid assigned to them so it

funds the one to one Aid during school hours DCF funds the one-to-one aid and the residential portion it's not a cost share on the educational component it's not a question on the education we fund the education and DCF funds the residential so the tuition is 180 000 per year is that correct yeah basically and then eligible for circuit breaker so we pay 35.

so part of the problem I think is that this is going to keep going on and on because if we pay for this now you said it earlier that somebody signed off from the administration so they signed off so that to me tells me that they said it's okay to pay this so now I think the fact that that's what happened I don't know how we can deny the second person

so now we're saying we don't want to pay anybody now but we've already we're paying one so if the logic is that this is not harmful to the child which I'm assuming that Mr losh when he signed off said in his opinion that it wasn't harmful to the child so if we're going to say that okay let's pay this bill because we signed in and it's DCF and this and that all these

other reasons then it defies to me why we wouldn't pay for more kids then I don't want to pay for any of them but we've already we've already said we were going to pay this that's the part that I'm missing I think that I've never seen the sign offs like the superintendent did you have to sign off on this too or was this prior to you prior to you become a superintendent so

who was the superintendent that signed off on this the superintendent did not it's not the superintendent doesn't sign off the assistant superintendent side it's DCF and the assistant superintendent of special education so the assistant superintendent can sign something without the superintendent's Authority I think that's another issue that we should disagreement yeah that's the way

the superintendent of schools is the boss she should be the one having to sign off Mr losh and His Infinite Wisdom at that time should not have the ability to sign this contract without the boss whether it's Mrs Ponce or Dr Malone signing something like that doesn't make sense with all the controversy that's here and now we're stuck here we're going to figure out what to do but when

you had mentioned that now that we said we're not paying for another student if that's the case why can't we do it with this one and I know you said that we're already paid so why don't we why don't we pay what we owe right now and say we're not paying any more go find another placement and I will definitely connect with DCF again we did let DCF know that we do

wish to locate a different placement for the student but they have and Mr losh did that back in the spring when objections were first raised but DCF has not been able to find an alternative placement for this student so what is the agreement from July is this a year-round placement one year it's a 365 day no 365-day placement so do you know when it began in May and so we paid last year already well we

have not paid them anything May 11th is when the student um was placed there right well I was just told that this amount of 176 is for the year 12 months you're saying now in May so last year we had May June so we had two months last year where is that money did we already pay that is it part of the 176.

so what what the heck I mean

so why is that not before us a table I can't take it off the table can you come to the microphone please absolutely the contract was was tabled at that at the June school committee meeting correct and I can't I can't put it back on on the agenda without it being taken off the table by the school committee did you ask the superintendent to put it back on the table we talked about it why

is it not here then Madam superintendent why would that not be here but we have the current one I asked for guidance in regards to the contract I will say so that's what we wanted to know what we were doing with the the bill that we have they continue to to send us bills we I needed to know where is the 23 000 that was tabled on this agenda it's not on this agenda but we

have a whole different eight times nine times as much money why not address it like I just don't know the logic behind not putting that one here right so we if we're going to take this up we should take it up in one shot Mr I don't disagree but this is a new contract related to this year last year's contract was tabled so in order to get the other contract I if you if

you can take it off the table right now make the motion right now put it back on the table let's do it but I can't just put it back on the agenda without it coming off the table and you know just like I do that I don't make the agenda I don't have input on the agenda the administration is the one that has to put that on I understand that's part of

the problem so I didn't say not to put it on but we already owe two months of that so we have an old bill on top of this bill at some point we we got to address this one way or another and and it seems like we we don't have everything in order here so what I'd like to do is make a recommendation that we pay for six months of this contract

and you go back to the DCF and say we're not paying any more than the six months and we need to find another placement for the current school year I'll make that in the form of emotion and Mr ago are we are we paying the six months of this contract plus the two months we owe can we pay that because it's not time to come back okay so we can put that on the

next agenda so I would say but we need to push the envelope here okay so at some point we either deny it all no what do we at least pay for something and say Hey give yourself a couple of months to to go and find a different placement okay so can I just one thing about the six months so this student's school year started July 1st and so six months is only going to give us

five or six weeks to identify there's no way we're going to identify a placement in five or six weeks we can't identify day placements that quickly right now yep I understand that and if we vote no guess what now we have no months so I understand that but I'm trying to help go further than six months just to give us time to work with DCF to get packets out and programs to review them

I just know we're going to come back because there's it's truly impossible that this is going to be resolved by the end of December I totally hate Mrs various and I apologize that you're into this position because you went the one that signed off on it but Mrs roderick's to my right has asked these questions for six to eight months to put the packets out to look for the placements

no one has any urgency that it appears to me to actually get this done other than that oh Michael Lowe signed the contract and he was stuck with it so my point in doing this is to try to say let's push the envelope and tell them for real that we're not paying it which I thought we did with the two months that's why we denied the last two months I don't know that the urgency is there

to say to them I don't need additional packets were sent by DCF but I'm happy to get that information for you right she asked that six months ago when it was communication when when that was asked there was communication and there were packets sent out they haven't been able to find placement I mean I I wasn't the one who signed off but I I will take responsibility because this is our district to say that there's no

urgency nobody agrees in creating trauma by placing a child nobody here we want the best placement for our children we have we are struggling to find a placement for this child so we will do that our due diligence and absolutely send communicate send out packets again but you know I I I don't I don't know if it's for a lack of urgency I think that is for lack of placement

but if you're going to do that then and if that logic is what we're going to go by that we can't find a placement which is what I said earlier if that's the case that you're going to say we can't find a placement for certain children based on their disabilities so we had to go to this placement and as superintendent I feel like this is a an okay place to send the

child that we're not going to harm the child if that's what we're saying then we can't at the same time come up and say but we told them we're not going to let the other kid leave the hospital to go those two things cannot exist together so if we're saying okay we it's a tough case we have to pay this placement then let's not ban it all together I'm only

one vote but you can be coming to us to say listen we've tried everything and I with all due respect we've checked it out we visited the place we know that the children are getting treated well there and this is the only place we can find it defies logic to then say but we're not going to allow it anymore in the future so if we can allow it like that then we

shouldn't be paying this one if we're going to say we should pay this one based on your strong recommendation and like I just said then I don't think we should ban it forever so our position after June Mr losh did go back to DCF and our position has been that we are not in agreement to the students placement there moving forward and will not agree to further children being placed there

but the fact Still Remains we need to find a different placement for this student and we have another student with a similar profile who they have been searching for a couple of months for a placement and continue to be unsuccessful so I don't think we're saying to you that we agree with the placement but what we're saying is one we've signed off on this and so we do need to deal

with the fact that we've signed off on this and we've been unable to find the student a different placement just a quick point of order quick quick question Mr agat said six months which which uh I I think that's a good idea however you think it should be extended over six months six months of December what's your what would be your recommendation if that's the path that

we want to go I mean I would try to give DCF until the end of the school year to find an alternative placement because they've been looking for months for other students and we have a student that is not DCF that we've been looking for a residential placement for since the summer and have still been unable to find a placement for wow I don't know I mean that seems like a I

mean six months was fine until she said she has a problem with the six months so if we can extend it to the end of the end of this year that might be the alternative to go with I'm just saying it up so that the student you just said they've been waiting however many months for what's what's going on with that student right now that student is home okay I'm sorry to meet you that's okay

visited this place uh I cannot answer that but I will ask can Madam superintendent can you please ensure that a staff member goes and watch and visits the school including this child's education and create a written report for the school committee by the next meeting explaining what they've what their opinion is and what they've viewed and then with that I make a motion the table list till next month can I just

prayer um I guess that I understand where where Miss dagia is coming from in terms of I guess is it is the hypocrisy but I guess I look at it like this what we're talking about right now is a contract we already signed by we I mean the power Zippy not us up here um already signed so we signed a contract and we said we're going to put our child this child in this school and this

scholar will be placed in this school and we signed a contract for an entire year is that what this cost is it's for the full year yes correct yes okay so what I'm suggesting which I do think in my opinion is different I'm suggesting yes we pay the contract we signed because that child is there the person who has custody of that child wants them there whether that's the state or not that's the person who's

responsible for the care and protection of that child right now we need to push DCF and let them know that just because we're paying this year doesn't mean we're going to pay next year but the bottom line is this kid is now in a bad situation that he's here with nowhere to go because you said the other child was home that's nice to have a home isn't it I'm assuming if this child is in DCF

custody home is not a safer Place correct and I don't think the DCF worker can take that child home with them so that leads me to go where does this kid go if there's not foster care to take him if there's not another facility that can help this child it's all well and good for us to you know speak on this topic the way we are because to me the place needs to be fixed I'll say

that until I'm blue in the face but you have to look at all sides of this coin here this child doesn't have a safe home to go to this place is not the best and we need to find better but I believe you in saying that there's no way the GCF work is going to get that done in six weeks and between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm sure the vast caseload that he or she has

so setting us up for that is setting us up I think for problems and quite frankly even if we all sat here and said okay we'll pay eight months of it I'm assuming they're going to say well that's nice to you but you're still not fulfilling the contract because you signed a contract for a year placement for a hundred whatever thousand dollars that's what you agreed to pay so now we're backing out on that

so what I think in my point is saying this time it's sort of Shame on us because we not us but there was some balls dropped if in my opinion because I think if you said no at the beginning it they'd be a different situation but this is the situation we're now and what I'm saying is yes I do think we have to pay this bill because basically that is till the end of the school year

it's July so it's July to the end of June that's his year July 1st to June 30 whatever that's the end of the school year so if that's the negotiation that's taken place that means we're just going to pay the bill and so the last time this came I said the exact same thing I didn't want to see this kid here I wanted the DCF worker to um you know figure out placement before

the school year started didn't happen you know we're going to reiterate that again and we certainly from here on out don't want a contract signed with that place because we're saying it everybody's hearing it that's in charge of hearing it so if this happens again I know that I will vote now and I won't be worried about a lawsuit because we made it very clear we're not going to pay for this anymore with that

