12.9.2024 Fall River School Committee

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do i' like to call to order the regular meeting of the Fara school committee for December 9th Deb would you please call the role Mr AA here Mr Bailey Mr Das here Mr Cory here M larv here M Pereira here mayor kran here uh salute to the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for

all pursuant to the open meeting law any person make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible we're going to do the we're going to do the recogition awards right now uh so

we'll go down to the microphone and we'll do those do that require a motion Mr chair I'm sorry does that require a motion to move it before citizens input it's already changed on the agenda what did you say it's changed it's changed on the agenda thank you okay for

on the weekend of November 3rd The BMC dery High School Marching Band traveled to Allentown Pennsylvania and this evening on behalf of the school committee I'd like to recognize them for their winning the US bands division 1A National Championship are they here yes

oh having a picture

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um next we'll have the student comment um Brooke

tius in November 11th and 12th graders in Trio were invited for the first generation Day celebration where students participated in a college fair meeting representatives from over 25 colleges and universities heard from first generation students and their personal experiences as well as how Trio provided support to complete high school and successfully enroll in college the event concluded with a networking lunch

provided by Trio offering students the chance to connect with one another then we had a gratitude challenge that happened during advisory where students had the opportunity to write notes to staff in the building to show their appreciation and have their notes delivered to the staff members that they wrote to there's also a construction partnership with the New England laborers union

which is the first of its kind in the state of Massachusetts and it's aimed at creating Pathways to high- wage high skill construction careers for students enrolled in the construction craft laborers program at dery then we had Deca day on the hill which was in November and dery's deca program brought nine outstanding students to the Massachusetts state house for Deca day on the hill during

the day our chapter was honored to receive a certificate of congratulations from the Massachusetts House of Representatives acknowledging the commitment and success of the students and advisers of the dery high school Deca program in preparing emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing Finance hospitality and management this recognition highlighted the ongoing achievements and the

dedication of our Deca Community um coming up soon we have a day at Santa's work Workshop which is an event that's organized by Fred TV but activities are run by student volunteers where Elementary School students with good attendance are invited to dery for the day where they make holiday crafts and have Story Time with Santa and then it's also worth noting that our pep rally was very successful with lots of

students participating in skits and showing school spirit and to top that off our football team won against New Bedford on Thanksgiving Day thank you Brooke um next up item number five I sorry item number four citizens input now remember we did limit it to a half an hour so I'm going to ask people to be respectful of that and stay on the three minutes first up is Randy Dudek um Rolling Green

for thank thank you all in 2001 author and filmmaker wrote about schools in America I agreed with the sentiment when I first read it and his words resonate even stronger with me today he wrote quote I don't know about you but I want the people who have the direct attention of my child more hours a day than I do treated with tender loving care this is my kid they are preparing for this world

you would think society's attitude would be something like teachers thank you so much for devoting your life to my child is there anything is there anything I could do to help you is there anything you need I am here for you why because you're helping my child my baby learn and grow not only will you be largely responsible for her ability to make a living but your influence will greatly

affect how she views the world what she knows about other people in the world and how she will feel about herself I want her to believe that she can attempt anything that no doors are closed and that no dreams are too distant I am entrusting the most valuable person in my life to you for seven hours each day you are thus one of the most important people in my

life when my family and I moved to Fall River three summers ago I was admittedly nervous about things I had read online about the school district but I can happily say that in my family's experience our time first at the Sylvia school and now at Morton have been nothing but wonderful for the growth of my two daughters it was perfectly wonderful up until about a month ago when one of my kids

came home from school said that her favorite teacher was leaving to take a quote opportunity in a different state I asked her if she happened to know where the teacher was leaving for hoping it would be anyone out of 48 other states but no this treasured teacher was leaving Fall River to take a job in the far off land of Rhode Island no offense attended to our neighbors at the ocean

state now I can admit I've only heard one size views on the ongoing negotiations between the F Rea and this committee and I am completely open to the possibility that our teachers requests are being heard more than they believe that they are however it is very clear that our teachers do not feel that we are here for them that we are not ready to do anything we can to help them

that they are not some of the most important people in our lives and that needs to change thank you all for your time thank you

next up Alex Bradley I'll need a waiver uh point of information um I don't believe there's any residency requirement within our rules I don't believe a a vote would be necessary I'll go with that Dr Das um Julian Street Pucket three minutes please thank you thank you um last time I spoke to the committee my message was of how much I love my job how much I love this community and how much I don't want to

leave it every year as I'm scraping pennies together and driving for 45 minutes to work with a difficult High need population in a level four School my friends colleagues and family look on in disbelief I have so many family friends and past colleagues who work in other districts including an assistant superintendent who asks me every year at Thanksgiving why I haven't left Fall River yet I'm constantly needing to

defend myself to my parents my husband and others alike my reason for staying has always been the kids I got my first teaching job here and I have been at the same job for eight years not to toot my own horn but I'm a darn good teacher I'm good at what I do and no one is perfect including teachers but everyone I come in contact with can tell I immerse

myself in this work I believe these kids need an educator like me one who is fully committed and puts the students first always even if getting christm presents for all of them means not having basic necessities that I need for myself I ended my last speech last time with this sentiment I don't want to have to choose between being a good mom and being a teacher here I so desperately

want to do both but it is becoming so clear that that is impossible I heard a quote recently that rocked me to my core as a teacher my students get me at my best and my family gets the rest I really want you to listen to that I am willing to do this hard work work I am willing to travel but I have debt collectors calling me for unpaid bills I

had to borrow from my pension to buy groceries my credit card is maxed out due to using it to pay for my Master's Degree that was required of me to keep my job again I was willing to do all this and break myself for these kids however when the f frps Facebook page shared misinformation the day before Thanksgiving when very few people have seen the true disrespect and gaslighting

that goes on in our bargaining meetings my heart actually broke I was willing to do it all and still be in financial failure but for what for a district that clearly doesn't care about me that is why with a heavy heart I announc that I am officially looking elsewhere for a job not again I can't cry twice that's too much one was enough I do not intend to come back next year because I can't I

will continue to fight so that these kids don't lose even more amazing Educators I will stay for this year because my kids need me but my family needs me too so to any of the families of students or students themselves who may be watching tonight just know it's not because of you I love you so much and I'm sorry I can't afford to be your teacher please mayor Ken come to the next committee meeting thank

you thank you uh next up Ava Wilkins uh third third School Street Bristol hello every day I tell my students to work hard and that they will achieve their dreams when I was in their seat my dream has always been to be a teacher thankfully I have achieved that dream with my degree in secondary education and my master's degree in special education all by the Agee of 23 it is also my dream to stay here and

retire in the Fall River Public Schools especially at dery high school unfortunately my dream has also meant that I now have to live paycheck to paycheck while having a master's degree to make extra money I tutor twice a week picked up a fifth class a coach volleyball in the fall season and I'm a junior class adviser all these positions require ample time and energy this also doesn't even include the extra tasks

that I do during my day as a special education teacher while pursuing my dream of becoming a teacher I chose to continue my career at dery high school because I love it here I moved my life from Long Island New York to Fall River Massachusetts that I can continue to teach here I have continued to stay because of my students and my co-workers but I don't deserve to live paycheck to

paycheck with a master's degree in my field our students deserve to have teachers are you aware of how many students get sent to the cafeteria because there's no teacher for their class when we are not paying our Educators appropriately no no one wants to work here positions stay open for long periods of time because those potential applicants are going to Brockton New Bedford Taunton our students learn not to get

attached because at the end of the day we have to make the tough decision to leave and get jobs at different schools for higher pay every year I get asked are you coming back next year I asked mayor Coogan and the school committee to reach a settlement that shows respect for our professionalism and dedication and demonstrate a commitment to retain and attract the best best possible

Educators our students deserve it it's time for a pay correction so young teachers like me can see a future here in Fall River thank you danana Branson Water Street Portsmouth

three minutes please thank you okay I'm an SLP in my seventh year at Fall River I'm standing here tonight on behalf of two groups one the students of Fall River Public Schools and two those compassionate skilled talented and dedicated folks sitting behind me in person and in spirit I did not grow up in this city I can I can move with and make more money with a similar work with

a smaller workload somewhere else so why am I here because I show up for students alongside some of the finest most admirable professionals I've ever known in my 24 years as an SLP showing up for students who deserve access to the appropriate educational support and services but do not have that access due to our Recruitment and Retention crisis last school year I wrote 300 letters

notifying families that their children were not receiving the speech services on their IP over 76% of related service job offers made declined with the primary reason being salary in October there was two-e period where five slpas could not see students leaving 196 students unserviced due to the resignation of their SLP supervisors because salaries are low and we can't F positions the district pays outside

contracted employees friends and family 6585 $110 an hour rates two to three times that of District employees doing the same work approximately 40% of special Educators in our classrooms today are not fully licensed as a parent I would not be okay with my child being one of the over 1,200 students who are not getting the required and deserved special education services from licensed

bed teachers today I counted over 170 students who will not receive their related services this week due to shortages there are 30 open special educ ation positions for speech and 2ot we are not meeting the needs of our students shortages are exacerbating gaps hindering progress and in some cases causing harm disproportionately impacting our most vulnerable I know recruiting and retaining can be

challenging but the needs of our students are critical and urgent we must take the opportunity in front of us right now to directly Target our Recruitment and Retention crisis without change our students bear the start breaking consequences offer competitive salaries and benefits in line with similar Districts The National Coalition on Personnel shortages in special education and related Services has

helped 11 states pass salary supplement legislation for slps and hundreds of districts across 32 states have achieved salary bonuses for school-based slps to attract special Educators and related service providers 39 states have sanctioned the use of monetary incentives encourage and support work life balance create a positive and supportive work environment that Fosters a culture of collaboration and open

communication Educators come and stay when they feel their creativity and professional judgment are respected supported compensated and valued thank you thank you uh next up Sebastian Sanders Flint Street Mr ago the um speaker raised a valid question I think so I'd like to get a response from the superintendent related to the speech pathologist issue and I'd also like to know if there is

anything that was proposed by the speech pathologist specifically related to what the young lady was just saying in negotiations well somebody please give a response well it's kind of come out of the 30 minutes let's let the people talk and we'll talk at the end soon as after the 30 minutes please thank you so we owe you a couple of minutes there guys um next up is Sebastian Sanders Flint Street for

over three minutes please Sebastian you told me hello she a minute to go tell them hi my name is Sebastian I teach behavioral sub separate for both sixth and seventh grade English and social studies at talbet Middle School yes that is my real title and yes that is this is my first year in the district for those on the stage that I haven't gotten to meet you not know that I'm in Fall River

by means of an agency that is specifically meant to put teachers in districts like Fall River districts that cannot keep teachers districts that because of their High turnover they see less than favorable reading assessment scores why Fall River has high turnover your guess is as good as mine but I think I have a pretty good idea I'm here to tell the school committee that last week I put in my two weeks at talbet and

I've decided to leave the district following suit of dozens of other Fall River Educators this year alone especially schal Educators I want to reassure you that I'm not leaving because my job is hard I love my job so much I love my kids I love the same sub separate kids locked in their own hallways that you're all too afraid to look at these kids desperately want to learn but you won't let them I'm not

leaving because of my co-workers I love talit man I love every blue shirt in this room cuz all taking time out of their night away from their family and friends begging for what feels like drops in the bucket that we have right anyways I'm leaving because of our contract I sincerely would love to stay I'm serious but I cannot as a self-respecting educator wake up in the morning and continue working for a

district that respects me so little that they cannot accept a significantly decreased package on F's part add District that respects me so little that they would rather wear me down quote than pay me a fair competitive salary as I work for months without a contract District that respects me so little that they see a school like mine like talbet cannot fill a single inclusion role and nothing is done if

you're not following that means not a single student with an IEP in tabbit is getting their inclusion hours from a special educator not one this means sorry this means that there are hundreds over a hundred kids that are not receiving their legally guaranteed rights to an appropriate education but I'm told that maybe it's my lesson plans that are the problem my job is to teach plain and

simple your job is to retain teachers and increase student outcomes so veteran teachers are leaving and new teachers will not stay what is your plan mayor Coogan and at least one of you I hope after you've heard at least two people are quitting today that you come to the next bargaining meeting on the 16th and make your best effort to see that we are bargaining in good faith excuse me but

soon the school committee parents of Fall River will start becoming wiser to the fact that their students are not getting a single service on their IEP and this will fall at your feet I sincerely hope that those parents are kinder to you than you have been to me thank you three minutes thank you next up Corey Anderson Robison Street 3 minutes please Cory I've been a teacher in Fall River

for nearly 10 years I took a pay cut leaving New Bedford to teach in Fall River but at that time I thought it's closer to home where my kids go to school and it was an opportunity at my alma moer you know class of 2000 and I'd be an active member in my own community in 2019 I gave birth at which point I was disappointed to see that our district didn't have any supports in

place for maternity leave being broke with three children I was forced to return to work prior to the recommended 12 weeks leave because we were unable to make ends meet in 2022 I had another child and was excited to see that the laws had passed for paid parental leave and was saddened to hear that it didn't apply to Municipal Employees so again no paid leave I was forced to use all of my

days and my credit cards to support us now with inflation still on the rise huge interest charges on my credit cards and the pathetic pay increases we've received in comparison to our neighboring districts we continue to barely get by the past school year our home needed a new roof my daughter started college our washing machine broke my car was hit in the work parking lot costing us another 500 unplanned

expenses I tutor daily after school until 5 I gave up all of my planning periods to cover classes I cover IEPs and I mentor and we're still just getting by I had perfect attendance last year and collected on the $400 stipend huge didn't cover the cost of the deductible at one of our bargaining sessions someone said no one is better off now than they were a few years ago you might be right there but the

teachers of Fall River have suffered with insufficient pay dangerous working conditions High case loads class sizes and much much more we're drowning here and we have been for far too long I have a master's degree why am I working so many extra hours to to make the equivalent of my brothers and sisters in neighboring districts we are due for a pave correction for too many years we have in too many contracts we have

accepted the leftover scraps offered to us with empty promises of more money in the future the future is now please show up at our bargaining session this coming week F frps show up thanks oh fun fact currently our teachers are starting at $48,000 a year and I found a job posting uh for an assistant manager at Chick-fil-A starting at 65,000 a year no master's degree no bachelor's degree no mtel required thank you Mr

