12.12.2022 Fall river School Committee

I want to call to order the December 12th Monday 2022 Finance meeting at Durfee High School Deb please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey Mr harp here miss laravey here yeah Ms Roderick yeah here at this time Miss Rogers is joining us by Zoom for the finance meeting We Salute the flag please foreign

pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings of Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unreceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible um is there any citizens

item number three Committee of the whole is discussion and vote to refer the HVAC and lighting improvements to various schools as presented by Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer Mr pachico

good evening everyone we have a team from ameresco here to answer your questions and we have handed you a document some of which is part of the document that was previously given to you at the last meeting but there are some pages in here that address the finance piece of this and I'll ask them how Myers from amaresco to uh come up and give you a a brief presentation

true thank you Ken and thank you to the finance committee subcommittee to uh having us in here uh this evening we appreciate your your time and as Ken had mentioned we were here last month before the whole school committee and we were asked to come back to the finance subcommittee to um uh basically obviously talk Finance so um as Ken mentioned also you have a PowerPoint which is very similar to what

we went through last last session so I'm not going to really go through Slide by slide and really try to uh because I'm sure you have other things going on as well in your finance committee sub meeting here so I wanted to just uh touch on the

um I brought some of my folks here today our ameresco team uh director of development and his assistant as well as uh VP of finance and also our VP of sales and again my name is Hal Meyer and I'm Amer esco's account manager for the city of Fall River and uh I've been doing this with Fall River since 2008.

and just by way of reference Fall River was one of the first communities to go out for bid for an energy Management Services contract such as this and that was back in 2008 when governor Patrick signed the green communities Act and we've done now four phases of of projects with Fall River this would be uh we skip phase five this will be phase six so I wanted to just basically just just

really draw a couple differences I know a lot of folks aren't really familiar with Energy Management Services Contracting but it's really not much different than just traditional plan and spec like your msba project for the Durfee High School here the only difference is that was procured under Mass Law chapter 149. this energy management server and which is administered by the msba and then this

program is administered by Department of energy resources and it's considered chapter 25A and some of the key differences between chapter 25A and chapter 149 is in large part it's a financial difference as well whereas chapter 149 is low bid plan and spec chapter 25A is design build paid in whole or paid back in part by Energy savings the other difference with chapter 149 chapter 25A is filed sub-bids there's no

such thing as filed sub-bids I don't know how how many folks know about how file subjects work they don't typically work all that well because what happens is the general contractor which is what AM rescue would be on this project uh amaresco can choose the subcontractors in conjunction with the city and the school department whereas chapter 149 as what happened with Durfee High School

the general contractors picked and then he or he or she the general contracting company inherits if you will all the low bid filed subcontracts and they have no say about it they they can't say well I don't want this contractor I don't want that material that they're going to supply it's all in the planet specs anything any deviation from the plan and spec is going to be a change order which

is a word that we don't use in chapter 25 a so chapter 25A everything's built to the available budget and and there are no change orders that those some of the primary differences between chapter 25A and chapter 149 foreign and basically when we bid these projects we bid them thank you we we bid them with um per the RFP that was written that was administered by the department of energy resources their bid with fixed

multipliers for services as well as for overhead and profit so at the last meeting when Miss Aguilar mentioned how do we make our money well we make our money just like a general contractor makes their money on any other building project I'm building a project I'm I'm doing addition on my house right right now and um I picked a general contractor and we are going with a it's an open book Cost Plus

project because that's what I'm used to doing so he signed a contract with me and he's marking his um his subcontractors which I'm picking in conjunction with him and he's going to mark up um the project 12 plus 10 for profit in in contrast to the city of Fall River Project amaresco's offering to the city to the schools is a overhead of 12 percent and a profit margin of eight percent

and importantly too and it's just a very subtle difference between us and our major competitors are some we're not a household name our major competitors are household names like Honeywell Johnson Controls Siemens those are those are our three main competitors and we tend to win most of the projects um from them because our overhead and profit tends to be somewhere lower we are the largest independent Energy

Service Company in North America I want to point out we have a corporate office in Framingham we have over 100 people there in addition to the half a dozen people I brought tonight we have a hundred people back in the office that are also going to support this project but the point being is that we're an independent we don't represent any product or service and we're able to uh

bid our projects at a lower overhead and profit than our much bigger competitors um they're bigger not in the Energy Services Marketplace but they're bigger in terms of their products and their services offerings so having said that um again I just want to cut right to the chase the way we make our money is like a general contract that makes the money we pay our subs we pay for the material

we market up 12 for overhead and we don't compound the overhead and the profit which a lot of companies do so I don't know if you know what that means but basically they'll they'll calculate the overhead then they'll they'll tack on the profit we basically add them up separately so we'll take all the direct costs put an overhead on it take that sum add it to the same sum with an eight

percent markup on on the profit side and there is one slide in the presentation that shows kind of how that works I think it's slide slide 10.

and basically this is all this comes right from the from the RFP document there was a table in the RFP document that had us fill out um these dollar figures in a an example format so this this project is 15 million dollars and you can see how the numbers basically add up so I I misspoke a little bit before where not only is amarusk a general contractor we're also the developer and the engineers for the

project so unlike again drawing analogy with Durfee High School you basically had a general contractor you had design Engineers both for mechanical electrical Plumbing so forth and so on architect all those things are done by amerasco so we are more than just a general contractor and we're providing Engineering Services as well as construction Management Services

Oh and before I forget another key item unlike again not to compare everything with Jersey high school but I can only imagine how many years Durfee High School wasn't the planning and then ultimately the build I'm pretty sure it took over a decade to get everything accomplished whereas with chapter 25A it's a much more streamlined and quick process in particular that's very important here with the Esser funding

there's certain deadlines in order to capitalize on on the grants and with a chapter 149 project at this day and time I don't think there'd be a possible way to do the bidding you know the plan inspect the bidding process the filed sub-bids and get a project built in operational uh by 2024 which is what's required uh by the uh by the yester Grant

that's really all I have if you have any questions on how the finances come together be happy to happy to address that any questions

sorry yeah yeah we just got this today so I'm trying to read it as I'm listening as well the uh when I first mentioned the last time I always heard you a company is Just Energy savings and this sounds more like just you're gonna be a contractor the Energy savings piece of this is not necessarily um the major part of it is that a big difference than what you typically did

for the city that our our business basically our business is to find as much Energy savings as we possibly can to address the cap a lot of folks think about these projects being Energy savings projects they they are but they're really it's really the way I see it anyway it's really another way for the city any school department in the anywhere to kind of keep up with their building stock I mean

there's just no way that you can do it with the available funds that you have this is just another way to kind of formulate you know the msba has a way to formulate funds to help out Fall River uh Energy savings under the chapter 25A is a way that we can help help facilitate improvements of the building so it's really a it's really um missed out you are just just it's

very similar to a construction it is a construction project just has to be paid for in slightly different ways than a traditional construction project would be paid for so we're not paying the fifth whatever you said it was 15 million the good news about the 15 million it's coming from the s s or Grant unlike most projects that we do because the way the law is written is that the project

must be paid for in whole or in part by Energy savings so you can contribute a dollar of Energy savings or you can contribute 14 million dollars of capital and the good news about this project is that the Esther is going to cover the whole normally the Energy savings would be like kind of like the mortgage payment so normally like on my house I got to pay now an additional mortgage for my

addition on my house whereas if I did an energy savings project like the last four phases that we did with Fall River the Energy savings paid paid the mortgage payment if you will so why wouldn't we just do it the way we did it before then why is it beneficial for us to pay the whole thing now if you're telling me we have I'm looking here something like 3 million somewhere I read in here so why

would we you're saying we had the option to not pay the three million and take the Energy savings but you want us to pay the whole thing ahead of time well what what are you getting you're getting an extra Grant so you could you could use the Energy savings to pay it back but the Energy savings could now be used for educational purposes so you don't need to use that Energy savings to pay back

but what if we don't get the Energy savings I think that's the part that I'm missing sounds like you're guaranteeing three million dollars and the all this program is also oftentimes referred to as guaranteed Energy savings projects so we guarantee that the city of Fall River will get roughly 165 000 a year that 165 000 a year is not enough to pay back if you will a 15 million dollar

Capital not that you have to pay back but if it was a regular project that was 15 million dollars there wouldn't be enough um Energy savings to pay back that that loan but we we we do this all the time where there's a number the other contributing factor to this Mr Aguilar is going to be a utility company rebates we have about three quarters of a million dollars worth of retailer rebates coming towards

the project as well and that we also seek out there's likely going to be other grants that we can come across once we're in the design phase and in implementation phase can you tell me where in this document what you just said is in here I'm missing oh the utility rebates why don't we have that if we quantify that in here that might not be in here Michelle that might only be in the in

the Pro former which we actually brought that with us tonight this is the actual design uh this is the investment grade audit document that forms the basis of the of the design of the project I think it's a lot of money I mean personally I think this is a lot of money when you look at somewhere in here it says people on our team who are here uh looked at this yeah look the director of Maintenance

the guy was working on all these is he here tonight no he is not Mr um pachico who is the CEO is the one who um is leading the project so if I could just take about 10 steps backwards and say the street light project for the city of Fall River was done through ameresco the entire project was x amount of dollars for which we knew we were going to save roughly three hundred thousand

dollars a year in this business they call it low-lying fruit to the reap the return on investment is quick it happens instantly there were some projects like the rooftop units at City Hall an amaresco project the rooftop units are a long payback 45 years 35 years 25 years you're going to get your money back but it's going to take that long to get it so you take a project and you Cobble

it all together the low-lying fruit with the long lead time put it all together and come up with a project that works for about a 20-year Payback the city would bond for this so Easter money is there which is not forcing the city to borrow because I will ask would be to the city of Fall River I need you to bond 15 million dollars so we can do this work

with the ease of money we don't have to do that so we're going to see those savings on our side and in turn free up money that we currently are using to pay energy costs and allow us to use it for other things in the district so the 15 million dollars is for all of the equipment and all of the labor to do all of this work that's listed in this um document but it's not

we're going to pay this 15 million dollars whether ameresco comes on board or not because it's a construction project what we're getting with this project is the analysis that's going to show us what our savings are and that amaresco guarantees those savings as a guarantee it's every one of the projects that have been done I'm not quite sure what phase we're on so phase six this is the sixth time we've put

together these projects most of them are on the city side and I can say that when it was on the city Side we didn't offer a lot of these projects to the school department because there was no value to the city to do that because at the end it was just going to increase the amount of money that the city is going to actually spend on this side of the Ledger as opposed to

the other side if we save a dollar on electricity we get to spend a Dollar Plus because that other cost is already into the into the mix so on this side of the house if we're able to fund this without going to the city the city wins because we're investing 15 million dollars into our buildings that eventually they would have to borrow without a doubt all the things we're going to do Henry Lord

is not eligible for another year for an hour for an ARP project which was just put on hold indefinitely so then msba can figure out how they're going to pay for these projects because the costs are rising so quickly so right now I have no other option but this the Henry Lloyd I have no other option for Talbot none so whatever we don't do through ameresco or through Easter is not going to get

done until it becomes a 9-1-1 and we have to do it so we'd end up doing only what we have to do this allows us to take a whole package of energy saving improvements and get something out of it and pay for it and not have the city borrow 15 million dollars to get there and the city would have to pay because of the con the indirect costs or anything over 150 000 exactly so this so

This stops us from going there and I know that that's been a goal as to how how the committee the school department can help on the city side and here's an opportunity for us to put those dollars to work we gain by making those improvements to two of our more difficult buildings to get funding for repair money to buildings who need an awful lot of TLC and while we're doing that

you know saving money and putting the Ace of money to work what it was meant to do so what I was mentioning is it says he had a site review with Ken's team Mandy Jessica Kevin G they've already walked through the buildings so that the site review was um all of those people including others has walked with with amaresco to the buildings walked through looking at the rooftop units looking at the equipment in the

buildings looking at the electrical systems each and every time Mike Keller here who's here with does all of that you know pre-walk and pre-walk through with um with our people to be sure that what they think is going on in the buildings is actually going on taking an inventory of the equipment we have the age of the equipment the wear and tear on that equipment and taking a look and

see what kind of replacement equipment we can we can put in our buildings so these folks that were here that are people on the ground yes they 100 agree with all of these projects that this is the best way to go I think every one of those people agree with that the two neediest buildings in the city of in a school department are these two and these improvements are going to get us

to where we need to be in both of these buildings I was what I was asking though is what types like for instance the Talbot we've talked about whether electric is good enough so we're talking about an expert in that in any way so we're talking heat pumps now because we know that we can't be guaranteed to get a gas service in that building and the cost of doing a retrofit in that building with gas

because the building's electric right now so it's piping um it's a a boiler room that needs to be fabricated it's a lot of work to change that building from what it is to what it would take in order to get that kind of system so this is a heat pump system for Talbot that'll Supply heating and air conditioning without all of that extra work and the electrical system is sufficient

in that building to be able to do a project like this Henry Lord on the other hand is in a different position Henry Lloyd has conventional boilers in it which we just renewed it has a cooling tower that needs to be replaced with a chiller that work is going to happen as part of this project to bring that building to a point with heating and cooling new rooftop units windows at Henry Lloyd all

of those items are in this energy management system that will fall under this project and whatever amount of money you have listed for Talbot isn't enough to do a conversion there's been an analysis of that though it wouldn't be it wouldn't be right now we don't have the first of all we don't have the the ability to have the gas service in place before the Cinderella Clause of the Easter money

um times us out so we need to make that decision now and that decision is going to be more expensive and we can come up with that analysis but it is not the better way to go because bringing the gas service in is not going to get US Air Conditioning it's going to get us a heating system are there any deficiencies are there any like problems with that going to that

heat pump system is that it's not it's it's probably the technology um that we will be moving to in any building that doesn't have a full mechanical system and what does that leave us with the was this already budgeted within the asset funds it was as this amount was not close to this amount I think it was just a touch more than this but close to this amount and this is Esser

through the one that's running out this is when the gentleman was talking about it running out was that it's two and three I'm sorry Kevin just said two and three so it's combined yep which runs out at the end of this year 24.