being said this is a contract we signed we're legally binded to it if I thought the child was in dire harm there like immediate danger then I would hope that the DCF worker would pull him from there certainly because I like to believe that people in this line of work are doing it for the care and protection of children um and they are trying to do their best to make sure this child is as safe as

possible you know so again I'm going to be voting yes to pay for the full bill which takes us to the end of the year because otherwise this child's not going to have anywhere to go he doesn't have a home that's safe for him to go to and that's sad but that's the truth and it's disappointing but that's the truth so that's how I would go but I'll tell

you right now I won't do it next time with that being by yield anything further Miss rodericks so just to my colleague's point about like going to the legislature that is something that Advocates have done for years and that's how it ended up in court and that's how the UN ended up denouncing this as a placement um I disagree that going to the legislature will do anything at this

point because they're already well aware and they've already done that advocacy work what comes next is if we continue if people continue to fund a placement like that it's going to continue to operate and so by us sitting here and agreeing to it and everybody has the ability and the right to vote however they want but I just want to remind folks that what is legal is not necessary what necessarily what is

ethical and what is legal is not necessarily what's moral and so you know with with all of that being said this isn't a kid who's going to be thrown out into the street DCF and and placements cannot just throw a child out of a placement and call it a day it's not like this kid's going to end up homeless that's not the case is will that kid be removed from that placement likely what

is more likely and I can't speak for gcf's thought process on it but what is more likely to happen is they will foot the bill while they deal with the other side of this typically that is what will happen it's not going to end well I'm not going to pretend that it will it will not end well on our ends because unfortunately someone signed a contract without doing frankly their due diligence about looking into the

placement because when that contract came up we did not have to agree but we did and so now we're stuck with it for me I'm not comfortable with saying that this kid's life is worth 178 thousand dollars and that's how I look at it because we're talking about a child and we are talking about a child who clearly has had a history of trauma because they wouldn't have ended up at jrc if that

weren't the case and I'm not willing to put a price tag on that so when I look at that you know we we Advocate we're in positions of power whether or not we want to accept that but we we have to say something because if you don't say something again you're promoting what we permit so I feel very strongly about this you know this could be any one of our kids and if we if we're talking

about inclusion if we're talking about Equity then we've got to look at this across the board and what kinds of programs and what kinds of placements are we supporting for our kids yeah Somebody went ahead and signed a contract that frankly shouldn't have been signed we can't go back and undo that but that doesn't mean that we also have to support it again what's legal is not necessarily

what's ethical and having a kid in a placement like this I don't believe is ethical and with that I yield Mr agya my last point is that if we don't put a stop and say the reason why I said six months if we go with this and just say it's going to happen for the year we're paying again for the next year and we're going to pay again for the next year so we're going to be

making a decision by saying we're just going to pay this bill for the entirety of this child's education in my opinion because there's no whether it's urgency on our side their side or whatever if he's in a placement that people feel he's getting a good education they're going to continue to fund it and his IEP says that that's where his placement is you said it earlier you're just going to continue

so it's going to continue for year on end so this isn't over today if we just say okay it's 12 months and then we're stopping it the reason why I suggested six months was to put a little bit of pressure on them as well as we're here November 15th the kid was in a placement starting July 1st as you just said so we're here now looking to pay a bill that's already four months old

so what we'd be actually getting them close to being being flush at at six months with that acknowledgment even then I don't think we can guarantee he's going to be left but I'm sure they'll look a little hotter if they realize that we're not just going to pay the bill we pay the bill we're going to pay again next year we're going to pay again the year after that as long as this

child is still to be educated so if it's not going to be six months I want to vote no dude I just want to make a point aboard again did you make a motion to the table yes I did I'll second it yeah I I I think that's I think that that is The Prudent course of action um I hope it's Miss Ferris but I hope it's someone else I want you to go to the school

um see what the plan is find out what they're doing with our student if any of these horrific things that we hear are going on then I'm definitely going to vote to kill it as fast as I can if not you can come back I'd also like a DCF report about their efforts to find additional placements in front of the committee for the next meeting along with the past 223 and the

full Bill and uh we'll see what they say when you after you come back with your report or whoever you designate to do it for you Christine okay is that okay I got a motion to the table in a second I'd like to make sure that we have at least two people from the district go together possibly the new special director I make the most sense because she's going to be at that Podium that'll

be two I agree with that 100 so I got a motion the table two people to visit the school um any discussion on the table uh Deb please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Ms Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes okay we have one more Southeastern Massachusetts educational collaborative put on that board so I just need to abstain from that okay we have oh the

reason it was held was for abstention thank you any discussion on that one Mr aguio just uh maybe under a separate cover Madam superintendent can you tell us if we're getting any uh discounts on these particular placements at smack and South Coast collaborative I don't need the answer today yep thank you all right no further discussion Deb please call the roll

yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick I'm Stan Mary Coogan yes item 11 is the approval of Grants we have a number of Grants uh actually only three or four any discussion on the grants can I get emotions second I have a motion a second discussion none Deb please call the wall yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss Harvey yes Ms Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes

mayor Kruger yes 12.1 Committee of the whole presentation and discussion the HVAC and lighting improvements to various schools is presented by Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer this is informational so the company that's here tonight in the packet that you have within your your packet um is from amaresco amaresco has been a partner with the city of Fall River since 2008 their energy and Esco company and Energy

Service Company and basically um all of the work that they do is usually paid for or will end up reaping the benefit of the full cost of those replacement repairs through Energy savings ameresco did the lighting for the city the street lighting a lot of other projects in our schools they did the uh some heating improvements at the government center so if three individuals here tonight

representing amaresco to go over that that packet that you have from the company Bill gabati how Maya and Mark Turner I think bill is going to speak

thank you Ken and good evening school committee so as uh Ken mentioned uh Hal's actually been the one for us who's maintained this 15-year relationship we're talking about a program tonight for uh five of the schools two of the junior high schools uh three of the elementary schools were looking at eight measures focused on Mechanicals and controls it's around building Readiness air quality

the key project is at Talbert which I understand has it needs a lot of improvements has been neglected a little bit and there we're going to do a uh heat pump conversion so basically it's electric heat now but we're going to convert those unit ventilators to heat pumps and that'll not only uh heat more efficiently but it'll also provide better ventilation and air conditioning over at Henry Lord we're going to be

replacing the windows and remaining doors and we're also going to be replacing the unit ventilators there and we're going to be upgrading controls and some of the rooftop units at the three elementary schools we're looking at upgrading controls rooftop units adding variable frequency drives to pumps and motors and at Sylvia and Borden we're going to replace the air conditioning Chiller that runs those schools

there is savings a lot of this is capital project related it's about 165 000 in savings we're going to be leveraging about a half a million dollars in utility rebates and the project schedule will be managing multiple contractors over an 18-month period to get this project done and close this out by September of 2024.

and I understand that we'll be working I look forward to working with the facility and operations subcommittee to finalize details and bring this back next month to the whole committee any questions on the amaresco presentation Mr angel can you just quickly summarize how do you make any money uh when you um you work with the city is it are we just paying you or are you making money

through other options like what is the financing of yeah so uh the city would pay amaresco uh amaresco this is a department of energy resources Energy Management Services Program so it's it's very straightforward they also have to approve the project it's basically an open book project amoresco has this fixed set of markups to to manage our and then we work with Ken and his team

to uh to to pick the directs and and the subcontractors that would implement so you get paid by the department of energy resources I'm sorry where do you get paid from Sir from the same company so I'm just looking at it says cost and savings by school and it doesn't it says the four schools there's no line item that says ameresco am I missing where that would be or how much that is or

so there is a cost uh there is a cost table the measure cost that our fee is in that in that table in that First Column measure cost so how much a if Talbot costs 5.7 million how much does amaresco get uh it's not a it's not a straightforward I I don't have that we would go through those details I think with the subcommittee in terms of how that breakout Works between the directs and the indirects

so you don't know I don't have that with me no yeah I mean this is I guess this is just informational but I think that's one of the first questions anybody should ask is why are we hiring you to do this and how much is it costing us to do it I think that's just the basic question so I think somewhere in your presentation it should say what you do to make money

somebody's got to pay you and your folks and whatever you know work you're doing I recall in the past seeing your company at the city Side talking about Savings of energy conservation saving so you would say you paid a million dollars in bills so we're going to save 500 000 of that and that 500 000 will be kind of where I don't think that's what this is but maybe it is but those are the type

of questions that I personally would have to decide what it is my last question is on the Talbot you mentioned about keeping it electric we've been hearing for years about making that a gas trying to convert that to gas to have it be more efficient are you saying there's a better process than converting it to gas yeah we've been working with Ken and the team to address that and look at both

Solutions and uh given you know the current environment around um electrification and some of those goals and uh looking at the heat pump technology that's available now we felt it was a better solution so you're saying it's better than the gases it's a more cost effective solution to keep it electric to keep it electric and that would be when you look at the savings where would the Energy savings is that the

on the chart correct so you're just saying if we pay 5.2 million we'll save 60 000.