chair Mr Das thank you I'm just wanted to respond to the um requests from the previous two um speakers I like to make a motion that we add all seven school committee members to the collect bargaining team so allow to all you're doing is taking time off them do it at the end of I could not hear you Mr chair can you do it at the end of public input so we can let them have

their time sure okay um next up La Lauren Hogan ad Street Fall River good evening my name is Lauren Hogan and I'm a third grade teacher at verett I've been an educator for nine years eight of which have been with follow Public Schools my main reason for speaking tonight is because of teacher attention as I was taking my students out to recess the first full week of school this year one of my third graders

turned to me and said Mrs Hogan please don't leave the school why would an 8-year-old child who has known me for meere days be worried about something like this this child then explained that her kindergarten first and second grade teacher have all left since she started up a Varys the saddest part is I too have been contemplating leaving for several years now it is because of my students that I stay because the

students of Fall River deserve consistency because they deserve to feel a sense of community and that is extremely difficult to do with teacher and staff turnover at the alarming rate that we see in Fall River I want my students to be able to return to vas throughout middle school and high school and know that they're going to be able to see their former Elementary School teachers I want our students to feel

worthy feel valued and feel loved enough that we stay every year I stay because I cannot be another person that deserts them and leaves them wondering if they are the reason their teachers leave each year however at some point I may need to put myself and my family first as many incredible veteran have chosen to do and continue to do in eight years of ays I have had seven different Neighbors in

the classroom adjacent to me seven every year in the district grade level and content teams are starting over with new colleagues helping them learn our curriculums expectations and routines not to mention that the district decides to throw a new curriculum or initiative every couple of years for us to Grapple with and figure out how to effectively implement it is exhausting to have to

rebuild year after year after year and how are veteran teachers shown value for this work the simple answer is we really aren't at last month's school committee meeting attorney Assad chose to partially quote F president F president Keith michon then the day before Thanksgiving f frps Facebook page shared an infographic with the same misinformation I teach my students to be critical consumers of media and text

your choice to include a partial quote as misleading and bias it has repeatedly been advertised that the Fall River school committee salary proposal is the best cost of living adjustment in the state but just because the percentage is high doesn't mean it helps us to close the gap let's look at Brockton this Academic Year a teacher with a master M degree on step 12 in Brockton will make

$13,100 with your current offer a follower of a teacher with the same credentials would make 9,878 great we have closed the Gap from nearly two 20,000 to a little over 12,000 by the time the 26 to 27 school year comes around that same teacher will now be making 1,100 100 one 10,192 meaning they will still be $300,000 shy of a Brockton Public Schools teacher if Brockton were to give

a 0% cost of living adjustment over the next three years Brockton is currently bargaining for a new contract as well and I can't see them settling for 0% over three years your current Financial offer May close the gap some but is not enough to make us competitive to nearby districts you claim that the school committee is committed to engaging in constructive dialogue yet you are not

partaking in constructive dialogue Nos and holds are not constructive dialogue regressive bargaining is not constructive dialogue if you want to commit to constructive dialogue then mayor Coogan and at least one member of the school committee needs to be willing to show up at the table and actually participate in bargaining sessions and settle this contract or you'll continue to lose valuable Educators that our

students so greatly deserve thank we're gonna run out of time but we're going to carry the names over I would like a couple more Josh Lo leder Deval Street fora

uh if it hasn't become apparent by now we are currently having a bit of a morale crisis in the Fall River Public Schools it definitely doesn't help matters uh when the week before Thanksgiving we get hit with really a double whammy um putting lesson plan language back on the bargaining Table after it had already been withdrawn that felt like a slap in the face I was there and this is my first contract cycle

being involved in the bargaining one of the things that I've learned in this process is that regressive bargaining is a no no you know if we say we're GNA take something off the table we can't just put it back on the table that was very disappointing the double whammy really hit the very next day when I'm leaving the pep rally at dery still got my school spirit going to spend the holiday

with my family and then I see a Facebook post that just kind of twists the knife in and then we look at teachers who were leaving in droves is this what is this what we want because that's what's happening here and it seems that there's a lot of Mis communication going on between your bargaining team at the table and what you guys are saying up here uh on Monday after Thanksgiving break you

posted another post on Facebook trying to clck verify no we didn't reject the package that the F proposed I was in the room your team did say that and they said it with a condescending tone of it was ridiculous to propose a package as one whole thing 50 of us were there we heard it right um but these are the kinds of miscommunications that happen when you're not there because how do you know what was

actually said it's a private meeting you're relying on other people to bring the word back to you so that's why we're really insisting on that um that at least a few of you guys come to our next bargaining session uh you guys have been making it pretty clear you want to go to mediation I don't know if you guys have played the game of telephone before but I don't think adding an extra person

really makes things happen fast um if anything it just seems like a way of trying to uh as has been said before just drag the process out and we're past that point right not only us f members but also every other employee you have in this District that isn't going to get their contract settled until you guys settle with the F our security guards our administrators PA professionals

cafeteria workers custodians I'm sure I'm missing a few they deserve Fair contracts too and I just hope that when it's their turn to get a contract you guys treat them a whole lot better than we've been treated thank you thank you yeah I think so uh we actually could do two we can do two more if they stay a three minutes Andrea Ross Key Street for River was the last one

letter good evening although I am a Fall River resident I'm actually here to speak to you first as a teacher in a smaller neighboring District where I work with numerous qualified fantastic former Fall River teachers one of them commented to me recently that she is now making more money than she would be in Fall River with better working conditions and less stress I share this comment with permission and many others

have expressed similar sentiments instead of being a place where rookie teachers get a position on their resume and move on as soon as they have the opportunity I urge you to offer competitive compensation as well as respond to the Union's requests that will not cost you a dime so the Fall River can be a desirable place for teachers to spend their careers there are teachers who have spent their entire

careers here and they also deserve to be adequately compensated for that this will be better for the students of Fall River as a Fall River parent and foster parent I have had the privilege of dealing with compassionate competent Educators at lerno Spencer bordon Henry Lord Talbot and dery these people are amazing and they deserve the fair contract that they are asking you for many of them are doing a job that I'm

not sure if I could do students are coming to school with more than just educational needs and teachers are having to wear multiple hats to meet those needs if the negotiating team does not retain quality Educators by offering a fair contract that is competitive with other districts it is the students of Fall River who will suffer if you look at the open positions they you can see

that they already are you were elected by the taxpayers of Fall River not to create new administrative positions and give raises to administrators but to fully staff River classrooms by offering competitive wages and respect to the people working on the front lines with our children this brings me to the final role in which I'm addressing you which is as a Fall River voter the only way that I would consider

voting for any of you in the next school committee election is if you do what is best for the students of Fall River by attending bargaining sessions and resolving this contract fairly and as soon as possible thank you

uh next up Keith michon trian Avenue East Province that's it last last speaker good evening I'm Keith michon president of the farer Educators Association as everyone knows we're well pasted due for a new contract frustrations are growing as you've heard tonight and it's having a negative impact I could talk about how my words have been misrepresented or how recent bargaining sessions have gone but I'd

like to talk about where we're going from here tonight we will begin to discuss bargaining budget priorities I'm happy to see themes consistent with what we have been fighting for in our contract settling contracts is an important part of the budget process and I implore you to make a serious effort to settle all contracts before the new year I'm pleased to see the increase increasing staff compensation and

benefits among priorities course reimbursement robust support systems and many other things that could make Fall River a desirable place to be an educator which it certainly has great potential to be I've experienced it right down the hall of this building one of the students I met while working at cus Middle School was 2023 senior class president Rachel Lemma I'd like to remind you all of the essay she

read at the youth candidate event in 2023 she spoke about how teacher shortage impacted her education and called for teacher appreciation Fair wages and respect this is what we've been advocating for in our contract campaign our students notice the impact of these things not only do they notice when they don't have a certified teacher but they are also establishing a perception of the profession our

greatest pool of talented future Fall River Educators attends our schools each day it's time to settle this contract and show that them that education is a great field to work in Fall River is a great City to work in status quo won't prove those last two statements true let's keep doing the work that we've been doing keep moving in the right direction this is a transformational time we ask that the mayor and at least

one other member of the committee attend the next bargaining session we ask that you seriously consider our recent package and we look forward to bargaining sessions with all of our units thank you okay um okay that that concludes the half hour appreciate you uh everybody for being respectful to each other Mr um Mr Das has a motion but I have a question for Mr Assad that related to your motion

if everybody goes that's a meeting isn't it please to negotiations yes right so I I will I I will he I didn't hear your question I didn't hear your question um if everybody goes it's it's a isn't it that's correct right so we'll myself and the vice chairman will go to the next meeting okay guys we'll definitely attend have a question SE Mr Das thank you um just um two questions one with

the 30 minute period um is there anyone that hasn't A letter came in but we're not go ahead if it's just a if it's I know we discussed at the last meeting the 30 minute rule but if there was just like one or two stragglers we could make a motion to wave the rules if it's just one letter I don't see the issue with reading it right now so I'll make a

motion to wave the 30 minute rule to allow the remaining citizens input to be read out loud I have a motion I don't hear a second okay and um just one other point go ahead um I just um I individual a few individuals mentioned about the Thanksgiving Day post I'm not going to get into it specific but I just want to know because I asked myself who posted that post on Facebook I

did when I when I chasing Facebook here are we that what we're doing tonight I asked the question are we chasing Facebook Mr Das you've never heard of those fake profiles and things we're not chasing Facebook up here we have to take care of some kids know who posted it okay I agree that's my question thank you how you okay I could glad Mr Mr um Mr Agia and then

you go just it's it's getting hard to hear just so you know uh when you guys were talking we cannot hear and understand what you're saying but my question is the same as it was when the young ladies came up for speech therapy so I think it's important when we're in somebody brings up a a valid issue I think they made a valid issue but we don't just sit by and just say that's

okay I would assume so my question is to anybody on the bargaining team has there been a specific proposal by the speech therapist to get a special whatever they called it additional compensation they quoted 39 other cities or states that did like what's the status of the speech therapy issue M curle so as part of unit a where the speech language Pathologists are there are um proposals on the table for around

case load sizes and around stiens for slps as well as SLP lead and what is it that they're looking for so I believe the SLP lead um was a $4,000 stipend slps a $2,000 stipend and then depending and then I I don't remember exactly what the case load um cap was that was proposed so when when I hear the what they're talking about it to me we're only hearing half of the story The

public's only hearing half of the story some things we hear that we don't even know about uh not that we're not communicating but we communicate once a month so it's a difficult process to go back and forth but when I hear those young ladies say that they we can't find speech therapists it's a very high need situation children are not getting the services you know is what they're saying

now I believe we're trying to supplement it with uh vendors and the like and people would ow be owed comp compensatory services so I think Miss openchain is doing the best she can to do that but I don't find that to be an unreasonable if that was what was going to help be a $4,000 stien the young man who just came up who said he was leaving that said he was a substantially

separate classroom I for one have been a proponent of that to say we have substantially separate highest needs classes in the district we need to do something different than that because those are the highest needs most needy children so I have been one that's been pushing for a stien specifically for them the committee has F has agreed with those recommendations to try to do that but I think it's dis ingenuous for

anyone to come up before this Committee in the public and say that we don't care about those certain positions and I'm only bringing up those two because they were here today but IA one and this committee has supported increases for those specifically targeted areas now we don't agree on everything but to say that we're not trying that we're not given every single dollar that we can

have to fund these teacher contracts is disingenuous it's disingenuous by anybody that comes up and say that we don't care but we cannot get blood from a stone we have a limited amount of money in negotiations but I really feel like the school committee is unfairly being looked at like as if we don't care the gentleman was excellent who that first Speaker talked about he doesn't know both sides of the story he would

hope that we're being conscientious I for one think that we are but we cannot give something that we don't have we can only afford so much and I think that's the part that I think is is missing we hired a whole slew of people based on the uh getting money from the student Opportunity Act we hired a lot of positions that are needed in order to service these kids we can't just turn

around and lay all those people off now so there's only a finite amount of money and I think that we're actually funding that you know we're doing the best that we can but I for one want to public to state that I support this uh special uh speech therapist to have more money I've supported the um uh substantially separate classrooms and I think most of the members of the committee or if not

all of the members have so I just find it disingenuous so I always like to ask what is the rebuttal what is the rebuttal as a group that our bargaining team here's the bully pulpit say what you have to say I would like to get somebody to respond to some of the things lastly I'm sick and tired of people coming up before us to say that at dery high school there's hundreds of

kids in that cafeteria that's unacceptable it shouldn't be happening and if it is I been asking well it's not it's this it's that that has to stop in my opinion our yield all right thank you well we'll we'll find out about that on Monday um thank you subcommittee updates please uh facilities and operations y Mimi larvie chair yep uh facility and operations subcommittee met uh this past

last uh Wednesday December 4th uh at the administration building 4:30 uh there were three items on the agenda that were uh referred to the full committee tonight uh and one item up for uh discussion uh Mr uh CH Mr Pico presented the envelope HVAC request for qualification to provide Engineering Services related to a study uh the winning bidder will be responsible for evaluations and recommendations for each uh

facility uh regarding HVAC equipment and operations uh they will be mapping out a longterm projection Capital plan and highlight individual projects by necessity uh this work will be proactive and priority driven with A continuous preventative maintenance uh plan committee agreed Mr Pico should be the point person for this work uh the conversation was had on who has the fiscal responsibility of this project

committee felt it's the city's responsibility and the full committee should discuss further there should be a green there could be a green roof Grant available through mspa uh Mr Pacho also presented uh the transportation invitation for bid for yellow Ser uh bus services uh for typical transportation and the mckin vento transportation my uh Mr Pico stated not much has changed from the last 5year

contract we discussed how the buses never run out of seats but run out of time the bus routes will be Revisited by district and bus company uh electric buses will be in operation in the next couple months we discussed the fiscal aspect and how the city's responsibility to pay busing not the school side uh we had a discussion about reaching out to arasy and inquiring about their start

and end times uh Mr Pico also presented on the renewal request from the tren's van transportation to provide special education 7D van transportation for both district and out of District students this would be a three-year contract beginning FY 2526 with a 2-year one-year renewal contract options um the van monitors will have an increase in their hourly wage of approximately $2 a year after FY