and this will be very close um because some of the lead times on some of this equipment of 40 weeks 50 weeks so the sooner we get started with with the design work and again as Hal said the the fact that we're it's a One-Stop shop helps us out a lot because as the GC so to speak they can order that equipment now so if you've got a 44-week wait and you

order it now as opposed to 10 weeks from now by the time you do all the procurement to put everybody in place that's 10 weeks we're guiding on to the end of this thing and we start getting dangerously close to not being able to meet a deadline of September 24 when the Easter money times out the in the budget for us it shows what is which which one is which

we have a budget for two and three yeah I think it does yeah it's broken down yes the um you had said the savings was 165 000 and then how did he get to the 3 million at one point there's something in here I think I read that was three million sure so that's escalated over the 20 years typically we have a cost of inflation which we use through the 25A doer

process so that's through the cash flow and that gives you the three million dollars approximately and the money that the gentleman talked about some other reimbursement is coming from yeah so there's other incentives so if you have the incentives and the Energy savings we're looking at it probably closer to 3.5 million dollars over that term that we're talking about it's about 273 000 uh in projected

incentives on this and that just comes in the form of we don't have to pay the bill yeah so the way this whole the whole intent of this is there's no borrowing on this so when that money comes in that'll either be bought down or you can use that money to reallocate it like the savings for other things in other schools educational it's really up to the the district and how

you want to allocate those you're saying in a year we can count on 165 000 that's not something yes we have our engineering team that has put that together the analysis and we'll be sure year after year that we're looking at that to validate that and if it didn't happen that you guys typically we have uh the way their guarantee structure works is we have to guarantee the savings and we have a couple options if we

missed out savings we have to make adjustments so that it does meet that if if for some reason we can't do that then we typically write a check to make the difference but it's at our best interest to make those repairs and adjustments so we don't have to keep paying but we will monitor that on a year after year basis have you for the five years I think you've said this is

the sixth project or something Have you ever had to pay the city or is it always worked out it always worked out so you never have to write a check to the city so it does no not I haven't heard that I mean we write checks like anybody else we've been doing this for 22 years but the whole idea is you want to be able to put your um company behind your guarantee and that's what we're

willing to do if I could just jump in there one because that's a good question um so we're talking about 665 dollars today with the rates today with a with a modest you know um escalator but if if the rates of electricity rates Jump by 42 percent as predicted then we can't guarantee a 42 hike so if we're using 100 kilowatt hours and after savings we're supposed to use 75

and we're using 75 but the rate has gone through the roof the dollars are not there the savings is still there as far as what what we were doing so you'd get hit with that no matter what so 42 increase on the 100 is going to be a lot more than 42 on the 75 so we can guarantee the savings based on usage we just can't guarantee the dollar savings because we can't

control that piece and when the would you be coming back to this committee on a yearly basis this whenever you do that analysis yeah so we can the The Proposal what we're going to do is we're going to keep the committee updated on where we are throughout the project because it's such a large project and and that kind of undertaking I want the committee to know if we order a rooftop unit and they tell

us it's 32 weeks you're going to know it's 32 weeks we'll give you that analysis as to where it lands and how we're going to work around that analysis but we will also give you those yearly savings as they do their work each year their audit in order to be sure that they don't owe us money and that what they said is being delivered so we will you will see that absolutely great thank you very much

are you Mr Harvey yes just quickly um so we all know me this is a huge project right there's four schools it's going to take a long time so my question is what if you know issues arise and we have to go over the 15 million what happens at that point or has that ever happened that's that's a very good question so again this this this whole project is open book Cost Plus so we basically get

our bids we buy our material um and we share that with the city and the school department and then we pick what material we're going to buy and what contractor we're going to pick to install it assuming that they all came in within you know we have a scheduled values that we first create and then we we seek to match that schedule values every step of the way but good point if

if it goes over then we have to either we've got to figure something out you know either either we've got to change our our approach or we've got to uh come up with some more money so I mean for starters um the rebates that are coming from the utility company that's that's like that's free money so we have in the past like we did with the street lights when when that one we got three

quarters of a million dollar rebate and when the rebate came in we used that rebate money to to provide additional um work scope uh to the city at that at that point right so we wouldn't have to go back and ask for more s or money I mean it we're not even sure that they'd be extra money available right I don't know if he could ask a picture of money all right so we'd

have to adjust with the cost saving money that you said would go back into the district well that's that that's Energy savings money right and that and again the good news about this project is unlike almost every other project we do the guaranteed savings number is what pays back the loan but here there's no loan so that that guaranteed savings number um not that it doesn't matter much but

it's the bank is not looking for that number um you know that that number and like Ken said too the once utility rates go up that number is going to be even bigger uh right now we figure utility rates go up on an average of three percent a year but chances are they're going to go up a lot more in the next few years so that just takes that 165

000 and makes it a much much bigger number and as Ken mentioned too if you didn't do the project whatsoever now when you get an increase in rates now you get even more of a hit now you really now you're really in trouble okay thank you I yield Mr agya sorry I just had one question at the beginning you were talking about 25 a b whatever it was so was this

project not bid or was it just uh can you just explain how you got it how you absolutely right so it's it's not bid on a it's through an RFP process so it's not a low bid plan and spec kind of a a bid it's it's a it's an RFP and within the RFP there's a um for lack of a better word of table that that all the energy service companies

have to bid on they're going to say well how much do you charge to do engineering how much do you charge to do construction management how much do you charge to be a general contractor how much do you charge for profit and we fill out that whole table and then we put that in our proposal in response to the RFP so maybe this is a Mr pachico question but did anybody else uh

answer the RFP like how did we get to the point of so there were quite a few companies that enter the RFP it wasn't it wasn't a four of a school department RFP this was a city RFP looking for an energy Management corporation amaresco's been with the city since 2008. without any interruption but after a certain amount of time we chose to go out to bid again and maresco won the bid the second time

based on their numbers and their performance so that this contract is technically so that the bid process which is a through the designer selection board RFQ for qualifications along with their package their price proposal in their non-price proposal they came out as as the winner of that proposal the 25A allows amaresco to bid the entire project now and basically they come to us with that open book

they put put the boilers out to bid if they were boilers on this project they put them out to bid they say here's company a company B company C these are the installers of those boilers which one do you want there's a local in the middle do you want the local are you willing to pay an extra forty thousand dollars to keep the work local and that process happens through the whole

project so to speak every single thing gets bid out it's not that it doesn't get bid it just doesn't go through the formal 30. B process which is the time consuming piece of advertising putting it out to bid having it out to bid collecting the bids and awarding that's about a five to seven week process depending on how you do it that's totally eliminated they get the prices they're written then

they're legitimate prices from companies with the entire scope as they as they have listed it and that scope is is what we've asked for so to speak when they get that price that goes into the Ledger and we slowly but surely build the entire project with real companies so this is this is estimates this is their work that they do every day so they fill that this current number with those prices that they have

and then in turn that will eventually turn into hard numbers from different companies and then we move the project forward and just to go backwards just a tiny step from Miss laravee if the project comes over we would do what we do in any other project has Hal said we may have some money sitting aside some kind of contingency but we'd also do value engineering so we take a look at that and say

how can we change this scope if it's way out of whack how do we change this scope to make it fall into place and that work happens all the time on every construction project no matter how big or small there's always room for us to negotiate something with someone to get to keep those prices in line so the that was an answer to my question was this particular P all these four

schools everything has hasn't been bid yet by anybody to say we chose amaresco over somebody else they're 20 I think it was 20 profit is going to come on the whole product whatever those results are and you just get 20 of that basically yeah 12 for overhead and eight percent per profit and uh just if I could maybe just skip back one step because Ken bro something able to jog my memory uh the

good news too about um uh amaresco being the general contractor and again I think unlike the filed sub-bids where you know the contractors really don't talk we we uh we pre-purchase and that's another thing in terms of the time schedule we'll pre-purchase all large equipment so we don't leave that up to our subcontractors so so you'll save on sort of a double markup if you will and

when was the contract that you had with the city that Mr Potato said it went back out so you're good now for how long yeah uh well it went back out in 2019 uh um so there's uh be honest with you Mr ago there's not a lot of guidance from the AG's office or the inspector General's office for that matter in terms of what for chapter 25A what the what the length of procurement time is

uh the city just decided to kind of play it safe and and um and our initial uh contract was in 2008 so or the procurement was in 2008 and so we went probably another seven years uh before the RFP was renewed or Rewritten uh for oh no I understand I saw I was I I was just asking to see what it how it worked that you became part of this

because your name has been in the city for a long time and I've heard it for different things so I was just curious why yeah how do we get it and if somebody else comes to us and says well why didn't I get a chance to bid on that 15 million now we have an answer because oh sure yeah thank you I yield okay I'm looking for a motion to refer this to

the full committee motion to refer get a second second uh Deb could you please call the roll Mr Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes yes Miss Roderick yeah mayor Kruger yes I also want to announce that Bobby Bailey recently joins the meeting on on Zoom um we'll take about a one minute recess and go to the full meeting oh motion to adjourn motion motion let him call the roll please slipping

already let's try again thank you sir yes thank you yes Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes yes Miss Roderick yes mayor yes

foreign

I'd like to call to order the Monday December 12th regular meeting in the forever school committee Deb please call the roll yes try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yeah Miss laravey here Ms Pereira Ms Roderick here mayor Coogan here uh Mr Bailey and Miss Rodricks are joining us by Zoom salute to the flag please

yeah the number of people for Citizens input Nelson Vasquez Sunset Hill Fall River oh I'm sorry Nell give me a minute buddy pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or May transubmit the meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings of Transmissions are being made with a perceived or unperceived by those present and are

deemed acknowledged and permissible thank you Mr Vasquez yes um so wake up this morning there's a motion before you um I'm against it I don't think you should uh follow through because uh you know there's a lot of families out there that work second shifts and don't have the opportunity to participate uh in citizens input at this time because they work a second shift so you know to me that's just not how

everything's supposed to be we're going to set a message it should be that everyone should have the opportunity while we disagree or agree or disagree uh that's the whole purpose of citizens input who want as much participation in that as much as possible but instead of putting all this effort into removing a segment of citizens input the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and secondary

education has come out with a new statistics on our student population's performance and I have to be honest with you it's troubling and it's unacceptable for English and Mathematics grades three through eight partially meeting expectations for Science and Technology in English grades five through eight five and eight partially meeting expectations English and math grades 10. partially many

expectations and then finally for the same thing science and technology in English grade 10 partially meeting expectations we have this enormous budget for our school department so much funding has come down like we've never seen before let alone the high school phase if our students can't learn these basic skills in grades three through eight in math and English how are they going to succeed in high school

if they don't have the that's hype of Education we're failing them this is unacceptable yes I know there are certain factors that factor in with students with disabilities and other things playing around in the background but at the end of the day these test scores okay they get put into a system all around the country and every state is is factored in and when you look at these numbers I mean it's just

things need to change so instead of wanting to remove a segment of citizens input because you know with all due respect he doesn't like anyone who disagrees with him this is where the focus needs to be right here let's improve these scores so that the state doesn't take us over to do what this school department is failing to do and that is to educate our children so that they can be successful

that one that that needs to be the focus not this not these games of just wanting to silence people because he doesn't like what what uh what they say be was they disagree with him politically this needs to be folked this needs to be the focus because if we if we're failing them now they will be on the street corner and they will be in a jail cell and their Futures will be gone given the

violence that's taken over in our city this needs to be the Focus right here these these scores before the state takes action and that would be a very consequential picture for our city thank you Colin Dyess Ray Street thank you members of the school committee and Mr Vasquez great citizens input um very quickly on the jrc I hold the position we should not send any City money to that organization we

should instead send a message and not fulfill that contractual obligation we should vote no that is a good moral Master message we could send to the community that this city condemns torture and organizations that engage in torture clear as day and what and listen to the law school committee meeting what assurances do we have that another student won't be sent to that organization and seeing that individuals can sign

contracts then the school committee votes to fund them later and then they're basically armed basically tied behind their right behind them that they have to fund these contracts I think we should amend the policies to make sure that we never put the cart before the horse before anything like that ever again um and I also learned before the school committee today and I'm going to call a spade a spade there

is a proposed change to the citizens input rules a proposed change that is nothing but a Paul Coogan plot to suppress freedom of speech the mayor I guess and I just learned about this Sunday I guess the mayor wants to pull a fast one on the community to suppress dialogue of any opinion contrary to his and we should make it easier for the public to participate and depart in the process in public meetings not harder

that is the Democratic thing to do we should encourage the public to participate in school committee meetings or any meeting within the city of Fall River and to give their input on matters not make it more difficult the mayor is clearly taking advantage of the charter where you have to review citizens input rules every year this is just another example of the mayor following the charter only when it benefits him

written input submitted to these school committee meetings are a great tool for one parents of our community those who lack Transportation those who work second third shift and those who work full time to make ends meet things that this mayor wouldn't understand because he is so out of touch with everyday residents of this community this proposal in my opinion is politically motivated

and we see this happen time after time again when you oppose this mayor or anything he supports in any way the kind Mr friendly attitude goes into hibernation we've seen the mayor Resort the name calling political attacks elitist Behavior he's told his opponents to jump in the Titan River he ridiculed his opponents one sitting right here telling him to go buy a house just this Thanksgiving he called out his

political opponents saying their social whatever he said I think there's something wrong when you resort to dirty Politics on Thanksgiving of all days deranged Behavior I think the proposed amendment to Citizens input is just another dirty trick to silent speech that those in power do not agree with and I asked the school committee to vote it down thank you next ones are read by you Dave Robert