in energy uh correct have you worked with anybody else in the school department other than Mr Chico related to our Heating and system Heating and ventilation or anything our Engineers have worked with some of the other staff members thank you very much if you can get that information those are questions I would ask at the next meeting thank you further discussions from Resco okay thank you guys very much Mr Chico

thank you the committee make a referral to the subcommittee okay that's appropriate looking for a referral motion to refer second you got a motion second to the subcommittee any discussion Mr agya I just want to make sure that everyone said wait I'm going to reserve my rights to ask whatever questions I feel at a full subcommittee meeting regardless of the some a presentation spending this

kind of money to the subcommittee just to tell you ahead of time I didn't hear you I'm saying that if we refer this to the subcommittee at the tune of whatever the amount of money that's here 15 million dollars I'm just saying to you or to anybody that wants to listen that I am going to ask questions because I'm not on that facility subcommittee meeting committee so if we wanted to streamline it we

might want to refer this to like the finance where we did for other ones so we can ask our questions once instead of twice but I just wanted to let people know I will have questions and I'm not on that committee that's all Mr chairman I it wasn't meant to go to FNL so it could be done under the cloak of silence or secrecy or anything like that it can be done in finance it can be

done here tonight it can be done anywhere I mean it's not that kind of thing let's refer it to our next question make a motion well don't we do that let's do our next uh finance committee meeting that's fine uh I have a motion um do I have a second just to refer it to the office we'll just put it on the agenda for the finance meeting let's go next item 12-2

presentation discussion of the data by Dr Tracy curly assistant superintendent school foreign

good evening I know that um we we did a lengthy subcommittee meeting and some of you may have had the opportunity to look through the notes to that meeting or the presentation that was posted online but I'm going to take some time tonight to just go through some of that information again it actually highlight some other information that nobody on the committee may have may have already seen so we'll

take a look at the accountability system summary in in what all the elements are of the of the accountability system take a look at some big takeaways from the past year and then over the last few years our prioritization for the 2022-23 school year specific looks at some of those elements and then some school specific data at the end so something I just wanted to highlight is that MCAS is the biggest

contributor in terms of school and District accountability whether it be achievement on MCAS or School growth on MCAT student growth on MCAS it is the biggest contributor and so when we look at MCAS over the last four years it's just important to note that um in 2019 that had been the last full Administration for grades three through eight and ten and when we look at our third grade students who took the test

last spring they were actually in grade one when school was interrupted in March of 2020 and then our grade 10 students who were the high school test takers last year they were actually in grade seven when when schools closed so and that was the last what they were in grade seven the last time they took MCAS they were an eight when schools closed so what we have this year is what the what

deci refers to as accountability light so schools and districts didn't get any information based on their progress toward the targets that had been set districts um you know don't have accountability profiles or anything like that but the schools did receive percentiles in terms of um you know how they ranked against other schools in the state so it's based on MCAS data which I said is the primary

factor anywhere between 80 and 90 percent of it for the non-high schools and then 60 to 70 percent for high schools access data for our English Learners chronic absenteeism for grades one through twelve and then for the high schools Advanced coursework four-year graduation rate the extended engagement rate in the annual dropout rate are also some factors so as we take a look at just the 2022 MCAS we did see that you

know mixed results there wasn't any particular pattern that we saw across grade levels that was true for math Ela and science but what we did see was a decline in the ELA scores in grades three through eight and we saw that grade 10 did show some improvement over the previous year math scores in general increased and that was something that was true across the state and then we also saw grade five science scores

increase although we saw a dip in grade 8. we do know that we have a long way to go across our grade levels and subject areas as we look to fully recover the learning losses but we feel like we're on the right path so we'll talk a little bit more about that what we do see in terms of Gap clothing closing between our white students and students in our subgroups whether they are students of color

Hispanic students in other subgroups we are what we're seeing in terms of Gap closing is that it really attributed to the declining performance of our white students so we thought we were seeing some encouraging data but then realize that the gaps were closing for the wrong reason what we have seen over like multiple years is really um that we're performing below the state um across grade levels and content areas

we know that in ela and math the performance Gap um between us and the state actually widens so it's not as bad at three to five as it is at six to eight and then in grade 10 we know that we have significant gaps for students in the high needs subgroups including English Learners students with disabilities and students of low income and we know that for our black Hispanic and multi-race students

those students are facing challenges throughout their careers one of the things that we landed on coming out of the day to diet for last year was an instructional priority to which the um you know the district as an entity subscribes to but something that all schools have adopted in terms of their making improvements and priorities for the school the current school year and that is providing all students

Equitable access to an engagement in grade level work and Beyond using appropriate instructional scaffolding is needed um and we landed there coming out of some extensive work that we did taking a look at some work um from tntp 2018 study which said that students need four key resources in order to be um successful in school and so the four that were identified were a great appropriate assignment strong

instruction deep engagement and high expectations for all students and what the study found was actually that students are coming to school for the most part ready to learn they want to learn they've got Big Dreams but that for the most part students were being denied access to these four key resources and that acts the lack of access was more significant for students of high need low-income students students with

disabilities English Learners and then also students of color so we we're taking a look here first as we start to look through some of these indicators the first thing that we want to take a look at here is student growth so we know as I said that we have a long way to go in terms of recovery in order to recover we're going to have to accelerate learning and accelerate student growth pretty rapidly but what

we've seen over the last couple of years of full MCAS full cast Administration is that our students really aren't growing at an accelerated rate we fall more in the typical range so really all we're kind of doing is like keeping Pace potentially with other schools as as students are progressing and so that is identified as an area of need in terms of the work that we need to accelerate student growth

I'm going to start by taking a look at the ELA work the ELA outcomes one of the things that stands out and this was true in terms of you know when the state looked across all schools Urban schools and then certainly it rang true in fall river is that you know the theme really is about kind of slowing the bleed making sure that we're not on a continuous Road of

Decline and so when you take a look at a slide like this one and maybe even focus on those last two lines it's really about the difference um in in a decline where we want to see a turnaround we want to see things on a little bit of an uptick or we want to see less loss from year to year so the change from 19 to 21 you can see what

that loss looked like in grades three through eight and then 10 and when you look at that column for the change from 21 to 22 what we're seeing in grades three through eight is less loss and then in grade 10 we actually see a little bit of an uptick so it's a sign of recovery really in grade 10 and a different kind of recovery in grades three through eight this next slide shows um grades three

through eight Ela with kind of this highlighted data that refers back to what I was talking about in terms of our high needs students low income students with disabilities and our English Learners and just taking a look at the performance Gap really between our high needs and non-high needs students so in 2022 only 18 percent of our high needs students actually met or exceeded expectations in grades three through

eight Ela where we see our non-high needs students meeting or exceeding expectations at a rate of 51 percent in grade 10 we see similar data where our high needs students are meeting expectations at a rate of 27 percent where non-high needs students are making meeting expectations at a rate of 61 percent so this is a slide here that shows um what we're doing in ela and I think as we go through some of the math and

science data what you're going to see is it's the same kind of activities very purposeful so we have things in place that we're continuing to support things that either started last year or the year before that we continue to support this year and then some elements new to our plan the theme here in terms of ela and again we'll see it across the content areas is that we're supporting

the implementation of high quality instructional materials one of the things that we said was that students do not have access to grade level resources in our adoption of high quality instructional materials we're we're taking that step you know that's one small way that we are ensuring that great appropriate material is in front of all of our students in all of our classrooms we're supporting the

consistent use of digital intervention platforms Lexia Core 5 and power up which is something again that we started last year the biggest change that we're seeing for this year is that all of our schools are using it and that we're seeing increased Rate rates of student usage across schools and then the last piece they are differentiated School supports based on need it's really about the way that our

directors and other members of our central office team are supporting schools where they are so everything is focused on our instructional priority in terms of access to grade level work and Scaffolding as appropriate but all of the different ways that we're doing that that we started last year and continued this year whether that's providing the doing observations at schools and

providing feedback to teachers working plc's modeling observing offering feedback there PD planning and facilitating support for leaders one-on-one problem solving and monthly cohort meetings the new pieces this year again a lot of commonalities you'll see across the content areas is really about piloting new curriculum at the middle school level which is something that we really haven't had in a long time in

terms of a Core Curriculum that's used across middle schools high quality instructional materials our leads are participating in the evaluation of academic leads at the at the school level facilitating monthly meetings and then if you take a look here at the ELA a lot of work focused on early literacy the science of reading Partnerships with outside providers for some schools and continuing that support

and development of teachers at schools that are not participating in some of those programs the writing Revolution across Ela and at all schools and then also other content areas same kinds of things show up in social studies a lot of the work that's doing that we're doing in social studies certainly is focused on the social studies content but when you take a look at some of the things that are new to

the plan also included there are a lot of supports for schools in terms of building literacy and that includes the writing Revolution our math results look a little bit more promising as I had mentioned we see when you look at that change from 21 to 22 you see a lot more pluses there so it was wasn't so much about stopping the bleed where we lost less or we declined

less from 21 to 22 than we did from 19 to 21. we actually saw in in a few grade levels we saw kind of that turnaround where we'd taken a dip in 21 but we're on the upswing in 22.

same kinds of patterns though as we look at the high needs group as compared to non-high needs 16 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations in the high needs group and 45 percent in the non-high needs and then in grade 10 high needs at a rate of 17 and non-high needs at a rate of 53 percent this math slide really does show a lot of the same pieces the high quality instruction materials

digital platforms that are in use consistently across schools and then the differentiated support based on need new to the plan this year some of it has to do with those digital platforms the elevation math and Mafia Flex ST Math which had been a program used in only some of our elementary schools which is now used across all elementary schools and then those other pieces in terms of evaluation of

academic leads vertical lead meetings design a PD and tiered intervention materials science as I had mentioned earlier we did see an uptick in grade five but we saw loss in grade eight grade ten we don't have as much data on simply because it was a new test for our test takers in in 2022.

same pattern here in terms of the high needs and non-high needs students and the rate at which they're meeting and exceeding expectations in science again we're looking at supporting the implementation of high quality instructional materials in many different ways and it looks a little bit different at each grade level we're also using needs based support in all of our schools and new to the plan

is really more of that work of supporting implementation of the high quality instructional materials we do have I mentioned obviously that MCAS was the biggest contributor but there are other elements to the plan in terms of the accountability system the next one here is chronic absenteeism and what we're seeing here at the bottom there's a 2019 rate in a 2022 rate those look a little bit different at a first

glance it looks as if we actually had a major improvement from 2019 to 2020 but to 2022 I mean but in 2022 the the difference there is that for accountability purposes we were ranked based on the percentage of students with who were absent 20 of days versus the 10 so in 2019 we had um almost 19 percent chronically absent in 2022 that 10 is based on a chronic absenteeism rate of um 20 of days

we do have plans in place for attendance in place in continuing to support we do have attendance officers eight of them working across schools we're doing home visits every school has an attendance team setting up Student Success plans for students at the school level we've added community facilitators that are assisting in communication with parents about the importance of attendance we're

starting up the attendance task force again and we do have school in school-wide and district-wide attendance goals new to the plan this year our parent Square Communications for attendance as well as the new SEL curriculum in grades 6 through 8.