2526 uh daily uh charges will remain the same for FY 25 and 26 uh FY 26 and 27 will increase 5% as well as FY 27 and 28 will have a 5% increase with this contract mckin vento will have a separate bid uh the district's director of Transportation will be using the Traverse system uh the van runs are constantly changing for numerous reasons and Traverse is used for efficiency uh final discussion

uh was the Pace Building the renovation and restoration of it uh the original estimate for this job was 33,900,000 not to uh and not expected to be 44,500 Mr Pico stated the job is one month behind the inside work has been going well the roof was littered with piping but almost all of it's off the roof now fire supression bid will be the next big piece of this project the bidding is underway Mr Pico stated pay

center has been halted because of the playground costs uh the work intensified in the costs were higher than estimated for all four uh playgrounds Mr agas stresses displeasure with the amount of time it's taken for this pace building project to be completed uh Mr Pico spoke to representatives of both rental sites uh Bishop Conley and 300 nor Eastern a to discuss rentals for FY 2526 meeting was adjourned at

6 Mr chairman thank you Mr AGA just to reiterate some of the points that Vice chair lar talked about about the issue that we brought up at this facilities meeting was about the pay center the actual building but for context the issue that we have is last February March we had a debate in this Committee in the public over how we were going to improve the prek spots Early Education

for our children we were told we were promised it was agreed to that several things were going to happen so that when we passed the lease we were going to do it for one year because when we pay a lease we are just basically giving away money so at this meeting was the first time that this school committee received any word that we were $700,000 over budget on four playgrounds that to me is a problem and

it continues to be a problem systematically we talked about things with the superintendent about how does this happen I still don't have an answer to that uh we have a meeting coming up on Wednesday with this topic being on the agenda when we look at the Pace Building we were promised in February March of last year I'm still awaiting the copies of the minutes which I'm sure I'll get you can go home and watch it

yourself if you'd like we were promised that we were going to get a new roof at the auditorium at the old dery high school including fire suppression the building inspector had told us already we cannot do any work until the fire suppression the um roof and I think a new generator and all the emergency stuff needs to work we received none of that I've been asking for updates on this for over the last six

months Mr Pico gave us a uh an update at the facility subcommittee said that the roof was 95% done or whatever so I figured oh that sounds good but the kicker was that the fire suppression system isn't even out to bid yet and we're in December and we were promised that this was going to be done so that we would have the time to work on the facility so we could in improve

and not have to pay leases at the other two sites the reason why I'm saying this is because everyone should be aware of it and people need to stop being held accountable when we say something they need to give the answer and we need to do it because what now we oh we don't have the money so we over $700,000 on playgrounds so the priority was a playground I guess instead of any other

expenses and money is not going to get better it's going to get worse moving forward and I think that it's incumbent upon this committee and the public to weigh in uh the building meeting is going the um special ed early Ed meeting is going to be at the pay center on Wednesday anybody can come and it's the intention of the chair which is me to do a tour of the area so we can see what is

planned I don't believe that we should just abandon this project and say let's kick it to 20 2026 and I also want the superintendent which I've already requested and giving her some time to get the answers we need to figure out how this happened and where was the money in the budget because now we're shot $700,000 that we thought we had to pay for the pace which was only going to

cost 3.9 do the numbers folks this is a problem so it was very disappointing at the meeting to get this information the other piece and I'm not sure if the superintendent has added any um data to this package or any one pages but the two issues were we're going to go out to look at bids for uh how to fix all the systems I'm not sure if we got an answer

to who's going to pay for that is there anything in here that says that or is that preempting the discussion do do you mean about the Colin Center I'm confused about what question so what happened is the committee debated at the meeting to say whether we wanted to go out to get a study to talk about the HVAC systems it's going to come in at $40 $50 million to get them all up to snuff like it

should be my concern concern is who is going to pay that bill at the subcommittee we talked about the process of the city is supposed to pick up anything $150,000 or more so here we are I'm asking you if that was rectified and do we have a letter saying who's going to pay when it comes time to that discussion today no we do not we don't the other piece was uh with Transportation the transportation bids

are something that is a city expense uh but I think it's our fiduciary responsibility to do it is the best way we we can that we need to upgrade some of the way that the the routs are on and so the lines are drawn and I would hope that there's something in place for that and I know that's a topic on uh Wednesday uh for our meeting as well but

uh I don't think it should be glossed over we overspent the budget by $700,000 on playgrounds whether it was legitimate reasons or not we overspent by $700,000 and now because the fire suppression system is not in we can't do the PACE Center we can't do the pre build out that this committee was promised that might be okay for some members I can tell you for this one it's not with that I

yield um I do want to make something clear we are um I talked to Al Aliva today about the uh fire suppression we're very close to sending that out and I believe the money will be committed um for the most one of the most expensive pieces the pump by the end of December and we will have we still have the arpa money that we're going to use to do the fire suppression that's covered uh going

forward on the pace I uh I would say as soon as we can get that wing of the building with fire suppression we get some bids out to see what this is going to cost and go forward from there I know the estimates that are floating around um may have included uh removing asbestos flooring but that's uh been tested and there's no asbestos in it so that'll save us uh few hundred, which is

important to a project like this and again working with our partners by renting spots that we've done for many years we'll be able to accommodate the kids and hopefully uh I'm with Mr agar get them into the pay center as fast as possible okay I have a number of minutes that need approval superintend oh I'm sorry I skipped uh okay um superintendent report so as part of the um the report tonight I have

a hiring update um the holiday event update and also a Callin Center update the first is hiring we've um since our last meeting we've hired 20 people one clerk two computer teexs one custodian part-time one provisional Junior custodian one nurse eight par professionals one sack one security officer three teachers and one utility worker part-time in that same time frame we've had 14 resignations one retirement

and four transfers within the district I wanted to give an update on the holiday events uh that I spoke to the last um time we were here um the first is that the winter wonderland holiday wish fundraiser was held back on November 22nd and the fundraiser raised nearly $113,000 that will be used to purchase gifts for students in need this holiday season all of our schools were represented at the event um there were

tables and some schools had more than one table and so I just want to thank all of the people who um did show up school leaders administrators teachers um many other staff members because um it's not a follow of public schools event per se but it is something that does raise a considerable amount of money for our kids so just wanted to say thank you for that um this past Saturday

was the holiday parade I also referenced that back in November that event was so well attended you know across the city there were so many people lining the streets and again we had every single one of our schools um present in marching so it was you know it was really exciting to see I we marched in the parade some folks from central office um so we got to stop in and meet

with schools uh prior to marching and um it was really exciting to see staff members and as well as students um in their families present there so um the last piece is the Colin Center review last year um superintendent Pon contracted with the Colin Center to do a review of facilities and operations as well as the human resources department this was a review that was supposed to take place uh Believe last spring but

we've postponed it a couple of times um it was going to be done late summer early fall but with my transition and the addition of a new direct um I'm sorry Human Resources Director we actually um were looking to postpone it to mid year I have been in communication with the Colin Center and that is something that's going to start in the early spring and we should have a report from the Colin Center within the summer

I know there have been questions around um a review versus an audit what we contracted with the Colin Center to do is a review of processes procedures and we are expecting a report from them over the summer that will offer us some recommendations for next steps that we plan to build into the Strategic plan moving forward Mr chair Mr Das um on the col um two questions one on the Colin Center um

with that contract um so we never started any work with the organization yet you want to push it postpone till mid year we have done only planning meetings and we've um we've done some of the document review but they have not been in the district to start the work of you know observing and interviewing people and things like that and um and if it's okay I know we're having discussions recently on um if school

committee members can request information but if it's um okay I'd love to see a copy of the contract if it wasn't already provided if it was I can go back and look for it but are you aware of any language um exit Clauses um if we the committee decide to go on another route I'm not aware of any Clauses and it's not my recommendation or if anyone wanted my opinion that we abandon the

plan to have them come in to do the review I think the needs that presented themselves remain and that it would be a misstep if we didn't follow through with this review thank you and you mentioned um an audit versus a review um I believe before my time on the committee when we discussed um the committee this committee discussed the reorganization of um facilities and operations it was

um with the caveat there would be an a some sort of audit what what type what kind of review is going to happen um like what would be the steps like what are they going to review would be my question so they request things like they're looking for any of the policies related to ities and operations any of the procedures that are in place that either we have you know committed to

writing in terms of kind of formal procedures in the district or where that doesn't exist they're looking for us to commit it to writing in a way that they have an understanding of how we conduct business so it has to do with the way the department is organized and the way the department is functioning and they are going to give us feedback there so that will happen for human resources as

well as facilities and operations so they'll just be reviewing policies and procedures they're not going to review like expenditures um and things of that regard I don't believe so it's not it's not a finance audit so it's not right and um obviously we so you're of the opinion that we shouldn't separate from this review there should be no audit of the department I I'm not making a

recommendation for an audit I just know that the review will not contain and will not include an audit so I think the the con Center comes in you know as partners similarly to what we just experienced with the Department of Ed having air come into the district to do a review in our schools focus groups interviews observations review of documents and they do a comprehensive report um of their findings against

standards and then they offer us some uh recommendations for next steps and so that's what that that's the kind of report we're expecting from the Colin Center thank you and um on the last point and I wasn't even gonna um bring this up but I was quite alarmed from the conversation we had the previous meeting are you aware of or has anyone in the administration had any um conversations

about limiting school committee members Authority or ability to request information has there been any conversations on that at all I'm I'm not I'm not understanding related to this in in general um has within the last month um has yourself or any anyone within the administration have had any conversations about limiting school I mean I'll speak for myself I actually don't mind speaking for myself I will

tell you that I'm overwhelmed with the number of emails I receive on a daily and weekly basis from members of the school committee it is it is too much I'm going to say that out loud it's too much for me personally it's too much for what I'm asking my team to do and so earlier this year I had requested that people start using a form so that at least I had a mechanism

for tracking what requests had been made when they were made uh put ourselves on a timeline and no I won't won't say nobody but uh I've gotten very few responses in that form instead it is like the Wild Wild West and I get emails day night weekends whenever it moves people and I'm telling you that it is overwhelming I have expressed a need for some kind of guidance because I think

it's important for me to understand what I am required to report out on and the timeline for that reporting so if there have been discussions outside of that where're I I mean I guess there have been because we we heard about it at the last meeting right but I I mean I will speak only for myself thank you and if um if I could just say in regards to the um reporting

mechanism and I I gave my opinion on that I think it could have been better formatted um and I think simple conversation this the first I'm hearing that you feel this way and um at least just speaking for myself I think just simple conversations and finding out ways we can better communicate would have been um a lot more appropriate but on on that point because I am very worried that this

could be set a very bad precedent for this entire city if we um have some sort of opinion come down from the city trying to um limit what um we can receive for response um an authoritarian way of governing and so I'd like to ask um through the chair um or if the chair knows or if anyone knows um what um memor do we have any memorandum with the um Corporation Council of the city yeah

I have it right here and um I had the um Corporation Council review the rights and responsibilities of members of the school committee and um this is what he pulled out for that specific issue because I did think it was going to come up tonight the authority to act on behalf of the school Comm committee must be obtained by an official vote taken during a legally convened meeting

without this Authority requests made by the school committee members can be handles as they can by any other member of the public meaning Freedom of Information request the school department is not required to create documents or perform any analysis at the request of a Committee Member pursuant to section 47 of the charter the school committee is never authorized to give orders or directions to any employ of

the school department even with the approval of the entire school committee um Mr Mayor just um is it was that an opinion from Corporation your Corporation Council or is that um policy of no that's the legal opinion opinion from Alan rsey okay um in that one section it does include um it's besides superintendent I believe that might have been left out delibery or not but um just to go to the question because

that's just an one one individual's opinion that doesn't make it fact doesn't make it true do we have any memorandum with the city of fiver when it comes to legal council I I just have my notes right here on a separate note I'm I'm just asking if we do we have any memorandum with the city of Far River I'll have him I'll have them if it's okay with uh attorney aside can I have um the legal

council rsy send one to all the members of the committee is that is that allowed Mr um okay so I'll get that to you tomorrow right that's my question is do we have a memorandum for not just for this with the for anything for can we go to the city for legal issues I'm assuming there's some sort of memorandum of understanding if I can ask the attorney deci is that accurate I think they work

together uh there is a uh uh cooperation between the uh Corporation council's office and and uh the school committee attorney uh and it has been that way for forever um I remember when I was Corporation counsel back in the in the 80s we had the same relationship with the school committee attorney and that has has uh uh Gone on to this day basically uh there is a an agreement whereby the uh Corporation Council

handles all of the uh litigation within the the school department that any Court action uh is automatically subsumed by their Authority as part of the uh the charter so there's no written agreement between the city of Far River and the Far River Public Schools when it comes to legal council I believe there was but yeah I haven't uh there may very well be and it might be in the indirect um uh authority

of the of the school department as well as the uh the city of Fall River uh there is a there is a an ordinance uh that definitely says that with respect to litigation uh the uh Corporation Council is the the authority to represent the city and its subdivisions in any action and they also handle the workers compensation matters um I'll you for now I see I see my colleague has his hand up I might have

further questions thank you Mr AG yeah just uh just to follow up on that so attorney Assad did the mayor or anybody on the school committee ask you for an opinion on what the role of the school committee is in asking questions of the superintendent well with respect to what I'm asked by uh uh the either the mayor or any other member of the of the school committee there are certain things that

that are confidential uh I'm as I'm asked uh on a continuous basis for legal opinions or for advice concerning school department matters uh with respect I've got a copy of the uh uh the looks like memorandum written by Mr Ramsey that was was handed to me just today by the the mayor um I'm in agreement with his findings that this is this is a uh a situation where this is

the this would be the law uh and if it was requested of me to write an opinion it would be consistent with what he is what he has here he has it in three different sections uh but it is it is does comport it is consistent with the law I just think it's disingenuous quite frankly to not go to you as our school committee attorney so there doesn't need

to be anou we pay you very well to represent us and I think at the end of the day when the mayor wants to get a decision that's not something that he can't control he calls Mr Ramsey and says can you please write something it's not the first time not the second time not the third time this just Contin H continually happens the end of the day the school committee members have a

right to ask questions of the superintendent now Mr Das asked a question to the superintendent saying did anyone in her Administration call any other member of the committee or the city to complain about the questions that anyone's asking I took it from her answer was yeah I think she did complain to the mayor and when in the last meeting when I said that the mayor is just trying to protect the superintendent from

answering questions I'll say it again here that's exactly this member's opinion exactly what's happening the mind reader is at it again I don't think it is I I'm sorry okay you can have the floor as soon as I'm done I have no problem with it I'm just making a statement okay my statement is that that's what's happening so I've asked some things to the superintendent along this line and I

think it's quite valid I've asked questions about illegal garages that nobody's address and I've asked questions of a whole slew of things that I think are important to ask and I think it's valuable just today for instance I looked at some signatures that we had on a document that said we're going to go out and we're were going to authorize payments two members of this committee signed off on these statements we paid