Camara Canyon Street Fall River dear school committee members as a Durfee graduate the father of two Durfee graduates and the grandfather of a recent Durfee graduate I want to express my opinion on the proposed elimination of written citizens input how can you as an elected body sworn up to Swan to uphold both the United States and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts respective Constitution

be considering an action that would limit the people's right to communicate their opinions feelings and positions on school issues part of the first article 5 of our Commonwealth's Constitution clearly states as follows all power residing originally in the people and being derived from them the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority whether legislative executive or judicial are

there substitutes in agents in our all times accountable to them how can you as our substitution agents at all times entertain a motion to eliminate any form of communication that can allow the will of the people to be heard after all you were elected to serve the people not the school system you were elected to be our voice our Watchdogs so to speak so I ask simply don't you want shouldn't

you want as much input as possible before you before you make decisions that impact the people you are elected to represent I would think so in closing I would use the profound words of our forefathers to remind us all why this proposal should not be supported governments are instituted among men driving their just powers from the constant of the governed should you not allow every possible

method available to determine the will and thereby the constant of the people you represent I would think so respectfully Robert Camara 127 Canyon Street Fall River next is Jeff goudreau Palmer Street forever good afternoon school committee board since this is the last month of the New Year I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a happy holiday I see on today's agenda the mayor is trying to pull

by proposing to remove written citizens input from the rules of the school committee this is the 21st century the old time thinking of making people have to come before the school committee to give their input is integrated I do not have always antiquated adequate I'm sorry adequate transportation to come to this meetings I often work during the day or night changing the rules how is he proposing

affects people like me I love giving my input on school committee matters the same way I would give to give you my input on city council issues I believe the mayor wants to make this change too so I personally feel he's doing this intentionally in my opinion he wants to change the rules the rule change is politically motivated the city council should adjust their rules to match the school committees not the

other way around if we the citizens who submit input said things the mayor agreed with 100 of the time he wouldn't want to get rid of the written input no doubt in my mind we should make it easier for City residents to be involved in government Affairs not hotter let's respect and honor the right of right to freedom of speech and let's cherish it what's the ma what the mayor is proposing is not

Democratic like I said we have those who work second shift cannot make it to these meetings in parents this proposal is elitist and two politically motivated to stop the mayor's opponents please do the right thing and let's put this aside thank you Jeff jandro 229 Palmer Street next CJ Ferry Buffington Street Fall River members of the school committee it has been brought to my attention that the

Fall River school committee wants to restrict written citizens input the written citizens input was the result of a Massachusetts commission against discrimination complaint filed against the city of Fall River the city was represented by Joe Macy and Gary howack the complaint resulted in a mutual agreement that citizens input would be allowed for public body meeting to accommodate those with physical

emotional or other disabilities while the chairman of your school of your committee may feel that it is the right of the school committee to censor the voices of the people a decision to restrict citizens input will result in another complaint with the Massachusetts commission against discrimination I hope that this committee will see through this attempt to deny the people he deny the people the right to be heard

thank you for your time and consideration in this matter CJ Ferry next up is Melissa Machado Bay Street Fall River good evening I'm going to make every effort to attend the meeting in person unfortunately this is a very busy time for me professionally so I am not sure that will be possible in regards to the issue of the judge ronburg Center I did submit my input on the topic during the

prior meeting where it was discussed since the topic has come up I have done some research the institution is for people with developmental disabilities emotional disorders in autistic-like behaviors using aversive punishment to actually cause pain to a human being to stop behaviors some as benign as not wanting to take one's code off this facility utilizes an electric shock device called graduated electric

electronic accelerator this device is attached to a student's body using a remote control one can give an electric shock to set patient according to the autistic advocacy.org people have been shocked for flapping their hands a common tendency for those on the Spectrum when they are over stimulated or even just excited standing up not taking off a coat involuntary noises or movement or

even screaming in pain from a prior shock geds can cause Burns to skin and make someone unable to move it can scar people to the point where they can get mental health disabilities from them jrc is the only place in the country that uses these devices the same person in one of these facilities in another location is treated without aversives especially with geds the FDA banned these devices in 2020.

jrc in turn sued them to be able to continue using these devices this treatment is inhumane and unacceptable autism and being on the spectrum is not a choice I have loved ones on the Spectrum and today I am speaking for them and for any of the people unfortunate enough to land at jrc I oppose this treatment this facility and the city using my money to pay for the children punishment of people who need

help not punishment I implore the committee to speak to seek any means necessary to see that no child from this city is sent there listening to someone speak last night last meeting I'm sorry she said resources were an issue in time scrambling to find someone a placement is difficult while I do not envy anyone in the position to make such decisions I for one would prefer to pay OT for people to work to find these

children placement to be able to be treated and able to thrive instead of just accepting cruel punishment because there are no other options I ask that you deny any placements to jrc and remove this child as soon as humanly possible so that he or she is not subject to even more trauma at their hands one last note I understand that mayor Coogan wants to eliminate the opportunity for citizens to send in

written citizens input for these meetings this is not a monarchy this is a democracy a professional should not have their feedback unheard due to not being able to be physically present I hope that the committee denies this request and encourages citizens to be active in local government thank you for your time Melissa Machado 1025 Bay Street Melanie Melanie Rondon Lincoln Avenue Fall River

good evening my opposition to the placement of any child in the in the judge Rottenberg Center is clearly echoed by the community in general and by members of this committee as such I don't feel it's necessary to reiterate the many issues surrounding this institution however the responsibility of this committee despite any moral objections this body may have as a whole or in part by individual

members is to uphold contractual obligations as required by the law and protect this district from incurring any additional costs via litigation for failing to abide by the terms of any contract it is financially irresponsible to withhold payment to any vendor intentionally I would argue a key function of this body is to impartially uphold contracts and especially to ensure the district incurs no additional

expenses for failing to carry out this Duty that being said it is time to examine why this facility is the only option for placement for of students with needs of this degree this population is clearly the most vulnerable in our community and deserve the highest level of care delivered by competent and compassionate professionals the judge Rottenberg Center does not deliver the care we rightly expect for

our highest need individual individuals it is time for all members of our community opposed to this torturous techniques of the judge Rottenberg Center to demand better care and treatment than that institution provides there is no cure for this facility and its abuse of the population is solely serves it's an outrage but it that this is the only option for this type of treatment Massachusetts is well known for

outstanding Health Care let us come together and demand this outstanding Health Care be provided to every citizen of the Commonwealth especially those with disabilities as long as there is as long as there is no alternative the judge Rottenberg Center will continue to exist Fall River school committee withholding payment will not affect the judge Rottenberg Center it's likely to cause additional and

unnecessary expense expenditures to Fall River most of all it's not a solution let's turn this detention and momentum into finding an actual solution Melanie Rondo 71 Lincoln f thank you Deb tonight we have no recognition Awards we have no subcommittee updates number five superintendent's report superintendent pond thank you Mr Mayor so uh first uh hiring update as of November 1st we have hired

10 teachers two administrators 16 pairs um eight s9s for custodians um 11 cafeteria workers and five Subs with a total of 56 new hires for the month which is very good however on the other side of that we have lost 11 teachers we have lost two pairs one custodian one Coda one cafeteria worker and one nurse for a total of 17 staff that we have lost we also have an update for the holiday

fundraising committee on Thursday November 10th the holiday wish committee hosted its annual fundraiser to support Fall River Public Schools the event was organized by Cindy Kudo and Claudia Costa from cities from the pace our schools and departments donated themed baskets which were raffled off and raised considerable amount of money also local businesses stepped up in a huge way and donated funds towards the

events in all between ticket sales and donations approximately 17 thousand dollars you heard that right seventeen thousand dollars was raised and turned back to our children every school has identified students who would benefit from this worthy cause gifts are in the process of being purchased and will be distributed to families in time for the holidays we are grateful to miss Kudo Miss Costa and every single person

who donated or took part in this very worthy cause we currently know that their generosity will brighten some Spirit um many many spirits this holiday season and without a yield thank you excellent Miss kudo um any questions or comments Mr comment on the hiring like I hear what you're saying about um we hide a lot but when I look at the list of jobs that are open it's a daunting task

for anybody to fill these positions but I just don't I don't know what we can do about it but that list gets you know one day last week I think there was almost 30 jobs that got posted to the same day I don't know if that's just are they reposting to get them quicker or something but it just seems like it's it's unbelievable how many job openings that we have but

with that said I'd be remiss if one of them just sticks in my side that back in March or April we made a motion to pass a Labor's position in the maintenance department and you know this has been an issue for me for many many months and it still hasn't happened and I I just when I see all these openings and I see people some of them you need to be

qualified for this and that and we can't find somebody but when I see that we can't hire a laborer in six months it to me it's just something that doesn't sit well so whatever you can do to get that rectified I know we did also pass a rule to put people in the um like a student or you know younger people is a tryout to make them at least minimum wage see how they go I think

that's a way to get some people in as a trial basis in certain positions but whatever you can do for that I'd appreciate it with that I yield absolutely okay thank you we have two sets of minutes that need approval tonight seven one is an instructional subcommittee meeting and 7.2 is approval of the regular school committee meeting from 11 14 the instructional subcommittee is from 11 7.

can I get a motion to approve most emotional proof second Deb could you call the roll Mr again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira Miss Rodricks mayor Coogan yes we have a number of travel requests approved travel requests any discussion I have a motion that's roderick's second Mrs Modric seconded it any discussion on travel one Mr agya another one that just uh the first one

about going to Mount Hope for a wrestling meet I think we should look at some of our policies this is just a high school that just they drive over to like it just seems to me to be a waste I almost every meeting now we come up with something that's a waste that I think that would be one I don't know if that's a policy change or is that just a

superintendent I for one think that if you if the high school needs to schedule a meet in Rhode Island then schedule the meeting why why would we need that but that's just my opinion however that could go I agree with that I yield I agree um is that just a simple policy change so that's what we actually have had that internal conversation because that's come up um there was an opportunity for

kids to go to Rhode Island for instance to do a scrimmage and if they're not if that doesn't come in in between meetings then that's not an option but because it's in the policy I think that we have to amend the policy we so we were we wanted to bring it either to the policy subcommittee or have this committee create some sort of um radius so that students would be we

would be able to um bring them I mean we can bring them to Springfield two hours away without coming to committee but we can't bring him to Tiverton why don't we just bring them to why don't we just include Rhode Island Massachusetts and Rhode Island because that's most of them Connecticut is and we can approve that okay does anybody want to make a motion make a motion that we include Rhode Island and

Massachusetts for the team travel or tonight second travel Motion in a second any further discussion Mr just real quickly that's fine Rhode Island as well but I mean when it goes beyond Rhode Island like New England is there is there any difference between August going to Rhode Island and us going to Connecticut or New Hampshire or well we would have to any anywhere else we'd have to bring it

to a travel station no I understand that right right okay we're just gonna for now we're going to conclude that's fine I'm just thinking I think the overnight is also that's the thing the further away you go the overnight becomes like a different vote they're up in Maine it's overnight well it doesn't have to be overnight I mean I've played at SMU we've gone to Maine in one day and back

but it's no big deal I I'm fine with Rhode Island that's why Deb you want to call the roll on that Miss drag yeah I guess Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks mayor Kruger yes acceptance of donations

oh I'm sorry you're right could I get a motion promotional I have a motion second to have call the ball please Mr agya yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks mayor Coogan yep um I have a few donations here tonight can I get a motion and a second motion to accept can I get a second second I have a motion second any discussion on donations

Deb please call the roll Mr agap yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Mr rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes contracts we have a number of oh I'm sorry boy go ahead Maria donation okay donations from Stop and Shop supermarket company to follower Public Schools um we accept um the amount of 1440 and that was to cover costs for um our students and families attended a

game in June at Fenway Park we just received the check which is why it's on today also from Saint Anthony of the desert Church to Watson Elementary School on behalf of principal Hogue she accepts 30 frozen turkeys and 30 boxes of side dishes that were donated to her families and from Home Depot to Green Elementary School on behalf of Dr Dunn a donation of a Christmas tree from Walmart in

Fairhaven to Green Elementary School on behalf of Dr Dunn 200 sugar cookies donated to Green school and from United Methodist Church green element two Green Elementary School from Dr on behalf of Doc Dunn she accepts four Thanksgiving dinners that were donated to Green families thank you everyone thank you superintendent number item 10 is an approval of contracts we have a number of them in

front of us and as we usually do if someone has one they want to pull out I think we should pull them out and if anybody has any suggestions on listening number one and two okay thank you one and two anything further good government connection down I don't know what number it is what is that on the first page first page the first second page no oh okay anything further and I'm sure we're

going to pull the judge Rottenberg both of those okay I'm trying to say that over here I'm not sure if anyone can hear me it's on the second page okay so I got the judge Rottenberg Center on the second page anything on the second page okay so can we get a motion in a second to approve the other contract motion to approve second I have a motion second Deb call to roll

Miss Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr hopp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes we have four holds item one is evolve Technologies Mr agya I just was curious if it's being used daily if there's any issues and if even if you can't say it now if you get us something in writing that gives us an update but that's all I will say that

it's being used daily absolutely but we will get you an updated thing in the Friday email thank you emotional proof second motion a second discussion Deb please call the roll this drag yeah yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes next is ene systems Mr agya yeah I just had a question on this uh I read through the documentation

and it seems like the cost is going up tremendously over the five years but my question is about do we just pay them a blanket and they are responsible for the work or does it is it you know you fix it x amount of dollars an hour so there'd be money left over out of this 465. it's a fixed it's a fixed monthly bill so part of this contract is the

employees that come with it so the two e e technicians um Union Fitters and they perform work here every single day so they are here every day the school is in session they're here on vacation weeks and they're here in the summer and they're doing PM work on equipment that they are that's part of the contract so we attached a list of equipment that ene does take care of it's not at

every building but it's it's Lodge equipment quite a bit of it is out of date equipment um and that is all part of their contract so there's there's two employees that are part of this particular piece that are here 40 hours a week yes or more and when I see it on the bidhead it's broken up to holidays weekends like is that just a guess but we're paying them so

what what happens is the um there may be work that is not part of the contract so we ask when we put out the RFP to have an idea of what is costing us if I call them on a Sunday morning because a boiler went down it's one of the boilers that they may or may not be working on and it also may be a situation where I need action because school is going to

be in session on Monday morning and I don't have a backup boiler so to speak so the hourly wage is not necessarily um something that we we constantly use but I need a number because contractually it's all part of the contract so if I have them come in to do that extra work I'm not going out to bid to try to get that work done on an emergency a waiver from decam

so when I go through this list of what you have here for each school yes we don't have anybody that can do any of this work we have some of not this work but I do there's a lot that there's a lot of stuff here that's not listed that our people are doing our one person is doing and every once in a while a plumber will jump into that mix but we only have one HVAC person

um and this work is not in their wheelhouse not because of any reason other than the fact that this is Lodge work and um we are responsible for we are taking responsibility for some of the smaller work in the other buildings some of the newer equipment that the um I don't want to just say filters but filters Lube cleaning out the coils um that work is being done by our mechanic our HVAC mechanic yeah believe

me I'm not an expert on any of this stuff but when I look at what we're spending it seems like a lot of money I would love to have three or four HVAC mechanics they not to be had I'd love to have an I'd love to be able to fill the plumbing ranks so yeah we were able to do that we're locked into this five-year contract we're locked into the contract for a