the next the next piece here is around access progress of our English Learners towards English language proficiency and what we see from 2020 to 2022 is is a dip for our non-high school we're in 2022 we're seeing less than 41 percent of our students who are making progress toward their goals and at the high school just under 15 percent of students making progress the multilingual Learners Department

has been collaborating quite extensively this year with our content leads from other departments specifically those content departments but also in for unified Arts so we do have some new curriculum in grades six through eight cengage curriculum time zones and impact for a level one two and three students and then the American reading company for our dle program they're also supporting the use of

digital platforms most recently tonight with the addition of Imagine Learning for our dle program differentiation of school supports based on need looks somewhat similar I think to what we're doing with content directors across schools where our coaches and coordinators for the MLL Department are in schools facilitating plcs providing PD doing observations and offering feedback and all of the things

that our directors are doing and then new to the plan this year is the rollout of elevation math with all of our middle schools in Durfee that was something that had been initiated as a pilot in just a couple of schools but we've been able to roll it out across all of our secondary schools and also looking this year to leverage elevation as a platform for professional development for teachers it has a lot of

really good information for for teachers that we just haven't leveraged in the past and that's something that's beginning this year as well one of the indicators that's specific to high school is Advanced coursework specifically the percentage of 11th and 12th graders who are taking Advanced coursework and we saw from 21 20 to 22 an increase in in that percentage of students Durfee is doing a lot in terms of making

making those increases specifically increased enrollment in the early college program increase enrollment in AP courses expansion of project writing black and the building of a co-op program for CTE the other pieces that are contributing to the high school percentiles is the four-year graduation rate which we saw an increase from 2020 to 21.

the extended engagement rate which pretty much stayed the same from 2019 to 2020 and the annual dropout rate which decreased slightly slightly but generally speaking was flat from 2020 to 2021.

again again we're doing a lot of work specifically up at Durfee but also over at RPA in terms of improving these rates credit recovery options Workforce Development opportunities expanding access to CTE for more students expanding access to enrollment in evolve which has grown re-engagement events for students and portfolio based MCAS submissions for substantially separate special education students

so depending on whether it's non-high school or high school and whether or not student schools have enough students to contribute to the number of else taking access the percentages change you know a little bit in terms of how things are weighted but generally speaking MCAS is you know is the boss in terms of those whether it's for achievement in growth and then we have access and all of the

other chronic absenteeism and then the high school indicators so those are all listed here and one thing to just point out is that in 2022 the school percentiles were calculated using two years of data and it just depends on the indicator as to which two years were used um you know for for MCAS it's 2019 in 2022 because those were the last two years where there was a full MCAS administered but some of the others are

just dependent on when data is collected and and available so I just wanted to highlight a couple of schools before we got into the percentiles for all of the schools the first one of those is Spencer Borden Spencer Borden is our highest ranked school and it has been for a few years it's a school in the 53rd percentile but while we are you know we celebrate kind of the gains of of Spencer Borden

um you know across the board you see different highlights at different grade levels but the one thing this year that really stood out for us was taking a look at the percentile rankings of the subgroups we've identified in the district kind of this pervasive issue of our subgroup data being really low in comparison to the data you know in a particular school we see high needs students who might be performing at one

level we see um I'm sorry non-high needed students performing at one level we see their High needs students performing at a much lower level and we're doing the work that we need to to to support all of those students but when we look at Spencer Borden it's this anomaly for us because when we look at their subgroup data their the students who fall into those subgroups are outperforming most

other students in the state and it's really something to celebrate and it's something that we're trying to look at a little bit more deeply because we are outperforming they are outperforming other students in those subgroups across the state and we're looking at what promising practices are in place that we can replicate across our schools the next school that I wanted to highlight before getting into the rest

was the Henry Lord Community School Henry Lord is a school that in 2018 was in the sixth percentile grew into the 10th percentile the following year and then has been working so hard and coming out of 2022 found themselves in the 12th percentile really such a big thing to celebrate for them because our schools in schools across the state are identified as schools in need of assistance when

they're in the lowest 10 percent and this is a school that has made such great gains that even though um that 2019 data which had them in the sixth percentile was contributed to their 2022 accountability they still found themselves coming out of the 10th percentile 10 percentile end into the 12th so it speaks to the fact that in 2022 as a standalone we know that they ranked higher than the 12th percentile

and um that's a big a big jump from coming from the sixth and and certainly more than the 12th the thing that stands out here um is that Henry Lord's Middle School students in math Ela science all of their 2022 scores improved over 2021. we saw increases at the middle level there across content areas but when you look at their grade 7 scores the the most impressive thing is that there um

in 2022 they didn't just like bounce back from 2021 in 2022 in both Ela and mass they actually saw their highest data so at a time when everybody's trying to just like recover maybe lose a little less from year to year this is a school that's actually saw in 2022 their best data ever in grade seven and it is cause for celebration because I think that it speaks to just the work that's being

done the traction that the school is getting in the trajectory of the work that is there so really really something to celebrate this last slide actually shows the accountability percentiles for all of our schools um in 2019 so that 2019 accounts for 40 percent of the 2022 ranking and what we see generally across schools many of our schools is that we we stayed pretty much the same

you know either whether it's starting in the second percentile in 2019 and staying there or being in the 16th percentile and just dropping a little bit to the 14th what we're seeing across many of our schools is that there wasn't much change in terms of their ranking in the state but we did have schools that stood out and it increased and I identified Henry Lord we know that Spencer Borden kind of knocked it out of

the park for us but I also wanted to recognize Watson in the sixth percentile in 2019 um and in the 10th percentile now so that's a school that we feel is really on the cusp of coming out of that um lowest 10 percent and um that tool will be caused for celebration any questions

Mr agya hey I'd have some questions at the other meeting so I don't want to reiterate those but the um I had asked for some information on this school data by grade and I don't see that yet is that yeah so we we did talk about that and what like what that looks like across 16 schools so I think that if it if it makes sense to do it what we can

do is put together a packet to send out in the Friday email yeah no that's fine I just was at the committee level it was just to look at the subcommittee to look at the scores and that's why I asked for it I thought it would have been beneficial for the whole committee to see it but I didn't see it here I just didn't know if it was an oversight or if it's just on its way

but I think that's data that we should see sure um disaggregated the um I said at the meeting my personal I'm very concerned about the achievement levels in the school I think you agreed this response agreed this action steps that you've put in place I made a statement and I'll say it again that over the last six years let's say we've spent millions of dollars in resources most recently in

the student Opportunity Act it went up even more but we have put the investments in to the schools into the programs and the services we're just not seeing the results and that's disheartening but it's something that we have to we have to get our hands around because we're spending a lot of money additional money and we're not seeing the results of that so we have to do something bold

in my opinion I've said that all along what I would ask is that in the action steps after the meeting we talked about new new things to be done whatever that wording is that you put in I'd like to request that every two months we have reports from the superintendent related to those action steps because I think we can say today that we're going to do the following 10 things 20 things 30 things

if we don't get reports on them and measure them some of those might not come to fruition so I'd like the committee to get 60 every 60 days updates on how those things are going the attendance we talked about it being just something that we can we talk about this every year Madam superintendent any luck with the reporting of the attendance offices to the principals well I've I actually have had a

conversation with some principals and they feel like that their work with the attendance officer is very positive the way it's structured so I think that what I would like to do is we have the new um assistant superintendent of student services and special education who oversees them I think when she comes on board in two weeks that we need to have a conversation about what makes sense in regards to how we um

redeploy or I mean they are all assigned I met with them they're assigned to their schools principals have not um uh complained or expressed concern about them not doing the work at the schools so um I think we need to have a deeper conversation with um with the new assistant superintendent when she comes on board yeah I didn't know we were at that point with an assistant superintendent she's come on board in

two weeks no it was just I never heard of that before this is my first no I was talking about the special ed person that actually shared duties with that the new assistant Superman right because the attendance officers work for the other job that's not filled so therefore the attendance officers haven't been reporting to anybody for the last year and a half well that's not so I I they

reported to Dr Taylor last year and I've met with them and they know that I will be overseeing them until we have um the SEL person on board until then we're as an administrative team the two assistant superintendents and I we will share those students just I I've asked this nicely I've said it in various ways to me that's just saying let's do more of the same so we've been without whether Dr Taylor

she didn't work here she was on leave and she didn't supervise those attendance offices for her time here in my opinion so we've had no direct supervision of those folks so I've suggested in private conversations and in public conversations with you about I think a way that we could actually get some a different level of support to the schools by having them report to them that's a pretty basic function so I'll

take it by your answer that you brought it to the principles and the principals chose not to have the person work for them so as one member of the committee my patients with the fact of not getting the information and our attendance not going up our attendance being atrocious chronically absent students being atrocious my patient says one member of the committee is pretty much done

so now we're saying let's just not have oversight we'll wait and find somebody when they do it it's just not working so if you think that's what's the best way to go then go with it I'm telling you right now my patients with attendance is is beyond done because we're not doing what we need to do there's not consistency I've said it to privately and I've said it publicly there's not consistency across every school to

follow our own attendance policies you know that that's not happening part of the reason why I suggested this so that we could get a system in place to have it go but some principles probably just don't want to have it then they're going to accept those attendance levels that's what we're going to go with that's a decision that can be made that's a decision that should have been made and I'm disheartened to say that

it's not but we'll go with more of the same and we'll wait for an assistant superintendent to come on board so we can address it in maybe June all right without our yield I I will say that that's not we're not saying because we don't have somebody on board there's no oversight that's an operational piece that we're working internally I think that everybody owns their attendance at

the school levels yes we do need to have consistent practices in place but we are working through them um nobody's happy with the attendance the way it is Ms dag yeah nobody is and we all know that it needs to be changed and everybody's got attended schools the district as well as each school and we're working towards changing that narrative um certainly we all know kids need to be

in school and when they're in school we need to engage them and we'll take responsibility from when they're in school but we need to work with families and the community and the schools in order to get kids in school to do so that they can be sick successful I I do have two things I didn't want to say I had a conversation with lieutenant governor about these scores Statewide

and I mean you got hit bad with the pandemic and employment I don't think people understand how difficult it is right now hiring teachers that are top shelf I mean every District's scrambling form everybody's looking for them if you listen to the superintendent's report we've had 16 people already leave since the beginning of the year while we hired 54 so that's a net of 38.