$250 it looks like because a company was called because a it looks like a um trash compact that wasn't running $250 it States from the person arrived on site and found the compactor not working check incoming power okay found key switch in the off position then they turned the key switch to on they tested it and lo and behold it worked Mr Agia for 250 the purpose of this is relative

to questions to the superintendent and that's what's before us Mr agie uh what does this have to do with anything what if I have the floor please I mean so I ask question so here's an example we are having a discussion because a committee member brought it up related to whether the superintendent gets too many emails from the school committee and I just wanted to point point out these are the

type of things that I get elected by the people to do and to ask some questions to say does this make sense I know I actually just wrote in the email to the superintendent hmmm with a bunch of dots because to me that was a question I think that's our responsibility before we sign things to ask her stuff I have plenty of things that I've asked the superintendent for and quite frankly the

superintendent has tried her best to review them I don't believe that every single thing that's been asked whether it be through the drive or an email I don't believe that they actually have been responded to another one this morning was from September 21st Mr Dia sent an email to the superintendent asking for the forensics of when somebody signs a bill schedule how many minutes it was

until they actually signed it did they actually look at the document we haven't gotten a response to that since September 21st so this morning I sent a followup that said if I missed it please resend it but please let me know to me those are legitimate reasons to ask the superintendent questions I don't think there's any ill will at all and part of the job is you're going to get some

questions asked you and I think we need to be able to do that uh relative to the Colin Center review the issue that I have with that is we were promised an audit I've said this before I talked to the superintendent on the phone today I think we can probably do some of the same but we as a school committee never voted on the colum Center review or the

scope of work so all I would ask is before they come in that we get a copy of what the scope of the work is so that we can try and see if there is some of the things that can happen which I had in a collaborative conversation with the superintendent today to see if we can make this colum Center review more robust and since it's not happening until the spring I think we have plenty

of time to look at it thank you a thank you uh thanks that what was it lightning approval of minutes number seven we're going to put a hold on 71 and I'm going to asked for the group to approve um the minutes of the subcommittee evaluation subcommittee meeting from 115 72 73 the approval of the minutes from the grievance subcommittee on 11:18 and the approval of the minutes from the regular school

committee meeting on 11:18 so moved can I get a motion a second I got a motion Mr chair can I get a second first second Mr Mr Das um going through board docs before the meeting um I did not see -4 in there um so I'm not going to vote to approve 7-4 I didn't see 7-1 either so I understand why we're holding that okay hold on she's checking right they're all done they just weren't

uploaded I guess 74 the others are though Mr Das yes um and it's m that's perfectly fine but just I just think it would be appropriate that we table 71 and 74 we'll hold 742 then okay so 7273 and is a hold on 71 and 74 I have ation Mr chairman Mr Agia on 71 is it that they're not done or was there some I'm just trying to figure out if we're in compliance we still in

compliance if we hold off till January it's from um 1021 1021 yep are we still in compliance if we don't pass those minutes uh approve those minutes until January I believe we are thank you so 72 and 73 I have a motion to Second Deb can you call the role Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes Miss lar yes M perero yes mayor cgan yes item number eight we have a travel

request motion to approve question I have a motion to approve but have a second I'll second it with a question Mr Mr Corey so I just wanted to know a little bit about the U on this bapson trip um what caught my attention was the bar Foundation uh what's our status with the bar Foundation now in regards to RPA is there still something going on that had been started a few years ago when Dr

Malone was our superintendent I believe our relationship with the bar Foundation exists with um with evolve that's at dery now so when would evolve was at at RPA okay it was I think we entered into it in terms of reimagining high schools kind of thing through RPA the evolved program was developed and that program moved to dery and so our relationship with the bar Foundation moved with it I know m m

Mr Pao was at RPA when when it first started so I was just wondering and I was just curious as to where the bar Foundation is right now with our school district are they still helping us are they are they giving us money they still act as consultants they are still still um funding partially the um the evolved program at Dary okay thank you I have a motion and a second uh Deb can you call

the RO Please Mr a yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yep yes perrera yes Mayan yes um item nine acceptance of donations uh we have a number of donations tonight can I get a motion a second before the superintendent reads them motion second I have a motion to Second uh Deb call the RO question Mr EG yeah I see uh I had mentioned this at the two meetings ago so most of these

things are small like little donations here and there but the first one on behalf of the parent and Community engagement Center I think is a bigger uh issue for us and I'd like to see if the superintendent can give us a presentation at least some kind of information on it when I look at this I typed in 2013 freight liner xline motor home and the donation on the internet and it came out that it's worth

$90,000 so I think that's worthy of a little more info for the committee for the public to see what this actually is and I'm asking that you either you or somebody present something sure yeah I'd love to have our director from the parent and Community engagement Center Cynthia Kudo come down so she can talk a little bit about um how it was we were able to secure this donation and what the plans are thank you

thank you as most of you know um the parent Center does p Pace on the go where we go out into the community and do a a variety of what we do at the center including registration uh for kindergarten um helping families apply for SNAP and Mass health um and a variety of other things that we do so about a year ago my admin assistant Don monus in our meeting our weekly meeting

said to me I wish we could just get a van uh to do this out into the community instead of just setting up tables and Tents and all that and you know initially I laughed about it but that always stayed in our mind so we um continue to look for Grants um none were big enough to cover this and about a couple of months ago uh we found a potential grant that we weren't G we

ended up not being able to apply for it but in doing the homework for that we called South Coast Health um just to get some information on their health van um and my contact there connected me with other people they were selling theirs um and then in further conversation they agreed to just donate it to us so that's how we were able to accept this donation can you just tell us what it

like is you have any thoughts on what to do with yes so it's it's actually a large RV and there's three meeting spaces um there's a bathroom in it and there's a waiting area right now it's equipped for medical um rooms where they can um have um physicals vaccines all that uh we plan on keeping two of those because the hope is maybe at some point we can bring our vaccine clinic on the

go as well um but they also can be used for meeting spaces so uh we're going to keep those as Mee can you speak a little CL we're keeping those for meeting spaces for families um The Hope is that we'll take our vaccine clinic at some point on the go and maybe offer some other services um in partnership with our Community Partners um maybe host some Community Partners as we go into

the communities with this RV in the future I think disguise the limit at this point uh what we can do with the van but the the focus is bringing us into the community um to service our families and students Mr AER any further just only thing I'd like to say is thank you I think we get a lot of donations this is one of the larger ones that I've ever

been part of and I want to thank uh Miss monis as well as your assistant I think she had a lot to do with this so I think you guys do a great job of promoting the community and I um I'm looking forward to it and I think it's not going to no cost to us you have money to in Grants to fund any of the repairs and the like

so this is what we call a win-win in my book so thank you yeah it'll be fully funded by grants as far as the running cost so yeah thank you Mr Corey no I'm just really excited about the uh the opportunity to have something like this and when when you say it's on the go that means we can probably really reach out and service so many more kids and families with the services that your

Center performs and so hope hopefully that reflects directly in better attendance for our schools uh more important uh raising the value levels of the people that you're reaching out to um especially in that very difficult demographic that I know you guys are working super hard with and uh hopefully down the road all of this contributes to better scores for our children so it's it's just a win-win and the idea of on

the go and going out to service different you know locations throughout the city their homes different clinics and collaboration just think you guys will develop a really good game plan what I would like is maybe like next year if you can just give us an overview as to just how how it's working and and seeing what sense of direction something like this might go into because it's very exciting I just want to

congratulate you Center for having something like this it's a really good PR thing for the fall of public schools I yield thank you Miss larv I just quickly I just want to comment on um Mr Corey what he just said I would love to get the numbers like maybe uh absolutely beginning of next year what whatever six months seven months I would love to have some some outcomes some data just to see

what you guys are doing with it that'd be greately thank you y thank you thanks uh s um so now can I get a motion a second to accept I already have a motion a second okay so why don't we vote and then we'll have uh Dr Curley explain them Mr a yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yes Mr lar yes yes may yes okay so on behalf of dery High

School athletics director Bad Brad buston the acceptance of $3,105 for the dery football team a donation from the hill topper grid iron club uh it's a donation to purchase sweatshirts and sweatpants for the program on Beal also on behalf of dery High School athletics director Brad buston the acceptance of $2,682 a donation for the girl soccer team from the booster Enterprises Incorporated um the donation will be

used to purchase Under Armour jackets and pants on behalf of the Henry Lord Community School principal sha Daniels the acceptance of a 75inch touch view interactive display screen a donation valued at $2,500 um from AER Technologies it's a donation that will be used um as needed in the school on behalf of um Dary Athletics director Brad buston again um the acceptance of $1,265 for the boys soccer team which is

a donation from various donors to snapmobile um this is a donation to purchase Under Armour jackets and then we have various donations made to schools um all over the city over the holiday season um for Thanksgiving and um and actually Christmas and so I'm going to try to summarize some of these um Green Elementary School principal Liz Dunn um accepts us a 7 foot5 inch lighted Christmas tree and 10 cases of

water as well as turkeys donated U six Thanksgiving turkeys donated um the holiday season these are donations made by Home Depot um Shaws of Somerset and the United Methodist Church Watson Elementary School Steph's Blain requesting the acceptance of 30 Thanksgiving baskets from St Anthony of the desert church at Sylvia Elementary School principal Patrick lens accepts Don accepted donations of 26

Thanksgiving baskets from the United Way the Henry Lord Community School accepted 30 pairs of shoes from Happy Feet as well as um 60 turkeys and 75 baskets um from Pastor Tom fonsica principal um Kathleen Cobb accepted four baskets um from T of turkeys and fixings a donation um from fansa families and staff West doll Elementary principal Rich Leman accepted four Thanksgiving Day baskets and um 10 $50 gift cards

from the United Way at Watson again Stephanie Spain accepted toys donated by the plumbers and pipe fritters Local Union 501 um annual toy drive at dery principal Jessica Stevens accepted 25 turkeys from Team Providence youth football at tany Eric brat requested acceptance of um canned food and non- perishable items um um from a food drive um and they donated to help Angel's Anonymous food pantry

at Doran principal Jason Souza accepted 10 Thanksgiving baskets and actually 16 Thanksgiving baskets and a$ 1220 umll gift card those were from the YMCA in Stop and Shop at resiliency prepatory Academy principal Riley accepted 12 Thanksgiving baskets um with $35 gift cards from the first congregation church as well as seven turkeys with fixings from Stop and Shop $25 five $25 gift cards from the

Elks club and three $50 gift cards from CC People Incorporated so I want to thank you thank you superintendent to all of our donors Mr chair Mr DUS I just really quickly just wanted to thank basically the entire Community for um like just looking at all these donations right here shows that we have a strong um Community we have strong Community Partners that know how to come together and

support support our schools around the time of the holiday so it's really great to see so I want to um give my um thanks to every single one of these organizations um for their support to our schools and and the students of our of our district thank you I you okay item number 10 approval of Grants we have two Mr lar just want to take a make a motion to take Early College support

Grant off the table okay we're going to hold second one early college does anybody have anything on the targeted assistance grant no did just hold it she's not taking it off the table hold on you want to table I can hold it all right I can motion to hold no you just got questions on us what you want to say it was Ted it was tabled I'm sorry I'm sorry okay Mr chairman we we need

have a motion to take Early College off the table can I get a second on that one first second I have a motion to Second um before we vote Mr Agia I just want to make sure we were going to talk about it that's all okay you want to um call the rooll on the motion to take it off the table yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes yes Mr Cory yes M lari yes M perara

yes mayor yes now we have the two grants anybody have questions on I do Mr chair which one Mr Cory uh the target assistance grant okay we'll hold that one anybody on the other one okay so we'll hold them both Mr Mr Corey so I I just wanted to uh to ask um Mr raposo I'm really really congratulations on the grant by the way it's it's a very sizable Grant and I'm

sure it's uh I'm sure it's very necessary for all of the work that you're covering I'm just curious as to what areas you have targeted so where this is going to go to sure yeah so um the grant uh focuses on um you know uh certain activities just to accelerate achievement in schools Improvement in schools and so some of those activities include uh professional development around the science of reading so over

the last few years we've done extensive uh professional development on the science of reading for our teachers in K2 um and that's been very well received uh we have not yet um trained every single person and so this continues to be uh an opportunity to do so using these Grant funds um we also similar to that have facilitated some content acmy and professional development in math and science um and so we have uh the

opportunity here to support some of that work um at schools and uh build teacher capacity in math and science through some content acmis um similar uh We've also in the last uh last year we piloted and this year we've expanded um investigating history curriculum in the Middle School which is a social stud curriculum in grade six and seven and so there are some funds here to support um

uh rolling that curriculum out and training teachers on that curriculum so they have what they need um uh We've we're also uh purchasing some licenses for Lexia power up which is uh specifically to accelerate Literacy for multilingual Learners um that's primarily secondary so middle and high school um primarily for students that are uh brand new you know considered newcomers um and so that's a a online um

software that students engage with and then uh we also have um some additional professional development uh related to fractions uh statistics and um I think our final expense here um is uh for adult um uh language classes for Spanish we've had folks express interest in wanting to learn Spanish as you know we have a dual language program at theis um and so we're looking to um potentially offer