variety of reasons as I said some of this work is Lodge piping we wouldn't do it in-house if the capacity is not there on our side the equipment the the um scaffolding so to speak everything involved in some of these projects on beyond our capabilities we need a company that does just that kind of work it's their wheelhouse so ene's been here for a long time not just because we didn't have Personnel to do

it but because some of this work is specialty work so as we strengthen the maintenance department slowly but surely we may be the next time this contract rolls around in four and a half years we may be able to pull some of this work away we may pull some of this work away with with the change in this contract at some point swapping out something else that comes along for instance the new

stuff that amaresco is putting in may fall into the realm of a little too big a little too intricate for our side and we'll swap it out for something else but if we were able to do the so let's just suppose we've got people that can do the work we would take away some yeah we would take away some of the PM work that Annie's doing and then how does it get compensated is

what I'm saying they well as I said we would right now I don't have the capacity so what what we've contracted for is what we'll pay however if we get to a point where we may have some technicians who are capable of doing some of this work then we would sit down with ene we have a long contract a long time relationship with E and and our contract this for the next four and a half years

we would sit down with them and see if we can renegotiate some of the items pull some items add some items whether we come even and I get other work taken care of my only concern is to be sure that you know all of these systems are up and running that that'll be between you know um Mr Monas and myself to take a look at our capabilities in-house and wherever

we can make that work we'll make that work so we get two two people full time and then there's other costs like there must be other costs so the two people full-time is their wage uh some of that material is is part of the project some of it isn't um so we do pay a material fee that's built into this also and then we also have the oversight of the equip the um

the uh operating system so that is maintained by them yeah when you said the two people and you put that in a writing the way my mind goes is two people six hundred thousand that means they get 300 000 a piece and I'm thinking myself we could if we were going to pay that kind of money we probably could get somebody we're paying people fifty thousand we paid to direct

to 75 000 like if we paid the real money could we to spend the 600 000 but then this escalates up to over a million dollars in the last two years that we are automatically paying and I'm saying why can't we do this some of this or at least and and we have and I'm gonna I'm gonna say to you that that we have done quite a bit of work we were on a roll

um to do more work except we just can't fill that second position right now with a person who has the ability to do this kind of work um it's a tough it's a tough Market because HVAC people are getting great money everywhere they go and these are union contractors who are working on this building because we operate paying prevailing wage so anybody who comes to work from the outside will be paid

prevailing wage we don't pay prevailing wage within um the district but we we do have to pay prevailing wage for all those who come and work in the district yeah and I understand what you're saying you're absolutely right if if we paid an HVAC mechanic a hundred thousand dollars a year we may have more office than we currently are getting more people applying that's a that's a big ask for a union

um to accept two or three members in the union making that kind of money yeah I just think the more we discuss it the more we look at it the reality is we're paying somebody else rather than paying our own employees who could do the work in-house I don't think we pay the people that are too talented and doing it enough but they're never going to get paid enough if we take the work that

they would get paid that much money and give it to somebody else that's that's sort of my feeling and I'm not opposed to it I know they've been here for a long time but it just bothers me that sometimes I don't think we're holding our own people to high enough standards where then we could get some of this stuff done so I personally have high expectations I think Mr monus is

doing a great job and he can do some of this stuff or you know with his skill set and recruiting but if we lock people in we're kind of like we'll wait five years maybe we'll hire you so I'm going to vote for this but I also think something that we should look really hot at sure motion approved I have a motion can I get a second second I have a motion the second dad

could you please call the roll Mr aguyan yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larvy yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes next item held is uh under miscellaneous government connections Inc um ten thousand headphones District wide uh Mr Cabral what's the question what are they oh so this is just a yearly revamp on headphones over covid many of them broke up until this point we've not been able

to procure that number so we've been buying onesie twosies here and there but with MCAS and testing season coming up we just being prepared anything further Mr Mr agya yeah the number just strikes me as ten thousand that's there's a lot of headphones and I'm just curious of the use the need for it like what do we currently have why what are they using it for now and you know how many kids

and you said MCAS I mean so before how many kids on MCAS need headphones so before covid every student had a pair of headphones um and we're starting to dwindle down on that number because up until this point I can't procure that type of number ideally they're a dollar seventy five a piece they should be replaced every year the other option is to pay upwards of 27 a piece and

um with breakage right now we've been as a central staff we've discussed it we've gone back and forth it's just easier right now to replace the headphones most of the buildings do an excellent job of um policing the headphones and putting them in bags for the individual students this will also allow headphones at the high school level in the past we've done earbuds and it just it doesn't work

I guess I'm just missing what the need is instructionally for students to use headphones here like over and over I just we only have 10 000 students so 11 000 students right but if they're using we have lots of platforms if they're on a computer whether they're in kindergarten or fifth grade or 10th grade um they're using headphones so that they're listening to whatever so they might be at a station we're assigning

the headphones to the individual students so there it is they are I mean technology is being widely used across the district so we want to make sure that we have headphones for every student so it's our responsibility to get headphones for every student well it was our responsibility to give every student a Chromebook but so I'm saying nobody brings their own like we just need this many some some of the

middle and high school students use their own but I just have to be prepared because at a moment's notice a building can call and say Hey listen we need 30 more headphones I need 200 more headphones for testing some buildings create testing kits where they have them in the bags and they use them just for MCAS so the kids don't bring their headphones most of them are used for center-based learning in the schools so

that the kids have their their headphones in their bag when they go to their Chromebook and they're working they have their own headphones and what's the policy on breakage we gotta replace them um yeah we've been replacing to this point we've kind of chalked it up as a pencil or pen at this point but I mean if we want to look at something long term and go with a a more robust

headphone type then we would look at people being held responsible for something that much more expensive well we're going to have to spend eighteen thousand dollars a year on headphones so the last time we did this was two and a half years ago and I've been just kind of yearly sneaking in 500 to a thousand and replacing the the most damaged ones this time now we have to replace the

fleet because the buildings are all saying their headphones are ready to go yeah I think we should look at something emotional proof that's a good question yeah what is his uh question what are these questions what do these headphones look like are they Bluetooth or they plug in no they plug in okay so personally I would prefer students using then Bluetooth home and they can sit there and listen

to music or do whatever so I do think that it's important they're using ours and I do think it's our responsibility to provide them so if there's still a motion to approve I'll second that I got a motion a second please call the roll Mr argue yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harp yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes yes the other hold was on two uh two bills from the judge Rothenberg Center

um I I'd ask um Laurie obachane and Kristen Farris come down who made the site business visit to give us an update on what goes on up there if you would it'd be so kind thank you so we took a team from Fall River up to the judge rottenburg Center we wanted to specifically to ask them questions that you had posed previously to Kristen about their use of adversive therapy I mean specifically

the GED we also wanted to tour the facility to see what that was like and speak to the people on the ground to hear the process they have to go through the type of education the director provides over there as well as the clinical supervision that's um the oversight that's done at the center they were super welcoming we got to see many different classrooms they answered our hard questions and I think in the

summary that we provided you there is we explain the process that we that they would have to go through in order to utilize the J the GED it's important to know though they do not utilize that form of treatment on any children under the age of 22. although the facility is able to do so they can only do so if they have um first assigned and accepted IEP that specifically lists the GED

as a service or an accommodation in there so that would have to start with the Lea which is Us in order to even begin that process to move forward if a school district was to do that then they still have many other steps to go through which includes their own human rights committee review as well as Probate Court where students are given an independent attorney to represent them during that time the whole process

would take six to nine months but again it would have to start with us and I don't think that um we would ever want to move forward with that type of treatment with our students but other than that we saw some of the same things we see in our own classrooms we saw schedules routines positive reinforcement we saw students engaged in instruction on computers or in a weight room we saw the staff interacting with kids

the kids interacting with the staff um again we get to see the positive reinforcement that they utilize their school store their movie theater their game room they were really receptive to us and welcoming any type of questions that we had did I leave anything out Kristen I don't think so I do have something so to be clear any student from Fall River that went to this facility before they could use any

of these practices that some of these people have described as torture or electric shock they have to get a judge's order with the school initiating the request to perform it yes so there's nobody up there unilaterally deciding anything no without the help of I'm assuming the school the Guardians and a judge yes the IEP team starts and that includes the child's Guardian okay thank you mayor

um Miss laravey so that leads me hi hi so that leads me so our system has a say right we have a odd district has a say because of the IEP situation so you said um and let the the signed IEP with GED listing so how do we as a district uh ensure that we're not in the future going to sign off on something like that does that have to be in our policy does

that have to be because I will never want any I mean I don't support GED I don't want anybody going to this facility if they're going to be getting that sort of service okay so how do we ensure as a district that we have the ability to say no that would fall on myself and my team as your leaders in the district to for me to educate the supervisors that that

will should never be signed off on because the supervisors in Fall River are the ones the that sign off on the IEPs to make sure they're ready to go out so it would be education on our end and I would not want a supervisor working under me that would unilaterally make that decision without consulting myself so okay and we can never be overruled by DCF or the courts or so if we ultimately

do not sign off on this it doesn't happen yes thank you itself anything further yes so I can't see you I'm sorry shouldn't have a laptop thank you thank you Miss Pereira um thank you for touring the school for taking your time to do that I I kind of voted to table it and let that happen because I felt my colleagues up here wanted it to me what were you gonna see the bad

stuff probably not right they knew you were coming they showed you everything that was good and I'm sure the facility is beautiful but I you could live in a million dollar house but if parents are beating their kids that house isn't so beautiful right so I'm glad they have a movie theater and all that stuff and I'm glad they have um you know schedules up and it seems to be educationally they're being proactive um

but I didn't expect any difference now in that you had made it was a statement and I believe it was we got an email I believe it was like at the end and it was something maybe somebody else remembers it but it was in quotes and it said something about a DCF as far as placement went that if DCF places a child it is not contingent on her signing a contract is that accurate

yeah so with that being said let's say Mr Wolf she never signed the contract and DCF wanted to place that child there where would that child be right now there okay so this really doesn't have anything to do in this case because this isn't a parent this is DCF which is a guardian and certainly knows more about this child than I do than any of us do um so regardless if Mr and I think

that's important to know that regardless if Mr Lowe signed that contract or not this child is in the care and custody of the state and DCF trumps us correct so in addition to the visit I was asked to get legal guidance on our ability to withhold paying this contract that was guidance from our attorney with the language that you're referring to comes directly from the regulations that it is because he is

placed residentially through DCF we do not have a say in that piece and the contract is sort of just a thing right it's just like a piece yeah it's just a piece of paper it's more an acknowledgment on our part that DCF has notified that the student has been placed there and that we are aware of that we are agreeing to the contract however we are not um the agreement's not required in order

for us to have to be responsible to fund 50 of that placement right so basically whether we pay this bill or not we're going to be legally responsible to pay it whether we agree or not that this child should be placed there we don't have a say okay so I just wanted to make that clear to everybody out there I am not for GED therapy I've said that in the past two

meetings we've been talking about this since June not for it I also know that the best way to get that done is by making sure that Massachusetts changes laws something else I noticed in your document 200 and 97 total students they have 22 are from Massachusetts is that correct so this this no no so they have 297 total clients they they serve both um school-age students and adults and they

service 22 communities in Massachusetts okay but these students are all from Massachusetts no they have students from not only all over the country but from other areas as well and I from when I looked at the data it looked like more students were from out of Massachusetts than in Massachusetts not that that's totally relevant but I'm just saying this isn't a Massachusetts Fall River thing

um I don't agree with the therapy but there's two things that I'm concerned about number one is when we're talking about Healthcare and that's essentially what this is falling under we're talking about education right but the child is also placed there for healthcare needs correct mental health needs is that accurate I know you can't tell us what's going on with the child we don't even know the child's name or any

of the child's diagnoses but I'm pretty sure if that child was placed at jrc the diagnoses list is wrong and is not just on the Spectrum for autism fair I mean I think that's extremely fair to say and I know you can't say it well Apple would say so we have a child who's suffering from probably numerous Mental Health diagnoses we can't find a facility for him DCF is saying this is where this child

needs to go because we don't have anywhere else for him to go I mean I think this is great that we've had this conversation but I think the conversation really needs to be why don't we have more Mental Health Services for our youth why don't we have more facilities that could that can assist our youth why don't we make laws so that you just can't hire a staff member who's 18 to

come in and get paid 15 an hour with no mental health experience to that kids that's what the conversation should be that's not what we were elected to do and I appreciate the advocating that's coming from the body as I would love to do outside of my position here when I was elected to hire a superintendent evaluator superintendent pass policy approved curriculum approval budget I wasn't elected to tell DCF or a

parent how they're supposed to care for their child so it's a slippery slope if we're going to sit here and criticize or determine where a child should or shouldn't be placed as a school committee body not talking about YouTube you should be the ones inputting we don't know a child's name we don't know a name we don't have a diagnosis we have zero information so in my opinion we are 100 overstepping your

role we're overstepping the role of a DCF worker who I'm going to assume is doing her job about DCF workers these bad politicians there's bad teachers but I'm going to assume as a whole that this woman if she's a DCF worker has dedicated her life to the protection and care of children and that she is making or he is making the best or possibly only choice for this child I can't imagine this child is foster

care eligible based on a plethora of issues so yes I don't like the facility I think it should be closed down but if anybody in the community thinks that us not given them 176 000 is going to shut their doors no way it's not going to happen that's one kid DCF will cover that Force for that child and then they'll come after us for the money because legally were obligated to pay

for it of no fault of our own because AS school committee members we should not be making Health Care decisions about children that are not ours I certainly wouldn't want anybody to do that to me what's next we have a body of committee members who don't believe add exists and Adderall doesn't exist so we're going to tell nurses you got to stop giving it in school because we are morally feel like it's it's not good

we're overstepping as a school committee in my opinion again I do not want that to be taken as I'm okay with GED therapy I'm okay with this facility because I'm not and I have no problem speaking out against that but I think that is where we can Advocate as Shelley pirella mother and and the caseworker at the DTA versus Shelley Pereira who was elected to be on the school committee and I think that's important that we

understand what our roles are here and unfortunately you know even if I think people maybe misunderstand what our role is as a school committee and that's understandable I get it we had a whole meeting when I first got elected telling us what our roles are nothing on there told me I'm supposed to tell the special ed department where they're supposed to place kids it's not my job my job is to question it which we have