these uh these are people that want to be teachers when they get the reality of the difficulties of the position they don't hang in they can't hang in and it's better they leave don't get me wrong but at the same time those gaps are draining Us in in different subject areas um I think when you have kids home on a monitor learning for a year at a time these scores are reflective of what you

see on most of the Gateway cities it's it's a struggle and we're not throwing a towel in uh Mr Aggie I was right we're spending millions of dollars on these things but that's because the state has given us millions of dollars to correct this and we're just going to have to keep our pedal to the metal as far as attendance I I uh I can't stress enough to parents that you're the key component

in this whole piece as far as I'm concerned we have them for six hours a day you have them for 18. if you need help you contact a guidance counselor an adjustment counselor at the school and let us know that there's follow-up but we need your help to get these kids in school and we really really do those are one of the things that's always frustrated me working in the schools for

as long as I did was attendance and I think it's gotten worse and I do Blame A lot of that on the pandemic but I'm glad to see we have some new baselines going forward um not saying I want to be you Dr Curley but um you know I wish you well I think you're gonna you're gonna have to grind it out and it's going to be a long slog

but we got to get these scores up that's that's where I hear about most the scores and attendance and I wish you well thank you anybody else have anything to say Miss Rogers um so just a comment really so the gap between our high needs students and um our non-hignian students is pretty large like you mentioned but I also want to point out that we have a very high percentage of high needs students so

that really worries me that that Gap is so big we have about an 87 percent rate of high needs students so I'm I'm looking very concretely for what and you don't have to answer this right now but very concretely what are we doing to help bridge that and I understand that that Gap has gotten a little bit smaller but really not for the right reasons so I'm looking for like specific

action steps for each group which I think is reasonable for each group each school for what are we going to do to help bridge that Gap because it's a pretty significant one we I think there was so much data that we didn't spend enough time on the action planning itself and the prioritization and I you know I mentioned this idea of High needs students in in what we need

to do right so that they do have access to the four key resources we are our Focus this year is really on that grade level content so we recognize that without access to grade level content there isn't any way that students can achieve at grade level they're not going to make growth toward grade level standards and so that really has become the priority so when we talk about spending the

millions of dollars that we have on those high quality instruction materials that really for us was just the first step and we spent time last year trying to get schools engaged in using them in using them with Fidelity with with support this year we are in a much better place in terms of schools I think understanding appreciating the the materials teachers having better access to them

and what those resources actually present to them in terms of their planning and the amount of time that's being spent on planning using the resources so that's our first step and then we recognize that just putting the materials in front of students is not going to be the thing they can't do the work without those resources but we're spending much of our time most of our time really

on working with teachers in schools around planning with those resources for grade level content in trying to establish what students need you know for a couple of years we were talking around about just-in-time intervention making sure that we were teaching kids what they needed to know at that moment just to access just to access the materials but we we're trying to go beyond that right

now that becomes one piece of the scaffolding or support that we're providing to students and when you talk about this idea of that Gap being crazy because the students who are meeting expectations at a particular rate that is a relatively small number of students when we look at the fact that I think it's like 87 percent of our students fall into the high needs category so I we recognize that it's why

we're putting all of our energy there it's why taking a look at something like the opportunity myth and focusing on those four key resources makes sense in Fall River because so many of our students fit the description of the very students who in generally speaking are denied access so it's I'm with you I and I think that what we can do um in terms of kind of General reporting is make sure that we're reporting out on

those action steps I like that idea I like the idea of our holding ourselves internally accountable but warning whenever we're able to do that publicly and share the work with people I think it's just supportive to all of the work so this might be a silly question but we keep talking about making sure our students have access to grade level material why haven't they had access to grade level material so I think that

some of it was the fact that we had some we had a couple of different things we had curriculum that potentially was outdated or we had schools who some schools who were using one thing other schools using another I think that became more and more difficult to support over time it's where getting the same resources in everybody's hands has made the work and the collaboration I think much more

doable really and because we're able to provide professional development at a larger scale we're able to get schools to collaborate in terms of their planning much more easily it just makes sense to do that but I think it's certainly the money that has been made available in the last couple of years has given us an opportunity the way it was intended to so that we could get the

the right materials in students hands we still to be honest with you there are still some content areas or grade levels where the materials still aren't available they're being developed it's you know the Massachusetts Department of Ed will be endorsing something but we just can't get our hands on it yet so we're kind of backfilling and supporting people until we can get there but where they're

available we're getting them into classrooms with that I yield if I can just clarify about the SOA yes Mr agyar is right we have gotten a lot of um we've invested a lot of money in our students with the SOA uh funds have done is equalize um provide our students with with the resources that we haven't had like we we haven't had the money to do for our students what we needed to do and what

the extra money has done is made um us look at our schools look at our needs provide professional development for our staff provide resources that are you know research based and make sure that we provide all of our students with what they need when they need it and we've had to scrimp and save for years and years and really just make ends meet and we finally are able to support our

students the way they need to be supported this is what our students are owed this isn't extra money this is an investment in what our students deserve thank you Dr Curley oh Mr Hagia yeah I just had a couple of comments one of the things that the subcommittee that really took me for a little bit of a loop was a couple of comments that were listed in under the end of the year survey and one

of them talks about lack of high expectations for all students it says an end that he has surveyed nearly 40 percent of teachers responded disagree or strongly disagree to the statement I am confident all of my students can master the skills I am teaching them in class this year that's one comment the second one was the lack of research-based practices and content across grade levels in a survey nearly

40 percent of teachers responded disagree are strongly disagreed to I have the tools strategies and support I need to help every student in my classes achieve this year's learning goals I think those were to me with two alarming statements that that's what they felt when they went in and I don't think that they should have felt that way along the years but with the Investments that we've made so I agree with the

superintendent this year's money went way up but we went doing something right to have these comments made even with the millions that we had beforehand so it's not just okay the new money comes in everything's going to be better this talks about I think a a systematic issue of something that wasn't working also I'm looking at my notes I said get the results I asked for the results of the survey I haven't

gotten those yet as well the um expensive board and one which I is ironic that when you mentioned it related to this is the only slide that we have that shows the breakdown like this but it it's showing in the 80s on 90 percentile of all those divisions and the white uh demographic is at 35 percentile so I think that's more powerful than just the slide but it means nothing to us if we don't get it

across the whole system to know what happened to know the background about okay what does that mean for those people are they just barely over the number are they you know we know the schools in the North End it's more affluent schooled in other places what is it like we we as a committee I think need to get some of these answers to say look at the data look across all of

these schools that's why we need I think the breakdown so that we can compare each of the schools that particular slide for Spencer Borden is not available publicly it's not anything any would could just access on the website so I'll make sure that I include that for each school and when we share the school-based data I think some of it looks um you know we're always taking a look at

the schools and trying to figure out the percentile is there's so much that goes into it right in terms of the MCAS data for multiple years multiple content areas there's that weighting of the 40 60. so we've been trying to kind of dig into schools to figure out you know what is it that kind of makes the difference right because what if Spencer Borden didn't make improvements they didn't make improvements at every

grade level in every content area right they might have slipped in one area made some gains in another so there wasn't really anything like super concrete that you feel like oh that's the thing that data certainly stood out to us especially in comparison to all of our other schools the the subgroups in that school are really outperforming other other schools it's it's pretty impressive and so it's a place

for us to really dig in outside of that schools are doing the work and we're supporting them to do the work where you know they look at a particular grade level and things slip or they make an improvement and we want to identify what it was but that it's the kind of thing that you know we can't do on our own I think I'll be honest with you I feel like there's a

there's so much data right there's data on the website it just doesn't tell the story so I feel like to it's difficult to just kind of put all the numbers out there and not talk about them in context um of the work that the schools are doing schools did develop prioritization plans School Improvement plans and I think that it I've talked about this with superintendent Ponce you know our you

know responsibility to share them with the committee and I think that's something that would be really helpful for the committee to see what schools are doing in response to the data so I would just make a suggestion or a promise or whatever it is to get that information to you because I do think that looking across 16 schools and all of the data and all the different indicators it's it's hard to piece

things together if if you're not aware of the actual work that's being done at the school so that would be something to share I agree with you you can say superintendent can say oh we went to every school we did a great day to dive we did this and that that means nothing to me sure to be honest because I don't have anything to say what was the result of that what was the summary of that

what did the principals think about the data what are this exactly nothing zero so I think you're right we need to get some of that to have a little level of confidence and that when we say we did a data dive and then we get no answer back after then it's like well what did that mean you went there and looked at some data I'm sure you did more than that I'm

being facetious but right and the point is it never comes to us right when we do the data Dives I mean generally speaking the people who attend the meeting everybody has seen the data and the discussion that we have at the table is really around the school's plan so even though it's not a lock step look at what is your school Improvement plan it really is taking a look at all the

components of it because school leaders really just talk through their action plans for the year in the context of that data and I think that that would be the information that would be most useful and while we're on the data Dives were those done individually so part of the concern that I have is that across this system we never do things across the system that are working across all areas so we have

pockets of things that work in this district for years and years and years so when we go to meet they might go to meet my school and I might be able to show you a few things or whatever and you go meet miss roderick's school and while she's she's on it she's got everything going but I'm not sitting there watching what she's doing to know what she's got and then the next person

the next person so to me that I think getting everybody together to be able to say everybody's doing the same system that's why I'm so hot on this attendance officer thing because I've been asking this for years and we're not doing the same thing some schools are doing much better than others nobody can can go against that but the same thing here we got to get everybody in the room together so that

when we have pockets of excellent it spreads what we do is just do it in silos and then we say we did data Dives and I don't have the confidence that that is enough but I I will say we do meet with our principals regularly Mr um agyar for you to say that we don't do anything consistently I I mean I I'm not saying anything if I did I apologize

there is pockets of of things that are working you're right and and we do like you can't possibly do a data dive where you have all 16 schools at the table with everybody doing the same it was like two hour sessions one to two hour sessions with each school we do share best practices or look at District data as principals so and we are putting a system in place where we're looking at the triangle

school so we're going to do a walk Talbot Fonseca and Watson Watson Fonseca feed into Talbot we're going to go and all three of those principals are going to join us so they can go see their fee to school so we are doing some of those things I think that what you're alluding to perhaps I need to communicate all those things that I'm doing and that we're all doing but I I think there is a

lot of work that's being done we're not where we need to be yet but you're right there's a lot of worth it I know I don't disagree and I'm not trying to say that nobody's doing anything I know people are working hard the results just aren't there so we have to figure it out yeah that's a committee I asked you a question and you gave the most honest answer I heard of the old committee you

told me the scores are awful yeah they're not good that's the most honest answer that I heard at the committee and it is what it is so we have to do something different so the scores aren't good we are doing a lot of good things in the schools all I'm asking for is that we have a system where we're all working together a little more so that the achievement will then therefore all

come that's all with that I yield okay anything further thank you Dr Curley thanks next up 12.3 PowerSchool presentation Scott Cabral Chief Information officer you all receive some information in your packet for the meeting I can tell you that Sims has been accepted by the state and we are currently working on epims as we speak this data is being used through PowerSchool to report and also Aspen so

it's a con you know a collaboration of both systems The Sims team had some early issues with the Sims reporting some bugs were worked out PowerSchool has been excellent since they met with us last month we have strategic support contacts now we have basically a phone into the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain to get to some of those more pointed questions that we have and issues that we've been having