something to our staff for those who are interested in um learning a second language so um Mr aoso I remember when that program kicked off at vus a few years ago the Dual language program I know there were a few bumps in a road kicking it off the ground but uh but the idea to have a dual language program is really very appropriate for us for our city um is it is it healthy now is it

doing okay yeah it's doing well um we actually um you know we have a pretty strong partnership we have some uh We've partnered with um some International teachers as well so we have international teachers working in the program as well as teachers from here um the the Veris has actually kicked off what they call NOA Vista so they do a monthly parent Cafe I had the opportunity to attend uh last last month

or the first Cafe uh with the superintendent actually um and it was well attended by families they they you know uh sort of discussed an overview of what the program looks like uh for students um and so I I think it's it's developing well uh tomorrow morning I believe or Wednesday morning rather um we actually uh I think are hosting a visit from another dual language school so as we we're also just involved in

some networks where we've gone and seen dual language programs and we'll also um host visits as well so that we can share ideas uh and collaborate you know to build an even stronger program with districts that have been doing it longer than us since we fairly new to it good I I like to see the growth and development of that and I I know it's it's not easy launching a program like that and when

it was being vetted there were people from OT state that were coming in to consult with our people and so there was already a pretty good wide point of view on that but for I think for our city it's very very appropriate thanks I yield Mr AG just uh how long have we been getting this grant I didn't think this was new this is not new um we but it's gone through the Approval Pro you

know every year we go through the process what's different this year is the allocation has increased um so I I want to say last year I believe it was 200,000 this year it's a $300,000 allocation from the department and when you apply in why how do we get it like what's the qualification so it's basically for schools uh that are in need of targeted assistance so because of the performance of some of our

schools right where they've landed in terms of accountability um we're open to uh compete for for these funds and it's almost like an entitlement Grant at that point for schools like us I think so yeah you could describe it that way only question I had is Mr cury brought up the issue of the uh dual language uh program yep if we could just get a a quick paragraph or whatever on what has been

the effect of the Dual language program on the Vera School sure like there's positives and negatives uh they have to be in the class I think it might have affected class size in a not so good way or you know as it goes but if you could just send us something to the superintendent absolutely relative to that um we sound like it's a real good program but everything has its cost as a

Bros and cons yep thank you are absolutely no problem motion to approve second I think we have a motion second no okay Deb call the rooll Please Mr a yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes M lar yes M Perera yes Mayan yes the second one Early College support Grant Mr Agia just had some follow-up questions from the um my concerns at the last meeting so one of them was around the

administrators and I think the last report that we got indicated that there was administrators getting the pay so I think some clarification would be needed for the edification of the public as I can read here but the public doesn't so that I doesn't have that right so I believe the administrators are not necessarily like the vice principal or principls it was more staff so I would

like somebody to answer what the real story is on that yep there's one administrator in the program which is a school counselor as noted um in the update one pager that I provided or actually Mr Woodward provided he's just not able to be here this evening with some family conflicts um but the administrator that was questioned last meeting is a school counselor position not a vice principal not any of the

other higher administrator positions and the hours up to uh 150 hours that wasn't as clear either but I see it here that's up to up to sort of correct all things that would happen outside of traditional Contra contractual hours whether that's after school or on Saturdays or over school vacations where we're getting kids together to be working on some of their college access pieces of the

program understood second person in it says teacher F Rea Early College academic specialist I'm assuming that that was inadvertently listed as one of the two administrators correct misinterpreted y y but that person the F corre the second third bullet says teacher F Rea but under it says instructional support liaison I don't know if that means it's um not to be confused with our position

of instructional support liaison um they support the instruction for the college courses so it's not uh it says the same name but it's not it does but it is not the same correct and when I look at some of this talks about like an adjunct professor the person has a I guess must have the proper credentials to be a professor um one of the questions I have and it's

not for today but if we can get you to get it at a subcommittee early college is not I'm not on that subcommittee anymore but one of the questions I would have is looking at the class size for Early College as well as the amount of money that we spend on supporting this program and part of uh the ask is that I think we offer an awful lot of support

to these kids that are in early college classes and I'm concerned that we're not supporting other special education programming in the similar fashion it's not to take away from this I'm just trying to see how that compares um so if we could have a subcommittee meeting or some other venue um the last page is on the sample student schedule so I thank you for that I'm not sure that

um I'm trying to have a hard time I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the how the program actually works throughout the year so when you do have the sub commmittee meeting meeting if there's any sort of um an expansion of that last piece of the sample schedule I think the committee should um get it where you talk about the three days for one two days for another and how that

interacts with the um overall dery schedule um so I don't want to go on and on about it today but that's just a question that would I would like to have answered at some point and like I said I'm not on the subcommittee but I could watch the meeting and see the presentation thank you I any further questions motion to approve I have a motion second I have a motion a second

Deb call the rooll Please Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yep Mr lar M Pera yes mayor cgan yes Mr chair item number 11 um I if I may um we do have two um presentations today um from different individuals and I don't know how far they travel from um I don't know how long um contracts is going to go forward I'd like to make a motion that we move 12-1 and

12-2 ahead of contracts second seems Common Sense yeah I I don't really have a problem with that um Deb would you call the rooll on moving 121 and 122 ahead of number 11 Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yeah Mr lar yes M Pereira sure mayor cgan yes uh 121 is a presentation by the massachusett Association school committee representative Tracy novic field director thanks for being here with us

Tracy good evening Mr chair members of the committee um I'm glad to be with you uh so this is an answer uh to a question that had been posed regarding um what it is you of course like most School committees in Massachusetts are members of the Massachusetts Association of school committees and what it is that that membership entails um so this is a brief presentation I'm of course happy

to take your questions um at the end of the presentation um and just so that you're aware um I am here um I'm the Central Mass Field director um I live in Wester and have most of the Wester County I'm here this evening um because as you may be aware Jim Hardy the longtime field director actually retired in August and you'll be getting a new field director in February um in the meantime we're

covering so this appears to be going all by itself sorry about that um the mass Association of school committees is the Statewide Professional Organization for school committees and it was established by school committees for school committees in the 1960s um among our Founders is uh the late Speaker of the House tip O'Neal when he was a member of the Cambridge school committee and we are a

member-driven member organized organization our mission is to achieve excellence in school leadership through advocacy through training and through Service uh the board of directors um is are all school committee members all of our leadership are serving school committee members is elected by the membership of masc um the executive director excuse me the executive board is elected at the annual

delegate assembly some of you may have attended that either this year or in the past it's handed H held annually in November every school committee in Massachusetts uh who is a member of the association have a right to elect and send a delegate to the delegate assembly the chairs of each division all of whom also serve on the masc board are elected by each division um and it is the chairs

that sit on uh the board board meets monthly to set direction for the association um over the course of the Year additionally of course uh at the delegate assembly and you may well have actually considered the items before the delegate assembly prior to November um actually sets overall direction for the year any school committee in Massachusetts can propose a resolution for the delegate assembly it goes to the

resolution committee for consideration um additionally if a group of school committees from across the state poose a resolution it automatically goes to the delegate assembly uh we do have a number of Divisions um as I mentioned the first are Geographic that is what the map uh shows you are members um automatically by virtue of your geography of division three um and by virtue being a city

school committee you are also automatically ver members of division nine which is the urban division there also is a vocational technical division um and there has been organized a uh Division 10 which is inclusion diversity and Equity there are also a number of subcommittees that members of committees can choose uh to um put themselves forward for as I mentioned the resolutions committee there's a

legislative committee there's one on special education um you can find a full list on our website one of the most important uh jobs that we do with the association is that we provide the legally mandated training for school committee members um under Massachusetts General Law chapter 71 section 36a every school Committee Member in Massachusetts in their first year serving an office is required to have

eight hours of training we are the organization under the mgl that provides that training we call it charting the course uh we provideed across the state um somewhere between eight and 10 times a year try to make sure that we are geographically distributed in terms of that we just provided it this past Saturday most recently um up at monitech in Fitchburg additionally in terms of training um any school committee can

request that their field director come in and provide training for them on really any aspect of their role um we quite regularly are providing professional development across the state um roles of responsibility open meeting law um I do a lot of one of my areas of expertise is school Finance I do a lot of presentations on school Finance across the state um and so we are regularly in front of school

committees um either as part of their regular meetings um or as a best practice of course School committees have Retreats where they set priorities and set Direction action together for the uh District that is regularly something that we are engaged to do masc also started uh when we were sort of all fully remote providing learning lunches which is the first usually the first Friday uh every month which is an hour

presentation at noon time um on topics that we see being raised by members something that we four field directors in particular um regularly put our heads together and and uh come up with things that we see people needing presentations on needing professional development on division meetings can also include training um and so if there's a a geographic um or an interest based division that all feels that they need

the same professional development that's something that we frequently do we also do have two regular um larger Gatherings one is the summer Institute which usually takes place in maror in July and then of course the joint conference that we have with the association of superintendents year in November the field services this is a a short slide but it's by far the largest part of what I do as a field director um

we are available as uh field staff and the frankly those who were in the office every day are available to um answer the phone answer emails respond to questions um we are ongoingly getting questions from Members um to make sure that they are um observing their own role fulfilling their own Ro um answering their questions in terms of making sure that their process abides um by the laws

under which school committees in Massachusetts operate um answering questions about things that are going on um at the state level um within their Vis divisions and so and so forth also both the board um and the staff are engaged in ensuring that school committees have what they need in terms of state and National advocacy um that in addition to being part of the National Association making sure that you have

what you need as things continue to develop um at the legislature um within the um state house um and at the on the national scene we also provide policy updates um you probably are familiar with this uh as me if any of you who have been on the school committee for any length of time as laws change or as regulations change um as either the federal level or at the state level um we are the organization

that reviews and we provide model policy you have no policies until you adopt them locally um but part of our responsibility as an association is to be tracking what's going on at those other levels that then require you to have updates we also are ongoingly involved um in review of policies to make sure that they are updated um that they are brought into to best practice and so forth again obviously policy

updates that were under your prview there are two services that we provide on a contractual basis meaning that they are outside of what you pay for as part of your dues one is a policy manual review um districts can choose to contract with the association to have uh we as an association align your policies with the model policies and then actually sit with you over a series of months and review each of your policies

in turn to ensure that they're up to dat that they align with your best practice that they align with best practice um that they have appropriate citation and so forth the other thing of course is superintendent searches we are among the organizations in Massachusetts that uh that provide Staffing for superintendent searches a number of things that we have ongoing again probably that you're

familiar with appearing in your mailbox we have the um m our masc bulletin um which comes out periodically about about once a month or so updating you on what's going on not only with the association but with your colleagues across the state we also provide legal updates as there are updates coming from again the legislature the federal government the Supreme Court uh the SJC we update all of those um anytime we've

send out a policy update we make sure that there is a policy bulletin alongside that so so that you can understand um what it is that's actually being changed and why it is that you that we are proposing that you do so annually of course you receive a Massachusetts General law selection um from masc which provides the education laws um for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts our website's constantly

updating um and we do actually also send out um news updates um as they appear those are electronic couple of things that we also run these are actually things that I do um we have a Facebook page we have a LinkedIn page we have an Instagram page we have a Twitter feed uh we're also on threads I should say the other thing you can do is a as a member um you can sign

up for the list serve it's a place for you to pose questions to your colleagues across the state um and the other thing is that we have these past couple of years started put sending out um on a daily basis you something that you would need to sign up for we don't um subject you to daily email without you asking for report um something we refer to is the daily aded which is a collection of

Education news from across the Commonwealth and across the country um which we provide to members although honestly anyone can sign up for it um be so that again as part of making sure that you have the information that you need in order to do your jobs appropriately and that Mr chair is my presentation I'm happy to take any questions Mr Das um thank you I'll start off with with two question um for the

field services do that include like um individual member such as myself can call and request information um individual members call us all the time yes okay and um second question on um the policy the policy recommendations that MD does um who is um in charge of like making those policy recommendations I know you you talked about the process but um is there some sort of committee is it a committee of school committee

members or is it like the administrative staff of masc um so we um they can be they can come from a number of places one is that if we in our um policy projects are finding that a number of school committees have a common question we might bring it back um what the the main review though of course is done by masc legal council um and that's always done

prior to it actually going out to you so we generally work on it together as a staff um but then of course it's reviewed by legal council prior to it coming out as a recommendation of the association thank you and um the last question um based off of um some of the um services that you offer like individual like within our um membership um I didn't I did go through

it briefly but I just want to make sure it's up to date I didn't see it on the slides um but if you know um what Individual Services like trainings um does um your you you all offer the school committies um I mean we respond to what is needed so um a lot of our stuff is actually developed um based on what people are asking us for but very

commonly and just off the off the top of my head we are frequently in front of school committees um talking about their role versus their superintendent role legally what the bounds of the school committee are we do a lot of training on budget and finance um do a lot of review on both open meeting law and uh the state ethics um we do a decent amount of work with school committees around goal

setting um on um setting uh school committee protocols we work with school committees on setting their own goals uh we are always happy to come in and work with school committees ahead of their superintendent evaluation since that's one of your um jobs as well um me I think those are the main things the I believe I saw a theorum on the website the Quorum training uh you may have seen that it's

not something that I've actually done myself we usually urge committees if they're um talking about that to make sure that they're aligned in terms of um open meeting law and also to talk about potentially having um operating protocols so that you have a common understanding of your relationship with each other and with the superintendent thank you certainly Mr Corey I'm curious about

what you can tell me about the vog tech division um so the any District that has obviously the re the regional votex are all members of that but also any school district that actually has a vocational school itself also is eligible to be a member of that so for example Boston Springfield and Wester are also members of uh division 8 I couldn't I couldn't I I'm sorry am I talking too quickly I have a habit of

doing that yeah I'm not I'm not understanding it's only because of the Acoustics in this room certainly so I'm sorry so certainly the the regional votex right greater Fall River greater New Bedford and so forth are all members of that but any school dist any school committee that itself has a vocational an independent vocational school is also a member of division 8 so Wester for

example has wer Tech um Springfield and Boston both both contain their own vocational schools and they are also members of division 8 okay thanks that answers that but I got one more question this one's more out of curiosity than anything in your experience and in your overview of other districts throughout the state uh do you do you view school Committee Action more as supportive or adversarial or you know uh