thoroughly we've thoroughly vetted this and I know we like to use the terms moral and ethics and morals and ethics and not black and white that's why this crosses in college on it it might be immoral and unethical for me to go steal food from Stop and Shop but if I'm homeless and my kids starving and I'm stealing food maybe some people think that's more because I'm feeding my

child so we can't sit here and use this kid as as as a as an object in our advocating for something we disagree with the advocating needs to happen it should happen not on our role as on the school committee but it should happen outwardly and I've expressed that interest to my colleagues that that's something I'd be happy to do but what my job is when I'm sitting up here is to pay a bill

so I I appreciate everybody's advocating I'm sure others have more to say and I'm sure others will disagree with me and that is fine but in my opinion the road has to stop here we have to pay the bill the advocating can continue but we can't make a policy that we don't allow kids to be placed there because if DCF wants to play something out we don't have a choice correct yes so we can talk

about it and Pat ourselves on the back like oh we're doing such a good thing nothing's gonna happen we can't do it so why don't we instead focus our energies on what we can do that's my opinion I am not I'm not going to vote to table this again today I'll tell you that I hope others can understand that there's other ways we can go about this and this isn't the way let's pay this

bill and let's find out different ways to advocate for these youth that are in facilities such as jrc with that thank you again for all your hard work I really do appreciate it I would value anything further uh Miss Rogers okay so first of all I found the comments to be extremely condescending and completely missing the point so I am going to say that it is well within our purview to make

determinations about what placements we are going to fund for our students no it's not relevant in terms of each particular student but if we're putting money into something that has to be something that we value the very beginning of the budget cycle we talked about we fund what we value is this what we can honestly say what we value I would like to think no and from what I understand from everybody here the the

idea is that no we don't agree with that we don't agree with and I have a hard time using the word therapy because this isn't therapy nor is it treatment that's being done I am aware that this vote is likely going to pass but I want to stress that even though the my colleagues are going to vote to uh um to pay for this contract that doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong but the

thought process behind it was definitely incorrect you're looking at a different perspective than I am and that's okay I can only do so much with my one vote but to say that we don't have purview in what we're funding we fund what we value we stood here and we said that at the beginning of the budget cycle and I'm going to continue to reiterate that I don't believe that we can in good

conscious fund a placement like this regardless of what DCF proposed and to say that we are fiscally responsible regardless yeah we are however a cost share is a collaborative process no one entity has the ultimate decision making Authority but that discourse didn't take place at the time that placement was proposed I'm aware fully aware of what the consequences are of not paying this tuition bill and I

maintain that those costs are absolutely worth risking for the sake of doing what is right for this kid I'm not willing to put one child at greater risk of harm by using a placement that's implementing forms of torture I didn't make that determination the United Nations the FDA and the autistic and disabled Advocates did no matter how shiny or bright or clean the facility might be it's still

actively engaging in practices that cause harm our student is still witnessing the torture of other students from other states in this placement yes it is 100 accurate that we have to go through all of these hoops in order to get a GED authorized for an IEP however that only applies to states that have put that in place Massachusetts is one of them there is a reason why most of those students come from New York and

our kids are witnessing that torture every single day our student is still witnessing the torture of other students in this placement I stand firmly in the opposition I cannot I can't sit here and say that it's okay to fund a policeman that completely goes against any of our mission of inclusion and belonging and yes again I am going to reiterate it is well within our preview to question what

placements and programs we are investing in for our students we do the same thing with curriculum we should be doing the same thing with placements that doesn't mean that I have the final decision or anyone here has a decision about what makes sense for a student but I can tell you that keeping a student in a placement like this and choosing to fund it absolutely supports the work that they are doing over at the jrc

I refused I will not under any circumstance support a placement like this and with that I yield anything further Mr agya yeah so part of the problem that I I'm seeing here is we you went on the site visit we've gotten a lot of information but there's contradictory information that we get from the conversations here the emails that we got so I don't feel confident in some of the answers that

we've gotten on what we can and can't do one was just asked by Miss Pereira about whether we can sign off or can't sign off and what can we do last month we were told right at this Podium that we can't we can sign off and we will not be sending anybody else to to that place that's contradictory to the information that we got by email as well as what we're hearing here today

is that we wouldn't and we didn't doubt to us regarding another student agree to the cost share but that I did not know what our Authority was in that and that I would get legal guidance and so I did get legal guidance and the legal guidance was even if we say we are not in agreement DCF still has the authority to place and we are still responsible for 50 so the other student

that was waiting is in the uh so we have a second student there now no how does that make it that student has not been placed anywhere yet but they wanted to play some at least over a month ago at that place because that's when we were told yeah and so they have sent out they are trying to work with us and so yeah they have continued to look for a placement will they find one will

that be I don't I don't have an answer to that I'm not part of the search they are conducting that search but I did ask for legal guidance and so the legal guidance was that because it is a residential placement through DCF we are responsible for 50 irregardless of whether we've signed a contract in every residential placement that has an educational component is all the same we don't have any children that go to a

residential place and then a residential placement go to school in another place we do we do have some it depends on the students needs and ability of different facilities to meet the child's needs and the services in the IEP so how does that how does that go with what you just said the legal counsel was that if you have a residential placement you were locked into that site because DCF will place

some students in a residential facility and then they attend public school programs in the district they may attend day placement in the district that the student is residing in that's not appropriate for all students it depends on what's in the child's IEP and what's appropriate for the student so the theoretically they could take the residential portion that DCF as the parent says that the students stay in

there and have the student be educated in another school if they had been accepted to another program and that was appropriate for them that is possible so they're not locked together not for not in all cases no right that's the so the lawyer writes I didn't like uh attorney Joyce's um it was very confusing it wasn't very clear to me and it contradicted a whole bunch of things that's one of them that

where whether the student can go to one place or another um I just don't like the way that the whole thing was handled right from the get-go and if a superintendent yourself the directors feel that students are safe and we want to send kids here then I think it's coming upon you to tell us you're going to send more kids here there if you truly feel like that that's the case

because if you say you went on the site visit which is I think what it's saying I'm not putting words in your mouth but this is what I'm feeling that the superintendent on our request sent you all as the directors to go up to look at the site you came back with a glowing thing to say that you felt like the kids were getting a good education quality education you're comfortable with it

that's what I think I'm hearing from you all so if that's the case and you truly believe that you should be telling us as a school committee that you're going to send more kids there if need be I think what's Happening Here is we're we're losing sight of whether well we were to pay for this one if we have to pay for this one but you can't in the one hand say that you think it's okay

that student's getting a good education he's not seen any harm or whatever it is but then we're not going to send any more kids there I'm having a hard time with that so I think what we did was we went and got the information that you got that you requested right and so we're telling you the facility appeared it was clean the students were happy by their expressions on their face they

were engaged in learning activities they had you know jobs that we got to witness so what we're saying is we're giving you the information on this facility this is not a facility that any District would Place their kids at because it is a residential facility for DCF like that's not in my opinion there's a lot more that would go into this facility before we could say oh yep send more kids there

we saw the only piece that we are responsible for that is the school setting and we gave you the informations that you could make an informed decision on what you wanted to do as a school committee understanding what the ramifications would be from our legal guidance like Kristen said should you not find find this by a vote so that's how we were doing Mr aguiar we're not but the question is and

this was brought about the meeting we are school committee members part-time you all are administrators that get paid very well to do your jobs and what we asked was to go out look at it and then come back with a recommendation on what we should do so that's what I'm asking you to take a stand here I'm asking you miss Faris and Mrs Ponce take a stand and say whether you think

that you should send more students to this school are you comfortable with that we don't we don't we're not going to put children in a residential that's not our job that's what you're hearing from us we went there and we're saying that we are liable to pay the bill this child is placed 41 packets went out to try to find a placement for this child this is the placement the residential

placement that was deemed appropriate by DCF we're saying we went there to see what we were asked to do but we wouldn't automatically say that's our option we have a student that has these needs this is what we're going to recommend that is a residential placement right but the question is are we going to send more students there are we going to protest it we don't know we don't send them there yeah

excuse me excuse me don't jump in please I know but hold on we'll whatever like I know I know I know it is it is confusing we did not send the student there we picked up a DCF placement Mr Aguilar has the floor thank you the question that we had earlier which was so Mr AGA you did not ask us to go there to make a programmatic evaluation of the building you asked us

to go there to see the facility to get information specific to your questions about their use of GED about the program the student was in we got the answers to those questions but In fairness we spent an hour and a half there and so we haven't fully evaluated the educational program there we went there to see the facility to see the environment which we did we were comfortable with the

environment we saw we were given unlimited access to the classrooms we saw multiple classrooms we weren't restricted from seeing any classrooms in the facility and pretty much left to direct where we wanted them to take us did we spend time going through the curriculum did we look programmatically deeply at to determine whether or not it's something we would propose as a placement educationally for a student we

did not do that well I think that's sort of goes without us having to ask that question to the superintendent and the directors that you would look at programs before we sent students there that's just a separation student there and we're not asking to send additional students there what we're saying is we are being built for this placement that was made by DCF and the determination is are we paying

this bill and we have and we were told at that Podium like you just said that you don't want to send any future students there and we will not send future students there that's what was said to this committee that's the part that I'm having a problem with as far as the whole system to hold the whole way that it went down when you were there for instance Ms Rogers just brought up a

point that other students can get this treatment that don't reside in Massachusetts I followed up with that from that question and any student regardless of the state that they live in under the age of 22 follows the same process so how when you went to visit how do is there like a room or something where they get to see where they monitor this type of activity was that happening when you were there

was anyone utilizing the GED yeah they have not utilized the GED on students in several years so no so we currently do not have any school-age students any students there via their IEP Services receiving that particular treatment and the facility has adults they don't adults they witness that a facility that we visited because we've visited the school program so there are no adults in

that particular building so when they get to residential which is like sort of the same thing um they live in different houses in apartments in the communities so we don't go there because that's again not something we would ever fund that's on DCF so you weren't able to see monitors or anything because you're saying it doesn't exist we actually got to see their whole room of monitoring the

entire campus we got to look at all the cameras um they're on full monitoring we didn't see anything on there that was using adverses but again that is only in the school because then after hours those monitors go into the residence and they are fully watched by their staff yeah we did not absorb the adult Day program we would have no grounds to observe the adult Day program and so we

didn't have that opportunity yeah the the you know where I stand on the issue I think that it's a tough situation but as Miss Roderick said if we continue to just pay if all these districts continue to pay they're just going to continue to operate until they get shut down or they are not allowed to use it the total we're never going to we're going to keep having the same argument and um with

this case here I do think we have to pay but I think at some point we have to make a uh a decision to say you know what we're not going to take it we're not going to we're not going to pay it and if we they want to take us to court let them take us to court and and try to make the issue more public because without that they're never going to change it's going

to be the same thing so I don't think it's a big risk for us in doing that I do think we're going to pay next year too and I think we're going to pay again when another student goes there and I I feel like um we shouldn't be saying that we're not going to send kids to them if we don't have to say or that's still up in the air but I I just

don't think we should be saying it and I want you all to know as far as this member I want you to come in make recommendations before us to say I recommend that we do this or we don't do that but right now I don't have that recommendation so I'm going to vote my conscience and say I'm voting no we're not paying the bill and we can move on with that I yield acceptance prayer

I just want people in the community to understand just sweating clear because a lot of people are using we sent you sent there are times where a child is placed in a residential facility but then can manage going to a public school in the area right um perhaps yeah you know placed here and they're they're still attending costs they get bus stand or a staff member brings them in what happened at the Saudi awake jrc

I don't think that there are any students there that are attending Educational Services somewhere else the reason being is because they are extreme extreme cases of childhood trauma and mental health that need to be cared for and I appreciate those of my colleagues all of my colleagues who are trying to advocate what I have an issue with is that we're saying we know what's best for this kid

but we don't know the child's name we don't know the diagnoses but you know who does the DCF worker they know they're the ones in charge of the care and protection of this child so what happens if next time it's apparent who shows up here and tells us this is what they want for that child because this placement is best for their child are we going to sit here and look at the parent and say meh

I don't know your kid's name but I'm morally opposed to it so therefore I'm going to put my morals on you that's not the way it should work I'm not saying we shouldn't Advocate against this place I've said it a million times well I I don't think it's appropriate for us to get on some you know for lack of a better word a high horse and tell somebody who is responsible for

this kid who knows everything about this child that we don't that they're making the wrong choice it could be very much that this child is there because we don't know I mean I've worked with this population of kids he could be he or she could have self-harming Behavior he or she could have already physically hurt or endangered another person the jrc because you're able to function

you go there because you need 24 7 care so you're right it's not the best place but if it keeps that kid alive until we find better placement and keeps that child safe and the DCF Walker thinks that's why the child should be no disrespect to you two ladies but I don't think you should be placing our children our students in residential facilities it's not your job it's not your job

if you know is it your job to make sure that the educational portion is getting done yeah that's your job and you're doing it so I don't think that it's your responsibility to be the educator the DCF worker the parent the reason I'm guessing that you have not signed off to place another child there was because we as a committee told you not to you did come up here did you did you no

you didn't come up here and say I'm so opposed to this I've decided I'm not going to place another child you didn't do that we told you if you do it we're not gonna pay so we tied our hands now we find out it doesn't matter if if we pay or not we're going to pay so I get advocating but I think advocating on the backs of our taxpayers is not okay because we're gonna pay

we're gonna pay the question is do we also have to pay litigation I don't know I'm guessing if we continue to do this type of thing until DCF are they're supposed to do their job I'm guessing that's what we're going to have to do and I don't think you'll find an attorney that disagrees with me but everybody's welcome to ask legal opinion from somebody else but the reality is DCF has care of this

student we have to pay we want to make a stand against this place there are a million ways we can do it and it doesn't have to be from this stage it just doesn't it wasn't what we're elected to do and quite frankly placing a child in residential care is not your job either and I'm sure you do the best that you can for the children in our schools and their educational needs and I appreciate

that unless somebody else has anything to say I'd like to make a motion to I'll make us I'll make a second on that but I also too wanted to thank both of you uh and your team and superintendent Ponce uh for you guys going to the facility and coming back to us with a report I really appreciate it nobody up here is for GED um not at all and I think anybody that

even out in the audience tonight or watching tonight is for that but it's uh it exists and I think our job now as uh committee woman uh Pereira has suggested made the motion seconded and to approve it so I know there's two line items here we're going to take one at a time I think this and that okay the first building I've had my I've had my hand raised with a common

uh Miss Rogers and we can can we have somebody turn that up because we cannot hear it yeah back there Evan is that you okay go ahead Miss rodericks okay so again I have a lot of issue with some of the statements that were made because they're problematic when we're talking about the disability population wait not one person has stood here and said that we know what's best for this

particular child what we are denouncing is the placement itself it is not about what should be in this child's IEP or what should not be in this child's IEP what it is is whether or not we are going to use our position to support a placement like this not just for this child but for any child And in regards to the statement that they haven't used GED on students school-age students for several years I

can tell you that there's a very public case from 2021 just last year where a student from New York school age student this is a 13 year old who suffered third degree burns as a result of their GED use so I would encourage folks and I am requesting that we get a second legal opinion number one because I certainly have worked in situations where the the Lea is in strong disagreement to the

particular residential placement that DCF proposed for a variety of reasons and the school department is was not responsible and that instant the the guidance from desk you had come out I think it was two uh 2004-2006. on top of it I would suggest that we're looking at this as a global decision not a this particular student shouldn't be placed there we've got to get that out of the

conversation not one person again is sitting here saying that we oppose this placement because we know what's right for this kid I don't know what's right for this kid I don't know this kid but I do know that using a placement like this is detrimental to all of our kids and if we are going to claim that we are going to fund what we value we cannot be funding this in regards to whether or

not we place children there are also situations where School departments where leas fully fund residential placement because they can't get DCF to agree or dmh to a great so there's a lot of nuance here that's not being discussed and I am suggesting I'm requesting that we get a second legal opinion we have a motion in a second Deb call the roll please Mr Dragon no Mr Bailey no Mr harp yes Miss laravee yes Miss