I can tell you on the enrollment side we're already making Provisions to begin to open the registration window for this coming February for next year um on the health module we continue to work with PowerSchool on some of the more intricate issues that Karen long and her team are seeing as far as the way they would like to see things work they have been very receptive to that and we continue to troubleshoot with

them on the daily and the health module on the special program side I just have to give a big thank you to Kristen and her team because they have been amazing in this process working through the bugs and the frustrations on our end and I can say and Kristen can probably wave behind me that we are finally getting to a point where we are getting more comfortable and the bugs and the

frustrations are getting less and it's also been helpful that we've had that strategic support to use with the Sims team with parent with PowerSchool directly a big piece was Parent Access that became a tremendous lift I can say with certainty that all middle and high school families have received their communication via parent Square with their code any of the families that did not receive the email it's because

there was not a communication or an email in parent square and I just urge those parents to contact their students main office and once they have verified you know some questions that it's indeed the parent they can get the code and then they can download the app and they're good to go we have also rolled out student portal on the high school side so the students now have access to

the student portal and as we get into the coming months Elementary grade level students parents will also receive their codes coming up and I can tell you that we're working on the standard based report cards as we speak with PowerSchool to get those to basically match up to what we had in Aspen X2 so that there's no lift there just some priorities moving forward that I'll probably talk about in the coming months

when we meet we're going to continue to move our data from Aspen into power school again 20 years of data there's still stuff that we're moving in on The Daily um a big push is going to be made now to take some of those reports that we use on The Daily and translate them into Portuguese and Spanish that is not something that happens automatically that's something that will have to do as

a district The Sims team along with myself have reached out to other districts in Massachusetts to see how they do things it's actually interesting that some of the districts do not even provide translations they provide it in English and there are other districts that are providing stuff translated as well so we have some avenues that we can discuss something that I would probably

bring to the technology subcommittee meeting first and then we can bring to the full committee and the last piece that we're going to start working on just like we do with the budget season we're going to start um asking the end users what they'd like to see we've started to use the project you know the program we're moving forward we want to know what they like what they don't like what they'd like to

see change so we're going to start some focus groups after the holidays and that'll give us as well as PowerSchool and Central Administration time to decide if we want to customize things moving forward or if we want to stay with the base model so those are some just brief updates on the PowerSchool side if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them anybody have any questions on Council of

Miss laravey hi hi so just a quick question so the survey when is that coming out so um Mr Michael Isaac and his team are working on that now we're actually working with PowerSchool on that we have a meeting next Tuesday some best practices they're actually helping facilitate that they've done it with some logic districts so I hope that that would be out the first or second week of

December it'll give us some time over the holidays to digest it and then have a plan moving forward that I would bring to the you know technology subcommittee meeting and then back to the full body what what do you mean by staff groups so just basically guidance counselors what do you think about your youth nurses just some of those more pointed areas so that way we're not just getting

a general teacher's parents office people attendance officers so they're going to be some different questions for each of those groups so we can get a better look at it now from a higher level and then we can start to clean up the process you so you're just grouping everybody everybody's getting surveyed correct in group correct thank you I yield anything further foreign so I had gotten a complaint a while back

that the system was down for multiple days and then at the time I had asked for an update of how pervasive has this been because I also heard complaints it's been down a lot more than what we would like um so PowerSchool Works off of pieces called plug-ins so if you have a plug-in from PowerSchool basically they bumper to bumper warranty it but if you use a plug-in from a third-party application

or they kind of have their own store like Apple or Google does you take that and you use it on your own so we had a plug-in in there that we were using early on because our attendance and our enrollment numbers weren't lining up to what were true numbers so they recommended that we use this plug-in third-party application we put the plugin in and come to find out that's what was slowing us now so the plug-in

has since been turned off Mr Michael Isaac and his team are looking at different options for plugins however right now we don't need it because our intendance in enrollment has been cleaned up there was an issue with that data pull from Aspen into power school so that piece is correct so overall we were down a total of two days one was a good chunk of time it was about eight

hours the other was about four or five hours and then just last week we were down for about 30 seven seconds because once we saw the slowness Mr Michael Isaac turned off the plug-in and we were back online so we are not using that plug-in now and knock on wood we have not gone down since so since the start of the Year telling me that PowerSchool has been down for eight hours total uh

it's been down for about I would say about 13 hours total between the two Lodge outages can't correct people have reported to me but I'll take your word for it the other thing is is there things called PowerSchool mentors is that like a teach the Train the trainer type of thing so so right now we have Gradebook mentors that was the language in the you know form a con contract with X2

um they're basically the same people um Mr Michael isek actually approached me last week and said that he may actually request some more time for those mentors this year just because it's a much larger lift and a new system uh something that we will talk about centrally in our senior staff meetings and then bring back to the body so what is it a stipend is that correct and right now nobody's getting them no

there are Gradebook mentors the current ones that were in you know last school year are still all current every school has them every school has Harbor departments to no it's for grade books it's for great it's all it is is for grading yeah I can make a suggestion that a specialist I I think them as sort of a specialist on the thing to tell people what's happening to help with it I think

special ed needs one myself because we have a lot of people doing the work here with the IEPs you might as well have a go-to person that if you're going to do that for the people that are just doing daily grades that we're doing IEPs all day too so having somebody get a stipend to to be the resident expert on that a go-to person might make some sense something that we can definitely look at

I can sit down with Kristen and the new assistant superintendent we can formulate a plan moving forward great thank you anything further Scott thank you Scott next item up 12.4 is a discussion vote to approve the communications specialist job description as referred by the technology subcommittee and presented by Tom Coogan human resource director and Scott Cabral motion to approve second

any discussion on that advertisement here in none debt please call the roll yes Mr for Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Ms laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Mr Rogers yes yes mayor Coogan yes 12.5 is discussion of what to approve an additional SEL liaison position at Morton Middle School as presented by Tom Coogan human resource director two two additional two I'm sorry two additional scl liaison positions

and one of the requests that came before the committee last month for Talbot it's for two Liaisons Morton has sort of a unique internal structure they use two houses and each house contains sixth seventh and eighth grade cohorts what he's asking for he has one SEL liaison now he's asking for one for the other house and he's also asking for one for a sub-separate strand he has a total of 87

students across nine classrooms that are being serviced would be serviced by that as additional scle liaison principal Davey's here if anybody has any questions from specifically but this is very similar to the report last month any discussion or questions yes he is no I just wanted to say hi that's all we never met before that's why I just was curious thank you Miss rodericks um I would say you know how many more do

they need but um the other middle schools how many do they have do we know currently we have two at cuss and there are three at Talbot uh two three have been approved at Talbot by the committee okay so I'm just looking for Equity based on their needs right so if they're getting two more do the other schools also need more and I'm just putting it out there as a

question to go back to those schools and really say like let's evaluate how this is going because I know that this has been a huge support for folks and so I'm just pushing that we go back to the other middle schools and say hey this is working well in these areas these have been some of the best practices I know Talbot uses them really well you know what is it that you guys

need that's all I'm pushing I'm not it's not about approving this it's really about looking at Equity based on what the other schools need as well any any uh further discussion on this model based on what Mr Roderick said that the other schools haven't asked for it yes because superintendent I think said she absolutely puts us to and they're in the midst of hiring their third one so

they'll have one per grade level Talbot did the exact same thing they wanted one per grade level and Morton is the one that only had one okay and then they're asking for two more okay do we have any at Doran Anna Henry Lord they have um they have at least one at each of the schools and I could give you actually principal Barnhart and she said she was staffed the way she needed to be

staffed I mean principals know that they would come so um and we have been really good about bringing their request forth so that's I agree that's been a huge huge support right in schools which is why I just keep bringing it up like making sure that they know that that's an option that if it's something that they needed that they can request it I yield anything further I get a motion in a second motion

approved second I have a motion a second tip would you please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes 12 um six and twelve seven the superintendent glad right with uh with the permission of the committee I'd like to hold those two positions until after executive session if that's okay we'll hold those two until later in the meeting