investigative so to speak um adversarial or an investigative like Visa V whom I guess I would wonder uh well just as far as like a a school committee's relationship with the uh Administration and the schools in their districts do you do you do you notice that more school committees act supportively or do they act you know adversarially um so one one of the ways that we um particularly stemming out of

work that we did during race to the top tend to frame the con the relationship between the school committee and the administration um is as a governance team um so the school committee hires the superintendent sets goals for the superintendent evaluates the superintendent um superintendent is there to fulfill those actions as provided um the and then the school committee has the realm of making sure

that they're setting appropriate goals setting good policy setting a budget that actually keeps the administration functioning um so I would say that we we would hope and we would want people working towards um a mutual mutually supportive relationship which doesn't mean that there isn't going to be um disagreement um we hope that it's principled and professional um but it should be something where everybody has

in mind not only the good of the students which of course are the the primary reason any of us are here um but also have in common the the way in which you're getting there which is really about having a common set of goals that have been established thank you you're welcome I yield Mr AG thank you just a few questions so I know one of the slides talked about throughout the superintendent search

process and I don't want to rehash the entire process but I for one wasn't happy with how the masc received the contract to do the um superintendent search because school committee members weren't aware of any of the contracts we weren't part of any of the process is that a typical thing that you see in when a district is creating a superintendent search that school committee members are not

involved so I can't I can't I wasn't obviously part of your search um I was busy in central Massachusetts at the time that your search was going on um the contract of course is actually with the school committee um school committee obviously has the authority to um to hire the superintendent and at the end of the day I mean the perview of the school committee is pretty broad when it

comes to hiring the superintendent so there really isn't anything um that that we do that changes that in any way because your legal purview is so Broad right so as a um just a followup to that so we weren't part of the process so Glenn coer was the person representing the masc now I personally told him via email that we didn't vote to even create u a search committee as an

example and my comment to him was do you represent the school committee like all members or just the chairman and and we got nowhere on it so I say that to you only in that you're here on his behalf as the executive director but I think you all should take a peek at how that process went and I'd be happy to share my email with him um Glenn is usually very candid with just

what he says um but that is exactly how the process worked and I think that's still a problem so moving forward to this whether it's this District or another I think there needs to be some tighten tightening up of those Pro processes and I'm not trying to put you on the spot at all my question for you though you said Federal you're you're on Federal and State um and I know watching

some of the things you post all the time you very informative on votes coming up the where things are heading what's H going on so while we have you do you project an increase in federal funding over the next year um I I love it when people are asking me for my crystal ball uh so Federal funding has been fairly flat for a significant number of years which of course as you all know feels like a

feels like a a NE feels like it's going backwards right because you're trying to do the same amount of things with a smaller amount of money um the federal government of course has still not actually passed a budget I believe that they're down into something like 12 days before we run out of a federal budget again just um as something else to worry about not that you need another thing um I think that

uh given what we are hearing um of sort of the national murmuring for lack of a better word um there's going to be a lot of there it appears that there's going to be some conversations as to um maybe less the amount of funding and more the format it takes so I would say that and again this is just me so you know um take of that what you will it's my

opinion but it's my professional one um I would be surprised if we see increases in federal funding um and I would be concerned as to what is going to be done in terms of the format of federal funding let me add this as a caveat we of course all have seen the headlines about the United States Department of Education and the incoming president wanting to end it I will say that I'm a

little bit more concerned about the United States Department of Agriculture and the support for free lunch I would assume that you all are Universal free lunch funded through USDA that's a little easier to tweak through regulation whereas usdoe would have to actually go through both uh Chambers of Commerce Congress excuse me I hope that answers your question it did it did so I think everyone that is paying attention

understands that we're probably going to get some Cuts in title one and federal funding moving forward uh and that's one of the concerns that I have and that's why we pay you guys to Advocate to um at least tell us so that we can be prepared for that potential cut that's basically where um and I think you probably going to be putting out more memos and stuff as it goes as we find out more

information so I appreciate that info but my last question is along um sort of uh how school committee members get their information and is it your opinion that school committee members should ask questions of the superintendent or should they not ask questions of the superintendent um in what context during the meeting during a meeting between meetings emailing asking for information relative

to budgets or things that are happening so that we can make informed decisions we meet once a month here so um I'm curious as to what your opinion is and what the Mass's opinion is on asking questions of the superintendent so the the thing that's that is an important thing for school committees to hold in a balance which can be a challenge um is that the actual the the boss of the

superintendent for lack of a better word the um the oversight of the superintendent is done by the school committee as a body which of course you as a body only exist when you're sitting in public session um and under properly posted agenda meeting on things into your purview so um when it comes to um making major requests for information that would require time and reports and so forth that's something that we say

needs to come from the body because only the body can direct the superintendent in terms of large expenditures of time for staff and so forth um when it comes to budget in particular obviously um and particularly given what we know are um tight Financial Times with the low inflation rate and so forth that's something that um cost center Authority belongs to the school committee and

obviously you need to be doing close inquiry and close examination of things like the budget when they come before you so that is something that particular particularly within the meeting of the school committee when you are meeting on things like budget it's important for you to be asking informed questions um and we would certainly never advocate for you to Simply pass things without uh

checking into them when it comes to you meeting as a public body yes so like we just you probably heard from the meeting we were told last week that we will over budget on a couple of playgrounds by $700,000 m and that money was supposed to be used for something else so at that point does the school Committee Member have a right to ask the questions about how did we get to this point and to try

to research it to figure out how did we get to that point when we have a $700,000 overspent line item so I would assume that that was being presented to you as part of a larger budget presentation um and thus it also then ends up potentially depending on whether or not your over cost center um coming back to the school committee and potentially needing a budget transfer so within the again within the body of the

school committee meeting as a body talking about budget that's something we having a conversation as a body as to how you'll move forward is important um because you can of course only resolve that issue together as a body it's not something that any individual member can actually fix so I think fact finding is I guess the way um I'm looking at it to see between meetings when we don't meet how do we

get the information to be able to figure out figure things out and I'm not I know you're only one person but when I look at uh what the role of masc would be I think it needs to be clarified for what people either you can make recommendations but it's not illegal to ask questions of superintendent or in any district and I think that's where I think we're going to probably need your support to figure out what

is the process because here in Fall River we are trying to not ask questions and I think that's part of the problem so um in the future if we'd had those questions to Mr D's point do we just call somebody up there and ask for policy updates individually is I think that's what you said to Mr D so people can certainly any individual member can um can call masc and ask for advice at

any time um to answer your larger question in terms of potentially like a disagreement around um process um around asking questions and perview that's something where that is exactly the kind of um experience where we would talk that the school committee meeting together to establish a common set of protocols as to what exactly are the expectations of the school committee um both at a meeting and in between

meetings when we do protocol setting one of the things that we do is we talk about you know what are the issues you see at a meeting in between meetings before meetings around the agenda and so forth and that's exactly the kind of conversation that you would need to do because to have a common understanding I mean one of the things that I tell School committees which I think can be a

struggle because of course you all ran for these positions for a reason um is that the administration is their primary role is actually not to answer School commit questions right you want them to be spending most of their time administering the district so how do you make sure that that's actually what you're doing as a body um whatever it is that you need to do as a body to make

sure that that can happen is probably what you would need to pursue and again if you're having a disagreement about that that's something that you really need to have a conversation about within a really I would say a protocol setting process good my last question and it might not be you I recently found out last year or two years ago that we have board dos and that it's actually masc

paid program so uh I don't know if you're the person or do you have a board dos uh representative within your organization to ask board dos questions um we don't no that they were um I don't actually don't even know where we're at with board dos at this point that was a number of years ago where we were working with them more directly um I could certainly find out for you where

we're at with that but board dos you would need to contact board dos themselves if you actually have convers questions about that but the payment goes to masc um I know that contractually there was a percentage that was going to masc and if that's still the case that may well be I don't handle that end of things yeah I think our whole entire R out went so we'll I guess ask individually or through the

chair to figure out how do we get that information because the contract's coming up and I for one don't think it's doing what we were told and I didn't know who that person is if it's not you somebody should be able to come to us and say this is why we want to continue the contract or whatever so thank you very much I yield okay thank you uh next

up well are we going to take the one we already moved and take the next one on on 123 yeah okay go ahead just want to make a motion to move 123 as well come before uh contact uh contracts I should say I um because CTE people are sitting up in the back so they come down after Mr Gil foil second I have a motion a second can Deb can you call the roll on is

anybody even here for 122 huh 122 is anybody even here 122 is there and then he's next and three because they're waiting also got it de can you call the roll please who second Mr D second Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yep lar yes perero yugan yes Mr gilfoil presentation for the public relations Academy 122 good evening I'm actually not Mr gilfoil I work for Mr gilfoil okay and

he's a great guy but I'm I'm not him this evening so let me stop by introducing myself and then I'll tell you a little bit about the company so my name is Paul zinny I'm actually a recently retired school superintendent I spent almost 37 years in public education the last 10 years of which I was a superintendent first in Avon then in King Philip Regional I actually started my teaching career uh my student

teaching right here in Fall River I grew up in Somerset went to Bridgewater State and I did two student teachings one at the tanzan Elementary School and one of the debuk so a couple of you are still nodding your head remembering the debuk yes just a few years ago um I will share with you that um I'll tell you a little bit about the company tonight but I'm here to tell you about it because I am

actually a big fan um as a school superintendent I was not not only the superintendent I was also a client so uh it's kind of like that old Hair Club for Men commercial when they talk about the fact that I'm not just a client I I'm the the president and that's where it comes out as well I was a very happy client um they made a very big difference for me as I was running um a

school district so John gilfoil public relations has actually been around for about 11 years it was started by John gilfoil he's a former um press secretary for mayam minino out of Boston and actually was responsible for um supporting um all of the press uh during the uh terrible Boston Marathon bombing uh he was on site and in charge of that um he was a Boston Globe reporter and um an excellent resource in public

relations when manino stepped out of office he found himself looking for a career and open the company we started with one person we're now a company of 20 individuals with two locations One North of Boston and one south of Boston we're located in Canton it John gilo public relations is actually a very unique organization in that it only works with municipalities and their departments so we work with

cities and towns police fire and schools those are basically all of our clients occasionally we work with something tangental like we uh the the Massachusetts organization of um collaboratives school collaboratives is one of our you know clients so they work with collab education collaboratives and so it's still tangentially related um we have over 300 clients um mostly in New England and mostly in Massachusetts but

we serf as 14 States alog together we have three divisions we have the division that is uh digital um it's our website design logo design all things kind of electronic that works in that division we have our Public Relations Division which I'll circum back to and then we have our Academy which I serve as the Director of education training and development and run the academy the academy actually offers extensive array

of professional development I basically in all are is leadership um including leadership and training in schools and school committee training and so we offer a lot of what masc has to offer and as a former superintendent I know they do a great job but we also come in and can do complimentary workshops um along with them around setting Norms around um working collaboratively and effective

communication and basically one of my messages will be is we speak with one voice public relations is the area that we're known most most for um basically what we do is help you to tell your story we heard that a couple of times tonight Mr agie I was talking about um feelings that you had heard messages here in the audience and then you had some thoughts that you had wanted or

wish that people knew that the committee felt um we also heard um stories this evening storytelling is a big part of the messaging and we help districts and we help towns police fire to tell the important stories about who they are we're not talking about making up fiction we're talking about telling the facts but we know in this day and age with multimedia and social media that you can't message and manage

simultaneously when I was an elementary principal years ago if something happened on the playground I could go back to my office I could dictate it to my secretary who would then type it up run it off on the mograph machine remember we all remember that smell the nice pink right and then put it all in the backpacks and send it home to our kids not today as a superintendent I had

a bathroom fire just before I retired just paper towels in the barrel that were on fire from a student who threw their Vape away and a spark caught it on fire by the time the students exited the building the fire was out but parents were on social media with all kinds of stories about kids trapped on the second floor and what's going on people wanting to get into their cars you can't manage

and message s simultaneously and so that's where we come in we work with primarily as I said school districts to help them to do that so a lot of the work we do we call crisis communication and we consider crisis communication anything that takes the superintendent and her team away from the important work that they need to do because they're too busy messaging and trying to manage some type of message so it's not

necessarily a crisis where we have you know emergency vehicles showing up in the building but it's a crisis of time where you're managing the message rather than managing what should be going on so we help a lot with that but we also recognize that truly the best way to manage crisis communication is when you manage the good news stories as well when you create a system of trust where

people are interested in what's going on in the community where they feel like they know what's happening and so we really talk about a 955 split we talk about 95% of what should be put out should be the good news stories and in fact I heard at least a half dozen of them this evening you had you started off with an award ceremony where you honored the band that won a a national award that

should be told now there were some people I'm sure home watching your meeting this evening but that story could easily get lost by the majority of people who would love hearing it you've got a bilingual program going on in one of your schools you have an increase in a grant that you receive from the state you have a dual college program that's going on with collaboration from schools the

superintendent read a long list of very generous people in your community that are donating to your schools there was significant Community collaboration I heard it from all you people as you thanked the donors getting that message out beyond the minutes of your meeting in a way that the the community can consume that is important and so that's where we come in and we help school districts to tell

their story story it's not spin it's the facts but it's telling the story that your administrators don't have the time to tell so basically that's what we do we've been involved with Fall River um we came on in 2020 when you had some difficult times and we were brought on um kind of on a contractual basis for that we've done some professional development in the city and we've been

working through the last Administration in this Administration for about a year now and so I just here because there seem to be some questions about Who We Are what we do and so I want to just kind of give you that overview and then allow you to ask some questions anybody have any questions lar then Mr Das thanks for being here tonight my pleasure I know it's been a few minutes

so well kind of reminiscent of the many many many years that I was at school committee meetings I guess I just want to get into um your responsibilities and um the interaction you have with the administration what we asking you to do what they're asking you to do um talk a little bit about that about your relationship with the um the administration sure so we work for you the school district you're a client but

we can't put the stories out unless we have the information so we rely on you to give us that kind of I guess a heads up that something's happening sometimes it could be in advance of or it could be after the fact but we need the information to come to us so that we can then write that that that out for you the team in Canton there are a number of people we have the