Pereira yes Miss rodericks no mayor Coogan yes motion to prove the second line item get a second motion looking for a second I have a motion is second Deb call the roll Mr comment oh I'm sorry go ahead just I want to just comment out with Miss roderick's just said the um when I read the report from Mr uh Joyce the attorney I don't think it was well written I think it was confusing so I do

think we should get a second opinion moving forward not so much on this particular case but on what our rights are because um I'm just not so sure that we're getting the right information so I'm going to vote no again but in the future I do think we should get some clarity so that we're all on the same page including the folks in the department yourself Madam superintendent so that we can we can

know what we can and cannot do and not making statements and then having to you know Backtrack on them so I would encourage that from the superintendent I have a motion a second Deb please call them all right yeah no Mr Bailey no Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks no mayor Coogan yes approval of Grants I have a number of Grants I'd like to take them all at once motion to approve

can I get a second any holds Mr aggia I just we don't have to hold it just over the question so on the Early Child early college grant it says something about people are going to get overtime for administrators or some other sort of stipend for administrators and I'm just curious who that is and what that means

good evening So within the Early College support Grant which is this which is designed to support the overall success of the Early College programs for district and to help them align with the five pillars of early college which includes Equitable access connection to Career guided academic pathways and strong Partnerships they we have various stipends the ones that you're referring to for administrators we have

about ten thousand dollars for counselors administrators uh part of the Early College leadership team to do a couple of things the first is to build a family engagement Pipeline with a focus on students grades seven through nine so going on the communities in the evenings and on weekends holding focused groups Etc getting buy-in uh and the awareness out there in the community the second is

to work on a multilingual website in brochure to support families we have a first language other than English and understanding the importance of early college and the opportunity for their students the third is for planning for our expansion we're looking to grow each year and that is logistical and supports that are needed to build when we increase the number of students and staff involved finally we'll be working

on updated mous with Bridgewater State and Bristol Community College as they're set to expire at the end of June for our initial mou so that's essentially what the administrator stipends would go to when you say administrator what positions are you speaking of so I'm talking about myself the department head of guidance school counselors on and uh at the middle and high school level essentially we also have

um some some stipends for our early college advisors as well as teachers um to support focus groups academic tutoring Etc I mean they grant that at the bottom where it says the teachers that I think explained a little more some of what you just described to me as part of an administrator's Duty in general like if you know you have a what's your title the head of guidance director of guidance of for the district

and you have a small case load at Durfee I do not have a caseload at their view I work with multiple schools uh there's the department head at Durfee so you have no so we have a second department head of guidance beside you have one at Dairy beside you your old position correct interesting the the question I'm having is I think some of that what you described is part of what people

normally would be doing so it's not very clearly defined in my opinion but in in a grant can that be changed if the superintendent uh or yourself like check into it and well we would have to mend whenever we change a grant anything um that any changes to a grant we would have to amend and get it approved again submit it I'm saying as far as like I didn't I wasn't clear what I meant was

if I don't think that you know the intricacies of who who's going to get stipends but if as you look into it and you say no I think that you know they should get it this one shouldn't get it that can fall within it does oh it does it doesn't lock the name in right when when we write the grant it doesn't there are no names attached and then when those step-in sheets are

submitted then that's it's approved after after the fact yeah so if you felt that they weren't the right people or something they could that's all I would ask is that you take a look at it because I don't think that when we're we're paying the administrators pretty good money I think in my opinion and just we have to be careful of how many stipends were given across the district

so thank you thank you can I get a motion a second you already did I already did yep the police called the roll on grants Mr strong yeah yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Mrs Pereira it's rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes Committee of the whole item number one we addressed in finance tonight discussion and vote to approve the HVAC lighting improvements to various schools as presented by Ken

Pacheco emotional proof I have a motion a second any further discussion Ted please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey

Mr Bailey yeah he just stepped out of the room yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes Mary Coogan yes item 12.2 is a vote to approve the selection and appointments the motion to Second any discussion on the nurse Dad please call the roll Mr agap yes Mr Bailey Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes 12-3 is a discussion and vote to

approve the spring slash fall 2022 CTE advisor as presented by Christine um Cynthia Sylvia I have emotional proof second I have a motion a second any discussion on the board members comment uh Mr Aya I just want to uh it's not a question it's just a comment that the time that I've been here we haven't seen a list like this that came out where there's a lot of people in the community so I think

things are going in the right direction there and I just wanted to make sure we recognize that thank you absolutely thank you Deb could you please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes 12.4 is a discussion and vote to approve an administrative assistant position promotional approved second I have a motion a second any discussion on the

administrative assistant Deb please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes 12-5 is a discussion of how to approve the audio visual technician job description as referred by the subcommittee and presented by Tom Cruise I have a motion second and a second any discussion on that position audio visual Tech technician Mr red

yeah so uh when we had talked about this at the subcommittee we were talking about um the need for the department and as I'm looking at this it almost uh appears that this is very similar to one of the positions of those uh mini electrician positions that run wires in that um low voltage low voltage people when um one of the issues that we had talked about was security outside security uh running wiring and stuff so

my thought at the time was to if we have somebody that can do this work in-house in one of those lower low voltage positions that we could potentially move them into a position and actually hire a full electrician that could do some of the electrical work because I think the I think the way the process goes is Mr capral has to actually say this some you have to ask somebody to use those people

from a different department and the goal was to put a person sort of under you does that make sense correct when when Mr Pacheco and I discussed the position I think moving forward what our plan is is to have the low voltage electricians do the wiring piece and to have this technician that's a technology site be responsible for the device so up until this point um we really hadn't had the discussions

the low voltage electrician did some wiring at the new PACE Center it's done some other wiring for us but moving forward the thought processes is that side of the house will take care of the wiring piece and then this technician will fill the need that we have with all of the AV stuff as far as installing the end piece device after the wiring so who does that now who does the installing of the devices

myself or one of the people that I've trained in the department so I'm taking someone that's typically a technician of computers and phones and using them or myself after hours or you know carving some time out in the day to do it so moving forward this person would be responsible for that piece for all of the audio visual control systems that are just in this building moving forward swapping out audio visual

control systems in the other schools I'm going to be coming to you at the subcommittee in future months we have to do something in some of our cafeterias and many of the elementary schools this will allow all that work to be done in-house and and you know strengthen the team internally but also using Ken's side of the house to do the back end wiring and we come in and clean everything up so though the

when we had hired the low voltage people I believe at the time it was meant and we I think we hired more than one was to do something like this type of stuff already so my question is are they doing that full-time now and they can't get to this so that's correct Mustang I would hired to people one of them is doing almost all of our fire protection all of our devices whether it be smoke alarms

um the panels the enunciated panels who that that particular person was doing our work as a subcontractor with his with his father and other people in that business for quite a few years so he left that company he's working for us now and doing the fire side of it we do have one other person who's doing low voltage but also doing some low voltage for us for instance at the pace of the sped the

new special EDS offices and other things like that I I think that it would be along the lines that you were talking if we put this person in the Union as an electrician which would give us three electricians so advertise a job as a union job the salary is almost the same it's almost there already and just add this into the maintenance department with the stipulation that mystical brawl has the access to that person

on a priority basis and therefore could do some of these installations and we wouldn't be banging up against any kind of conflict with the Union electricians so how does that affect this position all I'm saying is is let this electrician let this position become a union position out of the maintenance department and then we can dedicate a person to Mr Cabral at that point because we won't be losing anybody on

the electrical side at some point I'm sure that he may have too if we're working outside the buildings putting up stuff on polls we're going to need someone with a you know hoisting license to operate a bucket truck at that point we'll make sure that those electricians all have that license a couple of them do right now but that'll Aid in making sure that mystical brawl's department

has adequate personnel and we again we won't have an issue with the Union piece of duplicating work outside the Union well this there's no license requirement on this position so it wouldn't pay if it does pay the same as a licensed person I think that's a problem well I think if it walks like a duck and cracks like a duck it's a duck so I think that if this person is going to be

doing the same work we did the low voltage electricians would work which is kind of similar the only difference is our electrician our low voltage electricians are not hanging equipment I'm not sure if they actually have helped out but if you know I don't think that it's a far I don't think that's a far I think we're trying to say the same thing so in my my thought is that we

have a person right now in low voltage that's actually able to do this work I would think and what I'm saying is whatever mechanism you need to do to me it makes more sense for the district to put that person in doing this job and hire a full electrician not a low voltage electrician so that we have that the highest level of what you talked about the licenses the you know I don't

necessarily think we need an extra one so when you came to us to say you need two vote low voltage people this was some of the stuff that that person yes so I supported that at the time because I felt yeah this makes sense we need somebody to do this the problem is that they don't work directly under Mr Cabral so I think we're saying the same thing but when we have a person on site that

already can do it to me it makes sense to put that person in this position and hire a full electrician that can do the bigger pieces I think though there may be a situation and again I agree with you 100 percent I I think the other piece of this is the possibility of putting up a piece of equipment on a wall that doesn't have a 110 outlet is possible and therefore we

have to bring in another electrician so you know you have the low voltage person working there and you have this electrician what I'm saying is exactly what you're saying if we hire an electrician we let this person go over when needed but it would be nice to have a person outside of the ones we've already hired on the electrical side I think the Mr monus needs everybody he has

add that other make this position a full electrician at the disposal of mystical brawl whenever they need them and that low voltage person the same thing and when he has a project he has both he doesn't have to worry about bringing in somebody that Mr Monas may already have assigned I think I know I think I understand what you're saying is you're saying that what is before us you don't

agree with we think you should add the qualifications and let it be full electrician that's what that's what I'm saying and and write that and right in the maintenance department but again with an agreement which will be fine um on both sides I'm sure that Mr Cabral has that access to those people whenever he needs them and he doesn't have to necessarily wait while those other electricians right now are

already assigned so instead of this position you want to hire an electrician I don't know if that's I'm speaking here but I'm not sure Mr Cabral isn't agree with you I just the position that's there is not we weren't looking for an electrical piece I mean if that's going to help the you know the district and it's going to help the maintenance side you know I'm a team player I'll do whatever is agreed upon

um but I just when you look at the roles and responsibilities of this position it's it's not an electrician

right now I mean the other piece is if you want to table it and we can talk internally and come back next month as well yeah I mean I always he was saying this because we were and I think Mr Potato agreed with me that at the time when we hired the low voltage people this was the work they were doing so in my mind I'm saying why are we going to

add another one if it helps the district and you know if that person has the set then keep I agree with you put it the union so the gentleman gets paid or whoever it is if they have it so I make a motion the table so we can get more feedback I got a motion to Table in a second a deaf guy call the role yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larvy yes

Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes 12-6 is a discussion and vote to approve the special education interpreter and translator approved tribe description as presented by Tom Coogan I have a motion to approve I have a motion to Second it go ahead Tom this position um is a critical one to the special needs Department during IEP meetings during document translation a certain level of skill is required now

previously we had two people that were labeled as Community facilitators dedicated to sped and they would help in those meetings assist in those meetings and do the translations for the for the legal documents around a student's head education plan um we recently lost one at the beginning of the summer and you know in in looking at the reasons why we lost the person there's a little bit of a

differentiation in the skill level between what we traditionally have used as a community facilitator somebody who can speak another language can assist families with the their interactions with the Department uh the legal documentation the certificate that's required for translating those documents it's a little bit different skill set so what we're basically proposing is a dedicated interpreter and translator for

the disposal of the special education department and again there's two of those budgeted but this is just at a little higher rate any questions of emotional proof motion motion already we already have a motion yes okay Dad please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss larabee yes Ms Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes 12-7 is discussion and vote to approve

the board docs it's presented by Maria Ponce superintendent schools thank you well we're actually asked to add this to the agenda board docs as you know is that our repository that we use for our school committee agendas minutes videos Etc I do the contract actually was approved tonight in contracts that was for this year I do think that we need to I've spoken to our team we spoken to Mr farius as well as Mr Cabral

and we need to assess the effectiveness and how we're using it if we are maximizing um the contract and also compare it to what our website does and then we can come back to this committee for moving forward I think we have a contract for the remaining of the remainder of the year but I I do think that um what we will do is we will assess its Effectiveness how we're using it and

then come back with the recommendation for next year when does the contract end uh at the end of school year June June 30th yes okay so we have till 2 30. Mr Ang now so several things that I I don't think are appropriate so it was on the agenda on the contracts but we thought that that would have to wait till this vote because the the discussion on the vote for the contract

should have that should have been held instead of just letting it go through and I could have picked it up the same but I've asked a lot of questions and tried a whole lot of things but to me that shouldn't even been put on there knowing that we have it as an agenda item a thing in the agenda the other thing is that it sounds like as if we've already approved it

but then now we're paying a contract that's what I'm hearing tonight what are you so it's already been in existence we've committed to it already we have a three-year contract which this is the final year when the final year and our job is going to be to reassess to see if we are maximizing um the the platform and if we need to make any changes right so it says that the renewal term

investor parties uh give 30 days notice before the renewal so we just let this roll over in my opinion without it coming to us to say so this is on the agenda for the contract tonight in this December this is when we got built that's why it's on the agenda so in the contract it says that you provided to us here those terms starts 90 days after the signing of it so that was an April 8th

of 2020.