12.8 is a discussion and vote to approve the job description for the Commonwealth preschool partnership initiative Grant coordinator as presented by Tom Coogan and Kristen Farris I want you to approve have a motion do I have a second second I have a motion a second any discussion Mr agya it just looks like the Sally's 25 000 part time it's part time and then it says in there they you have to commit to at least a half

time of FTE and may be funded by the grant so are we not taking advantage of a full-time person oh actually so this position is part of that Commonwealth preschool partnership Grant and so right now based on the size of the Grant and the size of the initial program what's recommended is a half-time Grant coordinator so it's fully funded by the Grant and focused on the work of that Grant

specifically and so the grant initially has one classroom at Head Start One classroom at PeopleLink preschool and we will have an itinerant Special Education team that is servicing students at both of those sites am I reading this wrong though to think that the grant would pay for a full person and we only got to commit half to those the Grant's only funding a halftime person I'm just looking at where it says

the grant coordinator must commit at least 0.5 of an FTE to the grant work and may be funded by the grant so I'm looking at that as they could have a full person they just have to commit so the person could do other things for the other half of their job and be a full-time job if I better try to get somebody to be full-time than what time yeah so the grant you have to have at

least a part-time person through the grant based on the size of our grant and the size of our program only a halftime person would be appropriate right now so if we wanted a full-time staff they would only work for the grant halftime and it would be something else the other half of the time that's District funded but it says it's funded by the grant so they are telling me that the grant isn't

going to fund the other half to work for you and on other things correct the grant is only funding a halftime position right now based on the size of the grant the size of the program that we wrote for is this the thing we talked about with the students staying in those programs so that yes they I think it's worthy of a full personally but you know if it's it is what it is so

and make emotional proof sorry Deb call the roll please let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harp yes Ms Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes 12.9 is a discussion and vote to approve an additional speech language pathology assistant and certified occupational therapy assistant position as presented by Kristen Farris interim administrative special ed welcome Kristen busy woman tonight

it's my night So currently in the contract the cap for Service delivery for our speech and language pathology assistance and our occupational therapy assistance is 55 students we have the majority of our providers at or near that cap at this time and So based on a review of current Services as well as what we are projecting out in new students we are requesting an additional slpa and two additional codas

any discussion two of this Rogers do we have enough folks supervising enough slps and enough otrs supervising those slps yes we do like those our folks have for the nurses okay Fields can I get a motion in a second to approve second I have a motion a second Deb call the roll owners positions Please Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes Mr rodericks yes Mary Coogan

yes 1210 is a discussion and vote to approve the spending of 1.370 million sit on the city council appropriated as presented by Maria Pond superintendent of schools so as you know the city owed us 1.37 million dollars on city council approved the transfer at this time I'm requesting that we use three hundred thousand dollars and apply to the special education tuitions and that we use uh a

million seventy thousand to be applied to the Durfee athletic fields any discussion Ms laravee just a question I don't know if maybe you missed out what would that leave us for the fields so it's all based on pricing and whatever comes in so it's kind of it's I can't I can't give you a dollar amount we need the bids to come in to figure out what it is but to get the Durfee

project completed it's going to get us pretty close to where we need beautiful all right I yield thank you thank you any Mr agya yeah the 1.3 that came across came over I thought that that was money that we knew when we did the budget um that we had already spent in the budget they just had screwed up some numbers basically at the time so it was so the one the 1.3

million dollars was money I originally had assigned to tuitions and uh the tuitions aren't as high as you know we anticipated so I'm using funds the part part of the funds to go towards the fields okay I don't see that in this uh this particular memo here so what it sounds like is we had had a budget we knew we had spent all that money at this point now you're taking what you

had anticipated for tuitions is what you just said off so now I'll be able to spend this money yes but I just don't see that in this uh um I don't think that necessarily with its truth in advertising all we had we didn't have 1.3 million we knew that they had shorted us so we had spent that 1.3 million already so um so we submitted a budget to the city

council that was a million I'm sorry to the to the mayor that was a million three hundred seventy thousand dollars more when the budget went down to the city council it was less by a million three hundred seventy thousand dollars I had to take it from somewhere at the time to balance the budget and I took it from tuitions so the money so now as part of bringing that money back I only need an

additional three hundred thousand dollars in tuitions to cover me through the end of the year I know that the Durfee project is ongoing the athletic fields are ongoing so I'm assigning the rest of them we are assigning the rest of the money to the Durfee fields I don't disagree with the thought on it my thing is that procedurally when when will the committee going to get the notice that we took that money off of

the tuitions is I guess the question I guess I'm telling you now do you understand the question Madam superintendent yes so I'm not disagreeing with where we spent it but at the time let's say this money didn't come to fruition or the tuitions were fully um what you thought they were going to be we would be in a different place where we wouldn't have this money per se to advocate for so I'll speak for myself I

didn't when this money came through as the 1.3 I never called the superintendent to give her my opinion because I felt that was already money that was budgeted already um with the fields I think we where are we at with the city relative to having any kind of bonding ability to do projects that's been ongoing for but so I'm gonna I'm gonna say this we cannot as a department Bond City

is the city they are the folks that bond for the city so I can't Bond as a school department I cannot buy can you pay a bond can I pay a bond yes yes but that's Debt Service that gets paid for the city so it can happen but Mr agya that is not eligible for nothing I get it I understand okay Madam superintendent I've suggested now for months for months

to say in order to fund this project we have to eat together to look at ways to creatively figure out a way that we can have a situation where we could bond some money to pay these projects and we could pay the bond back now I've asked that for six months or more I've gotten zero information from you or anybody here to say oh we can't do that or we negotiated it what I see is just

no we can't do it so that's it that's not that's to me as one member that's not acceptable that's right because if we don't have the money to pay for these projects I don't know how we're going to do it we're getting lucky here with this million dollars that's in that we are going to pay for this that we that we couldn't pay for something else but I I'm getting tired of the fact of

we suggest something get no response back whatsoever and then just say well it just can't happen because we don't bond as simple as that just let it go let them say what he's got to say it's not a valid thought it's not a valid suggestion it's not something that we should go to the legislature to try to create an account to have a rainy day fund for the school department any of

those things all those suggestions fall on Duffy is because you just don't think that we need to do it and you're not telling them that we have to get a legitimate answer I just need to I just need the comment please right so when we ask a question we don't expect somebody to give us an attitude back that's all I'm saying nobody's giving an attitude he's answering your questions maybe you're not watching the

same meeting I'm watching he's not giving you attitude he's answering your questions but we have to be respectful there's no reason to talk about passion or anger just asking these questions you don't like the answer vote what makes your heart warm but at the same time this this gentleman's trying to do a job as these other people are as you are but there's nobody yelling there's no reason

to yell ask him whatever you want so that's how I look at it if you want to make a motion get your votes we'll do what you want there's no reason to get married all I asked was a simple you're mad all I asked was a simple conversation to be had it's not simple okay so if it's not then give an answer then just ask that's all I'm asking I've been asking for six

months Mr Mayor no you're not you're yelling right now okay can I I just need to respond please and respectfully okay we are not a Regional School District Regional School Districts Bond on their own okay we are a department of the city we are part of a municipality the cities are the ones that have the rights to bond okay the treasurer's office they are the ones that have the rights to bond not the schools

Mr I try to do everything I can in my ability to make all these projects and everything come to fruition and make them work as you can see I'm pretty Frugal with the money I do a pretty good job of balancing the budget all the time and taking care of all these extra projects and doing all these additional things that we do with your help okay you know that I do that okay as far as

like a sped stabilization account that we've talked about in the past once we get to net School spending any dollar amount over that that we get Absolutely I'll throw it into a spec stabilization account but right now the way the law is written there's nothing I can do about it there's nothing I can do about any money we put into a spec stabilization account it's it's silly right now for me

to come to you asking for a stabilization account because right now we have no ability to to take claim to that money once you put it in there because once that money is put into the specific stabilization account it doesn't count towards medical spending unless something is done it doesn't count so the city has gets no credit for the money that they've given us that we've put in aside so until we get to

that point once we've hit School spending and we've met and we've hit that threshold there's nothing we really can do that's going to benefit the city or benefit us so I'm going to do what I feel is fiscally responsible for our department that is what I'm going to do and I'm going to try to spend the money as closely to the classroom as I can possible that's all I can say so with Madam

superintendent if you go back and review all of the minutes to the meetings and the conversations that we've had for several years since when Dr Malone was here Mr Almeda has been in out for both Dr Malone and you at the meetings where we had those conversations the answer to this was or the suggestion at the time which was over a year and a half or two years ago now

was that you or the superintendent or Mr Almeda through his organizations or through General working with the mayor to talk to the city uh to the state delegation to look at potential changes to the law which would be one sentence basically allowing us to save money like diamond can that's all it is that I asked for over a year and a half ago so I asked the administration I asked Mr Almeida to

consider going to them to ask for that to advocate for that has that happened I would say no because if it happened I'm sure we would have got an answer to say we we sent this letter I think at one point we made a motion to even send a letter to the delegation that never happened under the prior superintendent so Mr Almeda is correct that under the current law these things can't happen

but right now the legislature knows that they're throwing millions of dollars at us so they should be open to any kind of suggestion for us to have a rainy day fund to have something to if we hadn't needed in a rainy day that we should be able to do what the Regional Schools do they should be no different than that so what I'm advocating for was to be proactive talk to them try to get some

changes in the legislation as they're throwing millions of dollars at us that make these Reserve accounts to I I'm upset about it because I don't feel like anybody took that serious and I don't think we went to the next level that's why I'm upset because anybody that would know if we're getting 20 million dollars here and there instead of us falling all over ourselves to figure out how to

prepay tuition and all this stuff if we could just put that in an account it would make everybody's life a lot easier and it should count towards net School spending that's a change that the law needs to happen so I think we're saying similar things it's just all I'm asking for is a little courtesy and respect to say we looked at it we did what we had

to do we asked them to do it and if they say no we can't do it then then we can't do it I don't think that those steps have been been happening so I'm not opposed to this but I do think that we need to continue the discussions and if it's a dead end then I think we're owed at least a one-page paragraph or an email to say why it can't happen

that's all with that idea motion to approve second I have a motion a second any further discussion Deb please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes 1211 is a discussion and vote to approve the proposed FY 24 budget calendar as presented by Kevin Almeida CFO the this is just the preliminary uh

budget calendar for the upcoming budget year for fy24 um just similar to previous years following the same schedule you know these things are subject to change based on things that happen so with that I'm just looking for approval of the calendar motion to approve second I have a motion second discussion on the budget calendar Deb please call the roll Mr I guess yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey

yes Miss Pereira Mr Roderick yes mayor Cooney yes 1212 is discussion of the year-end report and net School spending is presented by Kevin Almeida Chief Financial Officer so at this time the we submitted the net we submitted the end of the airport to the state in FY 23 the budgeted shortfall at this time is just under 1.2 million it's a million 170 about 170 000.