South team so when Fall River has something that they would like to get out and they want our help with it all they do is contact the South team and one of our our account manager will assign one of the people in the office to put that together none of our uh releases ever go out without the superintendent's sign off or her designate um we do a variety of different what we call pieces of content

in that it depends on what we're showcasing what might be the method that we we should actually Showcase with so it could be a good news story that rises to the level of a press release and we write it in a press release format our people are all journalists they know exactly what you know how to format that and we would send that to the local press could be the papers it could also

be the the TV stations depending on the magnitude of the press release and what what information were're getting out it could also be writing a letter on behalf of the superintendent during covid jgp wrote all of my correspondent home because things were changing so quickly and I needed to get information out but I didn't have a large administrative team so we were all handson deck I could

notify them mask mandate has changed and I had a letter ready to send home so we're able to do that kind of thing as well infographics a variety of different methods and we're happy to consult with you on this feels more like a small small piece that we can give you so you can add to your school's newsletter versus this might be a letter that should go home to All Families because

of the incident that happened in the school and we'll help you write it or this is a press release so again that information back and forth I will say that because we came in Poway through one administrative team and have started it with another one we have not been probably on all cylinders as far as getting that information back and forth um we I would love to see us get a

little bit more of the positive stories out for you um but you know we're we're really kind of working on that kind of you know now that your administrative team is you know hired from the summertime new people are in place they're learning their positions and we're starting to get that Rhythm together to kind of get better at getting that out for you right I'm glad you mentioned that um my follow-up

question to that is you came on the FY 24 25 M um no so that would be 23 24 correct it came on in the of last year so it's just been over a year 23 24 and this is your second year into our second year yes final second year of the contract yes ma'am okay um I'm gonna yield for now okay I think Mr Das I believe I was

next yes um and Miss u m lar as um asked a lot of the questions I was going to ask as well um and I want to um talk about um three points right now um first first um you mentioned the lack of communication or lack for better words with the administration you were trying to work to get there um do you believe the administration is fully utilizing you like in terms of um social media I

think we're we're moving in that direction so every District by the way works differently um Mr Das I would tell you that um we have some districts that feel that they consult with us mostly around crisis communication and they feel that that's what they comfortable with and that's what they want to do and other districts contact us all the time I was one of those heavy users the joke

in my district was that if I actually had to send something out I had to write like the PR Company because no one would recognize my voice um but there are there are the extremes of that but what I would say is cities sometimes are more complicated because you've got a lot going on in a lot of different buildings and so the superintendent is running all things and so Central office's ability to let us

know that a a great science lesson happened in um the ver ver school and you'd like to get that story out it was a great stem lesson and you know something like that that sometimes doesn't get to us because too many things are happening and we didn't you know the message just didn't get conveyed so we need to continue to work collaboratively to figure out the best method so that you know principles

perhaps are contacting us directly and then the final approval is for the superintendent different school systems handle that differently and it's I don't think any two handle it the same way so what I would say is I think there's more that we could be doing definitely but I think it's part of that is really getting the Rhythm together um and I think we can continue to do that moving

forward Mr chairman Mr chairman just a second might I just interrupt I thought we were going to take 123 first because it's going to be quicker I have questions for this gentleman can we just pause this and get missia down deal with that because quite frankly I have a few questions but I feel like um asking them at their Peril um can we just put a pause on this and have Miss syia come down and address

123 I I don't have a problem with that do I need to vote for that Mr uh we already said to take it out of order Mr feni you don't mind give us one second I'm pretty sure this will be very quick certainly thank you thank you thank you Mr chairman this is 12 item number 123 which is taking it we've already voted to take it out of order we want to get m

out of here as fast as we could go ahead thanks so um as by state law we have to approve the advisory committee as you can see it's increased from last year to this year we have a very robust advisory committee and um we work with the Workforce Development board and our local partners and parent students to create um advisories for all 10 of our programs so that we can make good decisions especially with our

comprehensive local needs assessment motion to approve and thank you I have a motion to Second any further discussion Mr D um just very quickly actually a request for information I don't know if we need a full vote on this I was just wondering what the um does I don't need it today I'm going to vote to approve it but what the state law is um governing these advisory committees um if we can just get that

email you get it online the yeah the state law just has you have to approve it has to be brought for the school committee for approval every year so I come every year with the list of advisory members and and these basically folks throughout the district I I did look at the list so I saw different um community members and and whatnot there's a there's a def definite makeup to each Advisory board

for instance in construction we have Labor Union representation we have contractors we have parents we have students we have um we actually have somebody with um if I'm not mistaken Mt where they own their own company so that we know what the needs are and they evaluate our programs they evaluate our curriculum they evaluate our our equipment and we meet twice a year and then later on um there can also

be a meeting with just the chairman and the body chairman of the school committee of the no of the advisory committee okay very well thank you are you just one quick comment Mr so I just want to say thank you to you for what you're doing here ever since you've came on here you tell us what the regulations are you fix some things that are not that we were doing that were not part of

the regulations so IA want to appreciate what you're doing I think you're doing a great job I you thank you all right can we get a roll call then uh where did Dev go you want to give it a call you can call it yeah you can call it all in favor do a voice we yeah okay uh all in favor you want to do it go ahead you feel like this Mr

agar yes Mr Das yes oh Mr Bailey Mr Corey yes Miss laravie yes Miss Pereira yes mayor cougan yes back to Mr one one last thing that I just want to just make the body aware of thanks to our Advisory Board and our construction program we became the first construction uh construction craft laborer program in the state of Massachusetts to have a pre-apprenticeship program approved by the Department of Labor that

gives our kids a direct line into the apprentiship program in the laborers union the only the very first one and at this point the only one and that has a lot to do with this Advisory board and the membership that our our teachers put together the thoughtful membership that they put together for our kids thank you great great great did you hear that Mr Zen just one miss Sylvio one question

please so in in in the construction craft labor cost for your students yes are they being apprised of the oosha laws as well uh they get by the time they graduate out of uh construction they have oosha 10 and 30 that's all I need to know thank you okay thanks Mr feny come on back Mr chair do I still have the floor do you still have the floor do I I still have the floor oh

yeah I guess yeah you could you go thank you I um my train of thought I do know um talking about utilization um I'll just start with another question about um social media um do you um does your organization manage or can they manage social like social media platforms for the district yes sir that's our digital division we do website Divine Design development and maintenance and we then

when we build those out we're able to then put a news blog on that homepage and then we're able to tie it to all social media channels if you have a separate system already such as your website is already built and you have those social media all we can do is create things for you in those formats that you can then post so if you want us to manage it we can do that but we have

to build it so that we then have entrance through the back end to post what we need to post okay um and if you don't know the answer this I understand but do you know how often the district uses um has used your services like a number I no I don't know a number and I would say that because it fluctuates you know it depends on what issues you have going on

now tonight I just you know got a wealth of of different topics to talk about one more we just heard about so I can guarantee you that tomorrow I'll be talking with our account manager and we'll be reaching out to Fall River to make sure that we get a little bit more information or at least contact people that we can then find out more about some of these stories to help you get

some of them out thank you and final question um I know you work with the fall rep Public Schools do you also work with the city of farer or is it just a far Public Schools you don't work on the city Side I I don't I manage mostly the school side so I don't have the complete list in um memorized I don't believe we work with the city of Fall River or the the the

police of fire but we do work with many police fire and and municipalities thank you um thank you for answering my questions i y Mr Who's down there Mr Cory did you have a question Mr so so thank you for the presentation one of the things that I think we are looking for information from the superintendent uh is there any updates on the contract the signed contract any of the email did anybody verify whether

we have the email that said it was a one-year contract or two any updates on that I would have to defer the superintendent to be working with Mr gilfoil on that one I I don't manage the record piece of it I apologize I I that meaning to ask the superintendent sorry no I don't have an update I don't I was not very attentive to my email today I don't know if I have a response okay so

just for the edification of the public so we as a school committee excuse me I don't believe have ever voted to have giloy communications come in in that contract as a school committee just so you know the perspective sure uh we never voted on that we never knew what you were supposed to do we never knew what you do uh we also didn't know that it was a two-year contract rather than a

one- year year contract so the question I was asking the superintendent was apparently we have emails that say it was a one-year contract the contract that we've seen isn't signed we don't have the signed copy but on one page it says 12 months minimum and then in the fine print it says a twoyear contract so there is some uh I guess controversy over whether it's a one year twoyear who

authorized it and what do we do what what don't we do so sure I have the same question that Mr da said in the contract it states that your company will provide up to five or six media is things whatever uh monthly now we don't have that I don't believe that you've done 60 um pieces but I don't know as one school Committee Member I have no idea what you

do what you don't do because we have received basically almost no information and Dr Curley recently the last couple months is trying to help to get some clarity but for those first 10 months my opinion we had no idea what you were doing or what you were supposed to be doing we don't know the scope of your work we don't know any of that information so I'm not trying to come

off as negative to towards your company uh but I have some concerns about how the whole thing went what I do know is one of the things that I did see um even though people said they didn't understand or didn't know that your company existed was that your company assisted the prior superintendent write a press release that she was reti on the list of priorities that you just named about the good things that

you would report on across all of your experience all of your company's experience all of that stuff probably one of the lowest things on the list in my opinion for what we should have been paying you for or your company for was to help her write something to say that she's retiring so that is what we get from your company because I'm not seeing anything otherwise so I'm I'm just telling you being transparent about

where I'm coming from sure Mr AAR if if that's actually a question I I would be happy to address it what I can tell you is all we can report on is what you share with us so when we came on in November I was actually here with our senior Vice President we made the proposal we put out the proposal we said what it look like five to six pieces of content crisis communication 24 hours a

day seven days a week you can call us at midnight on Saturday if if something terrible happened and we will help you through that it's all part of the pack package we then reached out periodically and said send us some information tell us what's going on we have as I said 300 clients we I don't know all of the great things going on in your Elementary School I can hypothesize because as I

said I spent 37 years in public education and I know Fall River I grew up in this area my mother's from here that said I can't make those stories up I need you as a district to contact our office and say hey we've got this piece happening when you do we ask for contact information so in other words if anyone were to let us know about about the the things we heard tonight we would say who

should we reach out to as soon as we get that information our people will reach out they'll ask the appropriate questions and they will put the appropriate document together to tell that so I think because we've seen kind of that transition one Administration kind of leaving and a new one coming in and quite honestly I was a new superintendent twice in two different districts there is a lot going on when

you first walk in and you're hiring new Administration and you're doing a lot of things quite honestly I will tell you my first priority wasn't thinking about how do I get the story out about this or that we need you know and so we reached out we made suggestions we get some information back we put some things together but we're now I think getting into that flow a little bit better and I

think we can help you to tell the good stories because right now some of the stories out there aren't as positive as you'd like them to be there are a lot of great things happening in Forever you have a huge amount to celebrate your community should know about that and they should know just how much all of you care about the kids you're here well I've been here over three hours or going

on three hours and I know that you've been here before and you're going to be here after I leave that's dedication your volunteers we need to tell that story we can help with that but you're right did you maximize did were we putting out six stories for you per month no we weren't would we like to do we have the people who are available to do so yes we do I understand and thank you for the

clarification and uh the I'm assuming are you the person for forever like are you our Point person so we intentionally don't have a point person we have a team so the South team is as I said based in Canton but hand until southeast of massach and the reason why we don't have a point person is because what we've discovered is crises happen multiple times all at once and then nothing at all right we have

multiple things going on and then nothing and so what we've discovered is when we assigned Mr aiar as the point person for Fall River and Somerset and Swansea they're each having a crisis at the same time and you're trying to manage it and I've got two other people in the office who are not you know doing anything so they're trying to fill in and help out what we have is a team of

four excellent journalists working in the Canton office and each morning we have a morning meeting those people sit down and we look at what's on the docket for the day and that gets assigned and then as anything comes up if the superintendent were to contact us at one o'clock in the afternoon and say we have an a moment going on and we need to process and we need someone to help us

with we then assign accordingly I will tell you that nothing goes out without at least an uh two people looking at it so we have editors as well as writers so if John wrote it Fred reads it and so that we have that editing and then again you approve it so you get to work with those four people I don't do the writing but I am as I said the education

specialist That's what I came on for so when you have those bigger issues that we that really require brainstorming I will be part of that team I understand so I don't have I guess the ability to ask questions of our Administration So based on you just telling us that you have had times where you people have reached out over the last year of this contract can you please send us a list of those times

that people in your department has reached out so I can help to make an informed decision on whether this is a contract we want to see moving forward Mr AG I guess I'm a little confused about the process and I'm saying that as a a former school superintendent having worked in both as you know at the table as a superintendent I would normally either as a person on the committee expect that that request

would go through the chair and the and this the committee would decide that this is information that they are looking for and then they would talk they would then direct the superintendent to get that information for us or if the superintendent had that request while we work for you as the district it would be very difficult for us if we then stop working for 10 different people to try to calculate who

we're supposed to respond to and what information we're supposed to respond to with each um so I guess I would ask and I clarify my question my clarification is when when I receive a formal request from your District we would be happy to provide whatever information but you casually asking it to me while I'm at a Podium this evening puts me in an awkward situation I understand I'm only

regurgitating what you mentioned sir so a normal situation would be that we if we're going to this tight if we want to continue this process and this contract we would get all backup information relative to the contract unfortunately the way that we're operating guest now in this district is that we can't ask for any backup information because we don't have a right to get it because we can't ask

questions so the reason why I asked you is because you said sir to us in this public meeting there has been times over the last year that we have reached out multiple times to the school department and no response came in you said that at this Podium all I'm asking you for is to please clarify that with some documents Miss curly so I I know that I already had a conversation with you about this I

actually said out loud and so I'll say it here at this meeting that jgp we did meet with them when I first came on board there was a a request we we had a running Google doc where they were uh requesting information we did initially it was like we got information out it got stalled we added more it got stalled they did pieces on all of the new principles they did a piece on me some

other things they and then we probably in the fall I think we did some work internally we collaborated around getting some pieces out we um so I've already said that we have not gotten five to six pieces of information out and that there has been a lag in information on our part um in getting things out to the in The Firm I mean that exactly Mr I'd like to also clarify for you that

we often give suggestions they're not demands so we might reach out and say hey it's teacher appreciation month if you're doing anything for teacher appreciation you might want to let us know what's going on with that that's a request that may have come from one of the people in our office uh are an example of and you may decide yes this is something we want to do or this is

not something that we want to do um and I may teacher appreciation is probably a bad example because it was right but but there are lots of of different things that that we we do send out requests like that and we also suggested a couple of things in the summertime that you know sometimes by the time we got the information wasn't necessarily timely but we again those were the first months

under the new Administration and so I absolutely support that we were all working together to try to figure out the best Rhythm and how to manage that and to get that that data out there yeah my last comment is just uh what I was trying to get at there was to try to figure out if we can make an informed decision on this contract and quite frankly in this District where we're

trying to get as much money as we possibly can to do what we need to do give salary raises and the like 50,000 is a lot of money for us to figure out it might not seem like a lot to you or to whoever but every $50,000 starts adding up and I'm telling you that we voted for 50,000 we didn't vote for 50,000 but we expended 50,000 so that's the nature of my questions isn't to try

to sandbag you to try to get you put in a tough spot that's not what I'm doing all I'm trying to do is to try to f figure out should we go forward and spend $25,000 over the next year that we didn't know about on this program when we're going to be very strapped for money to pay for raises and all the other things we have to work I yield thank you sir Mr sir I absolutely

understand as I said I was 12 10 years as a school superintendent and 12 as an assistant before that I sat at the table for many years with you know with those kinds of difficult questions I understand where you're coming from and I'm happy to help in whatever way I can as a matter of fact I'm the one who who said to to superintendent curlyy that if it would be helpful me to come this

evening I would be happy to do so so that you could talk to me directly okay Mr di um just um a general overview I don't know how much you focus on um our um social media um do you believe there's things that we could be working on as a district when it comes to our social media usage absolutely I think I think I would answer that yes to any District that asked me anywhere there's absolutely

more we can always do on getting the message out one of the things I would say to you is that the the better you are at communicating to the community that you have a a base of knowledge a base of information that they can access the more you control the narrative so in other words when you have and I often suggest it being basically the website your website and