so that probably was meant for July 1.

so my point is that it went July 1 drill again somebody's got to be watching this so that we can know if we want to get out of the contract well whether we would like to get out of the the contract before it actually comes up now eighteen thousand dollars is not a lot of money when we're talking millions of dollars but I've I asked for this to be

on the agenda because this is a total in my opinion it's a total waste of money because we're not utilizing it in any way that we couldn't get it for free we could have a computer with the website with email with Google Docs that has all of the information that we currently have right and I'm ready at our fingertips on every single meeting but we're paying eighteen thousand dollars for board docs and I've asked

for several months what is it why why do we need this this is a waste of money and the answer I got was because it gives us one place that we can look at all of our stuff well the first thing I would say is let's why don't we look at our website because our website for the under the school committee is terrible when you look at the minutes on the website you

can't even figure out what it is and which one's a which so all I feel we have to do for free is go there and say this is what we need to do but we're going to pay 18 000 just because oh that I guess that's the way it is it was a contract and we don't really you know want to look into it too much so I asked this to be on a vote

because I'm I want to vote no because I think it's a waste of money and if we're going to say we're going to watch the the dollars and cents then I think we need to do that and this is a total waste of money so um I think it was wrong the way it went through I think it was wrong to put it on the uh contracts at the start of the meeting

without saying anything and uh so I'll make a motion to to quit it but miss Pereira I have a couple of questions on board docs um I saw it on the agenda I didn't think we were pulling it off because I I know that this was like a three-year contract so I thought we were discussing like after April when it you know when it ends um so I don't think it

was shady for lack of a better word um but uh so I have a couple questions I don't know who can answer them honestly maybe somebody in a pair maybe somebody that I'm in but Kevin you made a point to say uh Mr agya made a point to say that there's other outlets that we could get for free right like the website or Google Docs or what have you now what

would that look like in terms of because I'll tell you what I do like about it is that I can go back and look in reference documents because we don't just get the agenda on it we get attached documents to it and such um and I know that there was an email sent out not too long ago saying that there was going to be a board docs training I'm assuming that there's more that we

can do with more dots that we're not aware of is that accurate uh that is accurate I believe so yes okay so nobody here really can no we we actually you know this is I will say Mr agyar you know this is the first time that anyone has actually uh requested we haven't gotten any complaints about it until now certainly when it was brought to our attention and to question we have I've

talked to Mr Ferris I've talked to Mr um we have looked at what are we getting for it there is much more that can be done with it I don't think we're maximizing the opportunity certainly our website Mr Ferris said today he said I'm not sure we have to look to see how that would interface the videos that's something we have to look at how we would attach them to the agendas like we

they are on board docs which is why we said Okay so let's look at exactly what it is that our website can do let's look at what board docs offers us before we enter and and continue with the contract it's not because we don't want to look at it certainly it was on the agenda because the contract came the bill came in we put it on on there and we're asked

to put on the agenda certainly any member on this committee this is your meeting anybody in this committee could have said we hold this one just like we held all the contracts until after the discussion so I apologize if it looked like we try to slip anything in but we certainly are committed to looking at what is best for our district there's lots of work that needs to be done with

our website absolutely Mr Cabral and I have had many discussions about that we are going to work through that and if we can do it for free of course we're not going to spend money just for the sake of spending money who does the website well currently right now we do not have a webmaster that was a um well our website is by a company it's a it's a it's basically a shell so a lot

of school districts use it so it's kind of a drag and drop piece there are individuals trained at every building that are supposed to be updating their websites some of the department heads update their side um the district piece is really shared between Mr farius myself members of the instructional technology team because we all have other job duties so we're sharing those you know those pieces um correct correct

and one of my pieces and and superintendent and I have talked about this but it was not the time to redevelop a website while we were bringing parent square and power school on so it is on the short list of things to look at however you know that is going to be a substantial project whether we stay with the current vendor that we have or we research other pieces that that could be a very large project

to the scale of PowerSchool at that point um long term do we need to look at having a webmaster we may however with the communication specialist job that's posted now a lot of the job duties there are going to be to update and maintain the website interview start this week so it's my short-term goal to have that person kind of jump in get their hands wet and and work on the website as well

as the other job duties in that position but it's not going to be a small project actually my next question so thank you the communication specialist position I thought they were the ones that were going to be on the website but even that position they're going to take a media lead role but you're still going to have people from different schools and what have you out and show it correct every

school has someone that's been trained um on the website and they're supposed to be updating their content superintendent has sent out multiple emails you know touching base with people the district side there are a lot of variables and there are a lot of players and that's why you know Mr farius and myself and members of his team have been trying to keep updated where we can but we also

have you know other pieces of job responsibilities and sometimes that does get put to the back burner sure like for example because I was given it and kind of Mimi showed me how to do a couple things and that was pretty much it the trainings are always seem to be like at three in the afternoon I mean I've used plenty of vacation hours to come to meetings that's acceptable but I mean I can't you know

so if we could schedule something maybe even on a Saturday morning or after five o'clock that would be helpful I could do it from my house remotely you could give me a book I'll read it um I'm not for spending money with Mr aguiar it is another way we can do this cheaper than why not but I want to make sure that it provides us the same I definitely don't want to go back to big binders

because to me it's just not only are they cumbersome and what have you where do you strongly build an addition to my house so what I had to do when I first started and I wasn't on board docs yet I had to um shred all of them because it's a lot of some stuff you don't want out there right so I felt uncomfortable just leaving all these big binders around in

my house so in terms of that I think it keeps information secure I think it makes it easy for me to go back and like look at a meeting like wait I think we mentioned this in June let me go back and look at June let me go back and look at this but I would like maybe can you write notes in it is there a way to write notes

maybe I did not know that because I make notes on a separate piece of paper while I'm looking at it so I'm all for getting rid of it after April but I would like us to um maybe have some explanation somebody come and give us a greater explanation of all the capabilities of War Dogs whether it's at this meeting or if we have a training um you know in the evening or on the weekend or something

um so that I have a clear understanding of what it's capable of and what would possibly be losing out of if we no longer have that and if we look at it and we don't know we can do all this on user Google Docs and using you know whatever then I'm fine with that as well um but I wouldn't be able to say today I don't want it anymore because I don't

know what I'm getting rid of you know I don't know what it's capable of the superintendent asked me um today to get in touch with board docs I have never spoken to the company because that's that software package really never fell under the realm of Technology it was always under you know the superintendent's office slash school committee area so now that I'm going to take ownership of it and you guys know

what the PowerSchool piece we will vet the product out we will get the people in here we will ask the correct questions and then we will internally look at if we can indeed build the same functions on a website with Google Docs do I think it's possible yes do I think it's going to be very time consuming up front 100 so we will look at both sides and and we'll report back to the committee

and we can move forward from there thank you anything further yeah just a couple of comments on that so one of the things I would like to get because I've tried for over two weeks to look on the website search inside the drive to say board docs training we had training there was people here at a public meeting I can't find it where it goes I couldn't get a

copy of anything of a video that we ever had of the training that we already did so I would like to request that as well as requesting all emails that relate to the board docs decision be sent to the full committee so we can all get a picture of how this happened who was the players involved and what do they promises that they were going to do I can't find it and I've worked like a lot

of time trying to figure out on the website when I look at the website Mr Cabral my when you answer the question that we to have people the problem is is that we have people that are trained but they're not required to do it and as a problem that we have here in this district is we don't hold people accountable to do their jobs so people are trained at every place in every Department to

actually update your your website and we don't hold people accountable I don't need I'm not looking for you to comment but I'm just saying that's what's happening you go through the entire website there's things that shouldn't be that way that's just a fact but this point here are the contracts Mr Madam superintendent I think the problem is is when I look at it says contracts I look

at that as we're approving a contract I think that's kind of common sense that the part of the meeting is we say we're going to approve the contracts we're not approving the contracts what we're approving at this time is the bill for the contract so that's part of my frustration is when I see the part of the meeting for contracts come up and we say here's the contract for the thing no the contract

isn't now the decision on this contract for board docs if we look back at the information was in July so in July when we have year three coming up before that time we should have a somebody to say do we want to go with year three but what we do here is we just keep kicking it and nobody says it in time so then three four months later we've already approved it we're

already working on it we're already having it and then we approve the bill so I think we need to look at when we put it in contracts maybe divide it up into bills because technically speaking I don't even know why we're voting on it as a contract because we've already approved the contract three years ago so if we're not going to deny it why are we sitting here saying it because it makes

it look like we're not doing our due diligence if we're not looking at the contract so I think that's something that you should look at because I just keep on getting frustrated and I and it's because of that reason this contract was July so absolutely no way even if we talked about it earlier last week that this contract was already done so now it's almost like the same discussion that we had before we owe a

bill we don't owe a contract with that ideal okay so since as Mr Aggie pointed out we already did vote to approve it this was a discussion and we're going to wait for further updates on board docs um there's really not much we can do right now um item 12 8.

first reading superintendents recommended FY 2024 budget priorities is presented by Maria Ponce motion to approve motion to approve they have a second second I have a motion a second discussion on your budget playoffs one just one question Mr agya look into Old meetings I think that we are still in the process of the goals coming back so I see these as kind of go hand in hand so I was just looking for some

feedback on when the right we still have not received the targets from Desi um as soon as we do I certainly can or I can just change the the targets and not use the deci targets we've always used them for most superintendents use them for their goals but certainly we can yeah I just I just my own personal opinion is these go together so when we do the goals this the priority should match the goal so

you might want to look if it's not coming in either do something different that's not my only thought okay so just just the point or just a comment so on Thursday I went to uh I had a Maslow meeting on Thursday and it was pointed out that because we have a new governor in office that she has until the middle of March to submit her budget for um Chapter 70 and so with that being

said it's been a while since we had a new governor but it kind of throws our time timeline out of whack because I really can't submit a budget to you guys until um we know what those figures are so with that being said I will be resubmitting a new budget timeline to you with that point so the process will be starting later this at this time and I know it's going

to kind of conflict with the charter because we have the charter the city Charter is set you know the way that it is but at this you know it's kind of out of our hands because of the new governor coming on board so I just wanted to bring that to your attention tonight that's also going to impact the city uh yes Mr Almeda and I had a brief discussion about that and I did not

relay that message to Bridget but I'm going to send it to her right now so we'll uh we'll work on a timeline that's amenable to all groups going forward but we do anticipate a little bit of a moved timeline don't we know from the student Opportunity Act roughly what we're going to get I guess we could say I kind of have an idea but not not really we have a we have a webinar

um I actually have a webinar this week on Thursday just to give you a little help but it's not going to be exact so it's it's not as easy as it seems I'll just say that yeah the only reason why I'm saying is I think that from what I recall the committed they made a commitment you know each year and I believe that the legislature is going to keep that commitment correct so even

if we did a rough number like we're going to get 10 million dollars more this next year than we got this year I would I would rather suggest that we do a budget based on a nine million dollar increase or something like that and go through our process the way we go rather than have us wait and then have it all be condensed that's just one member's opinion that we know we're going to get

9 million you know lower it a little bit but I believe that they're going to fund each year as it is so we wouldn't be adding new stuff but I think we could do the process but

um anything further item uh number 12 9 is mine discussion of citizens I'm sorry guys first read it just said first read oh okay I'm glad it wasn't me the one it's been me all night I'm gonna ask the motion the table the um the citizens input question for now motion seconds oh I just got to get some more information Deb could you please call them old can I answer just a question on

that sure so the document that we had had it looked like two one was Council and one was the city uh the documents that we got hold on an emotions table hold on no no I was trying to listen to Kevin I was distracted it's not debatable the motion to table Kev I'll talk to you after it's not debatable I we already know I just was commenting on what yeah the

lack of information that we got that's all he said it's not debatable I'm sorry Mr uh Deb please call Lowell let's try again no Mr Bailey Mr Hearst yes Miss Laramie yes sorry Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes with a comment um I agree with Mr Edgar that there really wasn't a ton of information so if we could get some more prior there's no discussion on this Miss Rogers I'm sorry Joe speaking comment mayor Coogan yes

item 1210 second read to approve the centralization approved second reading of the central office I have a second do I have a second second motion a second any discussion on the salary schedule Mr aggiel what is the motion for I agree a second read and vote to approve what the salary schedule Madam superintendent do you have any comment well as we um uh discussed the last time you have before you um either

um five percent uh increases from the bottom at the top of the range as well as a 10 increase from the bottom and the top of the range on the document before you lists the days worked I believe we were asked for that last time as well as the people that are under that particular person we certainly have S non-positions from central office you have the ranging from the assistant superintendents to the CIO