the difference is caused by the roughly six hundred thousand dollars in benefits associated with nutrition that will be coming out directly out of the account for the year and it's attributed to the change in the assessments from when the budget was originally done until now so um as as always happens the report's been submitted the state normally gets back to us and the January February time

frame and we'll continue to work with the city to get the money you know to get the money over the schools as soon as we can so that we can get the money spent on the kids and that's it I think further discussion at the end of the year he um I've been saying this for a while that in July when we created the budget we knew that the piece of the

school lunch program which you got listed at 550 to 600 000 we knew that that was not part of the budget well couldn't be used for net School spending so in essence we knew that money should have been coming since July so the only problem that I have with these is that we've known that since July and if we wait until March we're not going to be able to do anything with the money so I

would ask that at least that portion of it become over the other things that could go up or down maybe we did we've done this in the past when we knew it was a million and a half we asked for a million dollars up front that's money we can make a determination on what that can be spent on so I don't think this is asking for anything but I just wanted to weigh in that

the city knows about that money July 1 we all knew about the money before July 1. I'd ask that that at least be taken care of by the next meeting data yield just notified Bridget okay any further uh we get a mo uh do I have a motion a second it's just a discussion mayor I'm sorry it was a discussion next one is a vote discussion of vote to approve the submission of the funding

application to the community preservation committee for the following projects replacement and restoration of the fun patio I have a motion anybody else want to discuss anything on this CPC fund Dad please call the roll Mr agya yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harm yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes the next one is a duplicate discussion vote to apply the

submission of the funding application for the CPC for the following project replacement restoration 78 windows at 417 Rock streaming I have a motion second and a second any discussion on the Windows Mr aguiar Mr Potato between the windows and the uh railing system is that everything to make that building um look pristine like that'll um other than a possible um painter so we're going to need to

paint the upper parapet wall at some point and paint the front entrance of the building so that's the two items that are left but as far as construction wise the windows and the um the railing in the front of the building will be the major construction piece and the railing is not those big columns that look ugly and uh it's the it's the um the railing is the front facing Rock

Street I say at the front but it's the side of the building right on Rock Street so I'm concerned about the when we walk into the building or anybody walks into the building for years they see those columns that are chipping right so those columns and those columns the the work around those columns and the upper parapet wall on the roof area those are going to need to be painted

that's not included in any of this work and that's just paint like they're not gonna yeah it's it's 75 to 100 whatever about a hundred thousand dollars worth of paint and and labor can I please ask that the superintendent come back to us next month with a plan to do that because we have money and that's the place that people go to to look at it looks terrible for years so if we're

going to get these other pieces and I'm assuming that those projects are not eligible potentially so let's just spend the money to get the gun to make the place look good thank you I yield can we get a roll call Deb let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes thanks Deb discussion and vote to approve the invitation from the msba to

the accelerated repair program for the Robert Medeiros resiliency Preparatory Academy to appropriate the sum of a hundred thousand dollars to fund the procurement of the owner's project manager and design firm for the feasibility study as presented by Ken I have a motion second I have a motion a second any discussion on the request to the msba Dev give it a roll call please let's try

again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Mrs laravey yes Ms Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes 12 16 is a discussion and vote to approve the reorganization of the facilities and operations department is referred by the facilities and operations subcommittee and presented by Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer Mr agya just a question on this so typically we've been having things come out for a first read

so that like for policies and stuff so we can just get it presented and then we come back with the next meeting for a vote what I'd like to ask on this I have a lot of questions and concerns on this I've raised them privately to the superintendent what I'd like to request that is that either we table is still the next meeting in order to some get some of those questions answered to not

have a discussion in public here about some of those concerns which I'm very passionate about or we just do this as a first read so that we can come back at the next meeting with any potential changes I know it's late what's the issue so you want to table this here table it or first can you ask whatever huh table it or first read or first read what I'm suggesting is if we have a first read

for the full committee so the subcommittee was able to talk about it what I would what I'm asking for is to make this a first read so that we can get the issues presented so that if we have any concerns over the next 30 days the home all of the members can bring to up to the superintendent any of those concerns without having to go back and forth here for an hour over all the

questions that would be my suggestion so we have the first read I don't have to ask all those questions now I can digest it and talk to the superintendent with any of those concerns I don't mind how many questions you ask now is that something that's gonna stop preventing you from doing what you need to do if we table this and wait another month so it's just waiting another month it's

yeah it's just waiting another month it's not a not a big deal to you all right nope whatever table it okay at a motion to table a second I got a motion second Deb call the roll who made the motion is it Mr action Mrs Pereira made the motion the table and um Miss Roderick so Mr uh secondary is that what you want to do Kevin you should think that we have time

that would be fine so I can ask my questions and uh hash through some things with the superintendent rather than do it here in an open meeting in public right now okay try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr no yes Ferrera yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yep um for your information we have a number of retirements resignations appointments um I'll accept them all at once motion approved well second can I get a second

tip please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes uh any new business to come before the committee Mr ragio just uh I when we had the technology subcommittee meeting um we also discussed adding a position called like a um we were working on the language of whether it was going to be a low voltage electrician of some type or

whatever and I think that that's something that I want to make sure that is either on the next agenda because I think we need a position like that after that last meeting Mr AGI I was ill for eight days just have not had a chance to digest it we are going to talk about it internally and bring it next month yeah so we had talked about whether we use the same job description that

already exists because it you know just for your department specifically as in a way to expedite the process so under new business I'm wondering if that makes sense to do so we can have you guys just hire the person I if if it's okay uh you know with you and the committee I'd like to come back next month I'd like to revise that position a little bit I'd like to sit

with Mr pachico um I feel that where the Avenue and Technology with that position would go may not necessarily line up directly with what we have as a current job description good sir it'll be on the next agenda yes thank you it's important that's why I brought it up thank you uh executive session we have a request for executive session do you want to read the um the reasons uh

National laws chapter 38 section 21a7 to review and approve the executive session minutes for October 17 2022 regular school committee meeting National laws chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes for the October 25th 2022 technology subcommittee meeting National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to cut the bargaining relative to all

administrators and employees represented by the forward administrators Association as the chair has determined an open social media detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to All Professional teaching employees the affordable School System including coaches Title One teachers

nurses occupational physical therapists and Specialists the teaching profession represented by the former Educators Association as a chair is determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective buying relative to all civil clerical employees the Florida school system and

by the forward Department of Civil Service clerical employees Association as the chair is determined the local session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee national awards chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collector bargaining relative to all cafeteria employees the forever school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal

Employees Council 93 Local 11 18 is a chair is determined at a possession 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 the forever school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 local 1118 as the

chair is the tune that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective buying relative to all custodial employees in the former school system represented by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees local 93 I'm sorry Council 93 Local 11 18 is the chair is determined

that an open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National Law chapter 38 section 2183 to discussion strategy with disrespect to collect the bargaining relative to all safety security employees of the former school system represented by the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees Council 93 Local 11 18 is the chairs to attend an open session may

have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National voice chapter 38 section 21 A6 to this to consider the purchase exchange lease of value of real property located at 2501 South Main Street Fall River Mass as the chair has declared that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on a negotiating position of the school committee National Law chapter 38 section 21a2 to

conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiation with non-union personnel and or to conduct contract negotiation with non-union Personnel including Lori obachane assistant superintendent of special education Jacob Herrera Fred TV media editors instructor Jenny Guzman Gonzales home visitor family support specialist we would reconvene there may message statements at that time

uh can I get a motion in a second to go into executive session it's almost second I have a motion second Deb please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes yes Miss Pereira yes Mr Rogers yes yes

just came to my attention that I think we have a position that was on the agenda to create a new job description so I think we addressed it in the executive session but we haven't accepted the job the new language in the job description so I'd like to make a motion that we approved that the data um the conversion conversion of the data position it's numbers job description it's number seven on the agenda do I

have a second second discussion Deb please call the roll Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes anything further come before the committee Mr Mayor Mr hot a motion to approve the executive session minutes for October 17 2022 regular school committee meeting second sorry okay got a motion second eight discussion Test please call the roll

Miss Dragon yes Mr Bailey just laugh it up with me yes Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Mrs Pereira yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes Mr hot motion to approve the executive session minutes for the October 25th 2022 technology subcommittee meeting second I have a motion in a second any discussion Deb please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harm yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira

yes Mr rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes Mr hot motion to approve the frea mou has negotiated second I have a motion a second any further discussion Deb please call the roll Mr Ikea yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Mr RV yes is Pereira yeah Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes come here Mr heart motion to approve Lori obenchain as negotiated for assistant superintendent for special education I have a motion in a second

Deb would you please call the roll Miss Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Miss Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Mr Rogers yes mayor Kruger yes anything further Mr yes Mr Mayor a motion to approve Jacob Pereira as negotiated for Fred okay I have a motion a second Deb Mr AG yeah yes Mr Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Ms rodericks yes mayor Coogan yep one more

One More Mr heart motion to approve Jenny Guzman Gonzalez as negotiated for home visitor family uh specialist support specialist the second I have a motion in a second Deb please call the roll Mr agar yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes Mr Mayor Mr Mr agya sorry I'd like to also make a motion based on the other vote that we approved the job

description for the SEL integration specialist as an essanon that's a job description that was on the agenda okay just a job description we're waiting for a second second I have a I have a motion and a second Deb would you please call the roll hold on hold on Mr S9 contract as an S9 contract has modified to be an S9 contract that's modified to be an S9 contract I have a motion a second Deb please yes

Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr your heart yes Miss larvy yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes let me think further Mr agya I'd like to make a motion that we approve the original position that we talked about the data conversion as an S not as modified according to what attorney Assad recommended second I have a motion a second on amending the data collection anything further on that one Deb would

you please call the roll let's drag him yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes anything further to come before the committee I'll entertain a motion to adjourn still moved Dad please call the roll Mr Egg yeah yes Mr Bailey Larry yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes adjourned