Etc so we know that we have an fraa contract that with increases has brought people there butting up against people who are actually supervising them and you know I think that we've had this discussion earlier today um if we're going to recruit and retain and be competitive we do need to look at our salary scales and make sure that they're more comparable to um to others Mr I mean I made my comment was just

about what what are we voting on the salary scheduling yeah oh you want me to say whether recommend a 10 so my recommendation yes this is why I'm asking because I think we need to focus on This is complicated this is not not complicated this is there's big differences between what we get presented and what we don't so when we just say like we're going to vote for it no there's two options here we have two

different documents but what do we what are we having like five percent ten percent I I think that there's I assume obviously some work went into this to try to organize it to figure out what's happening and I think that we need a presentation relative to what is it that's here and how is this going to help us to move in the right direction but when I asked what it was for was because it's two different

um scales scales and I think without a discussion I don't know how we can say one or the other there's also pieces in it level two I think that needs to be to be looked at because we have people that what does that mean level two four plus years does that mean the person's own experience does that mean the person is only in the district I think some of those things pose further questions for us

so I'd like to hear a presentation as it was listed so one of the things that I did in looking at this was to look at the ranges that were established in some cases the ranges were set several years back and are a little bit outdated and in some cases I also used the information that I got from maspa which is a mass Association of uh School Personnel administrators and and looked

at the ranges for similar size districts so one of the options that you have is to sort of make a shift in the scales at the top and the bottom end and move them five percent in some cases at certain levels particularly at the upper levels of School District administration it seems like there's been sort of a little bit of a jump in the competitive salaries that that people are using

um so what I have before the committee is two separate options a five percent scale which just shifts the numbers five percent at the low end of five percent at the top end which gives you a little bit of breathing room over the current scales and secondly uh similar to what we have in the principal scale is something that recognizes somebody who has experience in the position uh in in a in in the school district

um so four four years or more and that could be four years at another District or it could be four years within this District as long as it's a similar position um and that's verified um so so the the option would be five or ten percent and a third option that the committee may want to consider is moving a shifting scale which matches what we're doing with our collective bargaining agreements so you could take

one scale and adopt it and then maybe adjust over time similar to what you did with the principal scale so that you're not coming back every couple of years unless there's some radical change in the competitive market for for uh District level administrators what I've tried to do in front of you there is to give you the salaries of the people underneath them and then a per diem rate that's what's in that Center

column that you see going down and that scaled again for the number of days I've put that next to the title of the person they're managing how many days in each year they work as well as the number of days for the for the administrator that supervises that area any questions I have a couple more so the other piece of this that I think is is sort of confusing on what we vote

on not so much on the information is we have SN on contracts all over this document and those are always voted on under a separate discussion I think they're here for purposes of um comparison like there's a few positions on here that superintendent needs to have some flexibility on but as we approve it if we don't say what we're approving we're approving all of this stuff and I think that there's there's

way too much on here in my opinion to approve without having a long discussion on each of the various items I think there's some that are more important than others but the the lower the pieces that are in here that are not in yellow I think I a part of this document that I'm seeing and I don't know if that was the I don't think that was the purpose in general but

um correct me if I'm wrong but that's I'm seeing things that are um I don't think are meant for the This was meant for the central office assistant superintendents superintendents CIO that type of thing not necessarily all the other the other stuff I think is background right but there's information in here that if we approve it's going to lock us into certain things as well right we're not asking you to

um the the positions underneath are so that you can have a frame of reference right in comparison to C so if if for instance if I'm looking at the page that has the 10 um increase in in the bottom and the top if you look at the first one the 143 to 159 and if you look at the people under that are fr-a-a that's for your reference to see where they're standing

in comparison to that person I also think that um this doesn't determine a salary it just determines a range for posting purposes and gives you some flexibility as to you know when we actually hire somebody new to the district that comes before you anyway so but at least gives you the range for for the purposes of trying to post and and recruit Talent I I get that just that we're if we're

approving this document it's a whole it's a whole piece of the you know some of the other positions on the right they have like uh there's figures in the level two um administrative assistance this transportation coordinator like there's other positions that have stuff filled in including some of Mr cabral's positions not his but the ones under him right I think that's confusing but we're

only asking you to approve the highlighted pieces the others are just for frame of reference those are for instance that's a good point you have all of mystical Brothers those are all s nons that we bring to you right to for those with those ranges we're at what we're looking at is the highlighted pieces but we included that information so that you could have a frame of reference to see where they

stand in comparison to maybe it's too confusing but we're not asking I only apologize I know it's a dense document but I did want you to add the information to try to be able to scale your your comments and your understanding so it's only 14 positions that we're actually looking at with the yellow lines

seven positions foreign

the four years plus that's Warriors in our district right and then four years in your District or four years in a similar position similar size District in other words relevant experience to the position so the Supreme is a relevant experience not four years of this District correct thank you all right so the seven positions uh motion to approve right percentage hang on Mr anger what are we focusing on here for a

move to vote on when we finally get there we're looking at five or ten well I will recommend my recommendation would be the 10 percent because the five percent is not going to get us to where uh we need to be um to put some distance between so the discussion should go around the 10 page Mr agya I'm sorry go ahead so I I think that when with these type of positions

I think we're overthinking it to put the level two and the four years experience or what have you so what I think would be clearer is is arranged just so that you know what the low is and the high so we currently were offering uh 125 to 145 for positions like as the range for this type of position I think that's much clearer than this particular piece so that when you advertise a job you you don't

necessarily put well if you have four more years experience you can you know we can add it on later truth in advertising to recruit the right people would be we're advertising at 140 to like the first one assistant superintendent curriculum instruction the low would be 143 the high would be 167. but what if the person didn't come in if they didn't have the four years but they were making 162 at their other

job you know like it gets I think it muddies the waters by adding a second level for these particular high level positions I think what the superintendent is looking for is some flexibility to have a range that's higher than the people that are in the union making less money working less days and actually making more per day so I think it's it's sort of uh I think it's it's a little bit confusing

to dividing them up the other piece of it is I want to feel confident that we're working towards solving the problem not just giving more resources when I look at the first step of that first one assistant superintendent the daily rate is less than most of the people that are working under her the other one's the same thing like we have Union positions that are more money per diem

then the person that's in charge of that entire department so something has to give here and I know we've been saying this but I haven't seen a plan that's going to address it we just keep on making the problem worse so so if you look at the the way that first position is structured and you have two tiers right but it's not like a Union contract where you could go down

and across and do that it doesn't work that way you could use a low of 143 and a high of the the number to the far right and then that gives you your range and that would be it now when you interview the person and you look at their experience you would decide whether or not it's not designed to be a a line and step chart it's designed to

be a range and then you could look at that from a standpoint of saying okay based on the person's experience four plus years five plus years whatever that might be that would put him in that second tier so you'd be looking at that second range that's the only reason that exists there but what I'm saying that's for internal that's for a superintendent to figure out internally I think you just said what I was saying

that the that top one if we're going to approve the 10 yeah should be 143 is the low and 167 is the high correct the piece of the four is more for the superintendent to decide why does she want to pay somebody on the higher end versus the lower end but if we're being open that's what the range should be it shouldn't be that uh the detail is in the middle I I think the reason it's

broken on two pieces is just that's the guideline we'd be looking at based on levels of experience versus you know whether they're going to slide towards the higher end of the lower end based on the person in the job but you would use the low and the high as the range how can you anybody justify somebody getting being in a top position making let's say 591 dollars a day and another person making 686 uh

well 623 or like more per day and that other person is working 243 days like how can how can we correct this we're going to keep saying it's the same problem but I never see a solution but that range is based on the lower end of the scale if you were to do the per diem out to the high end of the scale if you would be able to address that but if they're working

the person that's above should make more per day than the person below them in most most normal situations I think that's fair to say right so how do we address it so if we vote for this today how are we going to address everything else I think one of the things we've got to look at is is the days and I'm not telling people to work more or less but we're telling people that we

want to take them into the most high pressured job we want them to have the most stress and we're going to tell them you're working 243 days for people that are below you that don't have that same level of stress and all that responsibility we have 215 days like I think that's somewhere where never mind the range but the I think the days the benefits the time I think needs

to be looked at as well because we're not going to get what we need if we just keep doing the same thing without changing it just kind of everybody's gonna be making more and more and more and it's it's at some point we've got to say enough's enough and do something different so um I'll make an amendment to the motion that we take the low and the high on the

10 and call that the range for those seven positions I have a motion in a second uh Deb please call the roll can I ask sorry I just uh looked at something the bottom one it says CIO yep current 10 like I don't know what that means because that all the other ones have figures in it numbers and this doesn't have figures so that's a problem uh you mean for a range there's nothing

in that line under the 10 one if you go CIO it says 113 600 243 days and it's is that just saying you wanna you want to add 10 as they're going to be the low and like there's no number in there that's why the current range on that position as approved two years ago when the position was created was 110 to 130.

10 110 to 130.

but that that needs to be adjusted also that that contract needs to be because if you were pointing out before um in the CAO how um people under the CAO were making more there is a a huge discrepancy here between our CIO and right but what I heard Mr Coogan just say was right that current position is 110 to 130.

using the same logic that we used everywhere else we added 10 to the ranges why is it not like that for this yeah it should be 120. so if it was 110 to 130 and now it should be 10 added or whatever the same calculation for the other ones if that's what we're using the same thing it does it doesn't have that on us oh it's on hers that it says 120 to 148 it

is I don't have that that's right the one that I'm seeing it just says no you're right that's 10 it doesn't make any sense she's got it on hers it's 120 to 148. do you have the new um

it's 120 to 148 they have it on these guys no we got him she passed them out tonight okay so I I think the moral of the story is yes we should be doing the same thing for all seven positions so that's all right I'm not looking to prolong it just that it should be in there got a motion in a second uh that call the roll please yes yes yes Miss Roderick

Miss Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes okay I think we got to make a motion on the full motion because I had amended I had made a motion to amend so now we need a motion for the full I think somebody already made a motion to improve the entire range as Mr aggia pointed out I need a motion in a second correct Mr Hart had made the motion yeah just a boat all right so let's have the

vote

yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes there uh 12 12.11 is a discussion and vote to approve the invitation from the msba into the accelerated repair program for the Robert L Medeiros resiliency Preparatory Academy to appropriate the sum of a hundred thousand dollars to fund the procurement of the owner's project manager and designed firm for

the feasibility study as presented by Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer motion to approve I have a motion to approve well I have to make a separate motion can I get a second on this area we need whoever makes the motion to erase a certain language yeah yeah basically it's just um I neglected to add that language at the last meeting so this is um strictly to put that language yes go

ahead I'd like to make a motion at the Fall River Public School District appropriate the amount of one hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of paying costs a feasibility study for the windows and doors accelerated repair project of the Robert L Medeiros resiliency Preparatory Academy located at 290 Rock Street including the payment of all costs incidental or related thereto and for which

the Fall River Public School District may be eligible for a grant from the Massachusetts school building authority msba said amount to be expended under the direction of Fall River Public School Districts cheap Operating Officer the Fall River Public School District a knowledge acknowledges that the msba's grant program is a non-entitlement discretionary program based on need as determined by the msba and any cost of

the Fall River Public School District incurs in excess of Any Grant approved by the and received from the msba shall be the sole responsibility of the Fall River Public School District second I have a motion a second Deb could you please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes yes Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes I have a number of items on 13 for your

information retirements resignations appointments motion to approve 13.123 and 4. can I get a second second discussion Deb please call the roll please try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Ms Pereira Miss rodericks yes Mary Kruger yes uh any new business to come before the committee Mr Egg yeah are you just looking to get some information I saw there was a press

conference about buses and we haven't gotten any information on that at all as a committee and I'm just curious if anybody has any info I have a little bit we got um we were granted um the city the city city meaning we the city thank you 11 uh school buses very similar to what they got in New Bedford and the infrastructure um we applied for a grant for electric

buses we have to partner with one of our bus companies and both of our bus companies were at the press conference I do not believe we finalized the plans yet the idea behind the buses is that you take a gas or a diesel bus out of service and you use an electric one am I right um Mr Pacheco so that's what we have to work with our partners who Supply um a transportation for our kids it's

not finalized yet we have the infrastructure we have the buses and they are going to come in in dribs and drabs there's also some additional electric bus grants that are coming up that we're going to work on but we're not home yet but uh it was a very positive day for the city of Fall River and transporting our kids the only reason why I ask is we have uh multi-year contracts with bus companies that we've approved

so I the only thing I would say is I think we should be more involved in it to get some info to know what's happening what's not happening because if we don't get the transportation right it comes on us and I've always had the issue of it so you and you take it all but we we vote on certain things we have policies we have those procedures but now we're

going to give buses to there how is it working that's all I think we should get some info it's a little confusing I will agree with you there because even I'm been following it and I'm like how is this going to work out but I do have I believe we have good partners with trembly amarals and whalings that'll work with us they know it's an opportunity for them as well as us and I

think we can put it together I would appreciate any information you could send thanks anything further do we have a request for executive session yes we would um you want to read them first National laws chapter 38 section 21A 7 to review and approve the executive session minutes for November 14 2022 regular school committee meeting National laws Chapter 30 section 21a1 to review the open meeting law

complaint dated November 15th 2022 followed by Patrick Higgins regarding the October 17 2022 regular meeting of the school committee Mr Higgins alleges at the forever school committee intentionally violated the open media law by not accepting the main meeting minutes in a timely manner national award chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collect the bargaining relative to all the Civil

clerical employees the former school system represented by the forward Department of Civil Service clerical employees as a chair is determined there's no Open Session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee master of Lawrence chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all government employees including without

Limited Asian paraprofessionals parent workers and clerks the former school system that are paid by federal estate grants and represented by the Fall River Public Schools government programs as the chairs determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee National laws chapter 38 section 2186 to consider the purchase exchange lease or

value of real property located at 2501 South Main Street Fall River Massachusetts as the chair is declared an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the school committee National World chapter 38 section 2182 to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and law to conduct contract negotiations with non-uni Personnel including the

Elizabeth Lewis coordinator of data assessment and accountability we would reconvene that may not be our statements at that time can I get a motion in a second motion approved second all right can we get a roll call Deb Please Mr aggiel yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes rodericks yes mayor Coogan yes in recess for executive session back in session Deb please call the roll

let's drag you here Mr Bailey Mr Bailey Mr Hart here Ms Laramie here miss Pereira here miss rodericks maybe they can't hear us Sarah thumbs up Sarah she can't hear us yeah she can't hear us they can't hear us I bet Scott they can't hear attendance anyway she's right there and mayor Coogan I just I can't see if Bobby's here or not he might be the same thing is there correct

I just want to make sure if he's here then I'll um

Sarah can you hear us you there Sarah can you type uh yeah can you hear us yes no she just pointed to her yeah yes I am too

better we convene though we're going to do a vote to reconvene you there now Sarah hello emotions anything further to come before the committee Mr Mayor Mr um a motion to approve the executive session minutes for November 14th of 2022 the regular school committee meeting you need a second second I got a second uh Deb please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Ms Pereira

yes Miss Rodricks a motion to approve as negotiated the contract with civil clerical employees or the small River School System needed a second second I have a second dead please call the roll let's try again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss laravee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks mayor Coogan yes motion to adjourn second I have a second can I get a roll call please Deb let's try again yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart

yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks mayor cougar yes