I'm I haven't gone on it in in weeks so I'm not talking I'm talking hypothetically a school district's website should be up up to date and should have all the relevant information that any parent any Community member would like to find and they should be able to find it in within a couple of clicks because when they can't find it quickly they're on social media asking questions and other people are asking

questions and then there are these conversations that go on um sometimes also when we post on social media only that information gets lost because of more things that get posted so we post something in the morning and we've posted four more things it gets pushed down the page when we put those things directly on the website and we send the link to social media we're now making sure that there's a place where that is

stored where it's where it can be retrieved by anybody even if it got pushed down the Facebook page if you will as a school superintendent I posted every letter every document every news piece on my website and then I would send a link to families so they would get an important message from superintendent zinny and there would be a link in the email for them to click and it would

bring them to the website why because I didn't want the Rogue families or the Rogue people on Facebook with misinformation I wanted to control the narrative now in a big District remember I was in Small districts at the end I started in urban but I ended in small districts it's easier to do that in larger districts it's much more difficult to have that level of control and to manage all of that but those are

the kinds of suggestions when we work in the big picture about Community communication plans and how to be most effective and how to communicate that's one of the recommendations that we do is that you have a place where all of your information lives and you consistently drive people back to it so that they know they have the information at their fingertips and they can find it easily

um thank you um how much is it to um or I don't know if it's already in our contract or not for you to um your organization to um utilize our social media run our social media is that an extra cost or is that something that that have to be allocated something in the contract already as I said where you've already got social media accounts and a website we can't go in if we were

to make new ones yeah if we new one we would have to then it would start with the website and then we would have to to go from there I couldn't give you a quote in the school committee meeting I'd have to go back and talk to the digital department but we certainly could put together a quote for something like that but it would not be part of the scope of work that your contract

currently puts out your your contract is for public relations work that division it does not include the digital division at this time okay um and my last question is um do you have any if we do um put social media posts out on our own do you have any dos and don'ts that you could provide just just generic I'm just curious sure so I actually do a full workshop on communication we do one

that's specifically designed for school committee but here's how much don't mean to cut you off how much I would have to look at that but probably two-hour Workshop we're probably looking at maybe $ thousand doll to come in to do that um but a couple of things I would say to you right off the top social media for each of you don't one of the things that people don't I'm just going to be very honest

with you people in your community will not separate you as the Community member you as the parent you as whatever from you as the school committee person and even when you say I am posting as a community member not as school Committee Member you're posting as a school Committee Member so you asked for a couple of suggestions so I'm just giving you one thank you um I would say another

one yeah that I would um I AP I just wanted to clarify my question oh I'm sorry um I wasn't referring to me personally or any I wasn't talking to you person I was referring just in general the other another suggestion I would say is you speak in one voice I'll give you an example we had a situation where we had um some graffiti that could be construed as perhaps a

threat it was just a date and then you know kind of an rip situation um it got out to the community we had a very good idea of who was involved with that we were working collaboratively with the police and based on the investigation and I won't give you a lot of details because we're just going to keep it more broad the police was comfortable in saying that it was not a

credible threat so we put out a statement to that trying to calm our families down and it did for a little while until one of our kindly board members reposted that statement and added that just simply to it if anyone knows who was responsible for this please let the building principal know once that went out and people saw the statement their question was how can you say it's not a credible threat if

you don't know who it was that person had the best of intentions when they posted that on social media but by adding a little phrase they changed the message to a lot of people and caused fear and escalated the situation rather than deescalate it one of the things that we're really good at if if you didn't use us for the pieces of content if nothing else one of the things that our company's really good at

is knowing the right words and the right things to say not to again spin the situation but to tell the truth but to tell it in a way that's resp responsible and can control the narrative sometimes it's just a little phrase or a one change of a word makes a significant difference in how it's perceived and whether we create undo Panic or we create calm in a situation that requires calm so those are the

kinds of things that I would suggest some I I I do believe that when people post on social media sites they have the best of intentions overall not always but usually um but I think sometimes they don't realize the unintended consequence it could have and when you're asking an Administration to manage a district the size and there are multiple voices one voice is my if that that's my number one

recommendation thank you um again thank you for um Coming before the committee tonight um it was very insightful because I know speaking for myself I had um a few questions about the contract I know other members did as well and um it was very valuable information so I do appreciate it I yield thank you anything further for Mr feni thank you just just for the minutes purposes last name is

Zin Z is the last letter of the alphabet i n i Mr I'm sure is a great guy he wants to meet up afterwards for a beverage we're all set but in the meantime Mr Zin Paul ziny and as I said I'm very happy uh anytime that I can be of help um and again I always suggest you work through one person but if you work if you feel that it's important for

the school committee to have a statement on an issue talk with the superintendent and we will work with a subcommittee of you to craft that for you and help you with the messaging that's what we're here for with that I say good night and thank Youk have a great night okay we're going to go back now to item number 11 approval of contracts um under the new contracts we have I guess

four then we have a grant contract for Roberts any holds on the first four contracts col which one you got uh yes all of them all right let's start with the first one century Paving West school thank you um thank you Mr Pacho um so from the conversations that we've had earlier during the um subcommittee report it appears that um with a a few different um construction and extensions

of the playgrounds this one I I guess being included um we went over budget $700,000 so I just want to ask for this specific contract um it being 69,4 how much is that over budget uh probably three quarters of it so as I explained during the subcommittee meeting I I I wasn't able to watch that part so as I explained during the subcommittee meeting um the construction of the four PL grounds um were not the easiest

playgrounds to build three of them were um very difficult and difficult because of the site difficult because of location and um and the method of construction that we had to to use so to make a playground safe there's a few things you have to do and on three of these sites um and the fourth one just a touch but on three of these sites the topography of the of the area was a

problem so we were on slopes um and therefore we have to level a playground to make them safe to use the swings stay one-sided that's a little humus sorry um so if you look at uh the the four sites the West do uh 2541 South Main Street the um fonsa and Spen Spencer Spencer um um no not spense board it says furnish and installed to offices oh I'm sorry yes so it four playgrounds

that were installed um had those issues so when initially we're looking at for instance a tany was the other one so when in tany school the location of the playground was in the rear of the building problem was that the design of the new play area to accommodate um rules and regulations of distances in between pieces of play area um and also uh concerned with um rainwater um the the playground in the

back was susceptible to flooding at times we moved the playground to the front of the building it was a brand new location that wasn't prepared for a playground therefore we had to do some extensive um Excavating bring in new soils put in curb so we could pour the the surface totally different than the original design of this um second playground was westall again on a an extreme Hill uh the playground

on one side is even with the ground on the other side it's about five and a half feet tall so therefore it's required to um bring in some kind of block system that would raise that playground then install a fence to make it safe 251 the slope was not quite as severe but at least four and a half feet tall but it was a much bigger playground than at the westall and the fonsica um playground is

built within the confines of the building so we had to take out windows bring small pieces of equipment inside to do large work try and get that work done by removing a couple of Windows passing a piece of equipment through the building in a safe manner some while school was in session others while it wasn't in session so all of them became very complicated installations which required extra

excavation I also sat here um about a year ago maybe not quite a year uh at least seven months ago eight months ago and it was made very clear to me um and rightfully so that we weren't going to give up one thing to get another and that the playgrounds were very important to the schools that needed them so therefore I had an obligation because I stood here and said

that we could do it and I did it I didn't do it but the department did it at a cost and whether I took it upon myself to do this without the superintendent's approval without the school committee's approval guilty is charged I needed to get it done in a timely fashion and some of this work can't be done after the weather gets too cold the West doall school was a situation where it took 3 days longer

for it to dry because we waited so long in the season time is of the essence and as much as I would like to say that once a month for school committee meetings works it doesn't work with FNL it just doesn't it makes it very difficult for us to get work done so did we spend more money than was anticipated absolutely by $700,000 the $700,000 came at the expense of other things that we had to P

push aside the initial plan for these four playgrounds was part of the $3.5 million um allotment of funds that came from the city um late in the year that work that money allowed us to do these these playgrounds um and that's how all of this came about so this in particular uh is product of that okay um on the four so the 700,000 was for playgrounds correct the 700,000 was extras on

playgrounds and most of it was excavation um my question being so I see West doall um I see fosa um should we I don't see the other two as as they were coming in some you've already approved at a previous meeting and there is I think there may only be one left to come in as quickly as they're coming into to us I'm bringing them here if you notice when I

wrote the letter I'm writing it that the project was already done again two or three times I've been called that we're approving contracts that have already been done these estate contracts these vendors estate vendors on that contract we do our due diligence to make sure that these are the best prices for the district there are also local firms that are here when we pick up the phone and answer that call and um

as I said I I apologize to superintendent the school committee I they there were steps that I should have taken I and they will be taken in the future I I would just like the committee to know that the process is very very clumb isome and I'm not saying it shouldn't be followed what I'm saying is it's very cumbersome any kind of holdup any kind of Hiccup forces us to do things that we normally

wouldn't be able to do it's it's not cut and dry construction has never been it never will be it's the nature of it and unfortunately um this came back and uh was quite a bit of money no I really do appreciate the the explanation um the thorough explanation I guess I would just say as one member is just like the and I understand some things come up it's just the communication process of

this of course I'm just hearing about this um yesterday um and of course we approved um contracts um with um again buildings in the past that we we didn't know were over budget as well and I think it's just going forward just having more communication with all of us um and I think we can say that about a lot of issues we have internally as a committee but in general um I believe we

communicate more and when these things come up um I think we all benefit from that in the long term I do have a question on the contract how this um came about so obviously the 69,4 contract has been fulfilled the contracts completed yes okay um the work is finished the work's finished contract has been fulfilled so it's a completed contract um with that being said do we usually as a committee approve contracts

before the work's done or do we approve contracts after the work's done because we we're approving a contract we should um Let me let me backtrack what was the original um now obviously it went up from 69 450 I I think it's a valid question so you said it was three quarters so did we start around 20,000 in each of these units not knowing the extent so we we run a very tight ship as far as

the amount of employees we have so we don't have an estimator on staff we don't have a surveyor on staff nor an engineer on staff some commun unities do maybe not for the school department but on the city Side so without those people it's very difficult for companies to come in the playground company would come down and they would give us a price on the playground this is where you need to put

it next step is bring in a contractor bring in three contractors to have a conversation with us this is the site we need to do some of those contractors right out front would say you're going to need X Y and Z this is what the costs are going to be others would say um we need more information we need to get you know some engineering done so each item of everything we do would cost

the district more money I I as I said I think that a lot of things contributed to this one of which is time the second of which is too much in such a short amount of time we opened two schools this year two buildings and four playgrounds and a whole host of other things mold and a bunch of things so it's a lot to ask very small departments and we may think we're big but we're

tiny we run on a Sho string and with that kind of work to do and the amount of time you have to do it and mind you every one of these schools absolutely positively needed what they got I don't it took us a lot longer to do it than I would have liked but I would think that if you go to these buildings and ask those who took pictures seeing the kids and how excited they

were and I'm not making excuses because as I said there isn't anybody to blame but right here right at the podium full responsibility okay trying to get everything done the process is wrong it's flawed and I think a couple of things will change first thing is we won't take on more work than we can handle period done this is what we can accomplish that's all there is the more we want to

accomplish the more expensive everything gets the second thing is I am going to do everything I possibly can moving forward that contracts come here ahead of time which means means the process is slower but that's the way the only way to fix this and other than that I we will work within budgets that are given to us and I will absolutely positively let you know that it can or cannot be

done way ahead of time no than and and just to that point it's a more a question for the superintendent or whoever has the answer in terms of the the policy we have in place not just for this contract but anyone any for when we have a contract come before us is it supposed to be before the the contracts fulfilled or after before before and and this came after the work was fulfilled

yeah absolutely it's not it's not no it's not just with your department too I've I've seen this be a habit we're getting contracts after to approve after they've already either been fulfilled or entered into and and just not not just you but as a district we need to re back on that and again respect the authority of committee um with that being said I really I mean you gave an explanation as

to why I really don't have any further question at this time um but yeah I think going forward if we can really bring these contracts before us before like you said beforehand would really be beneficial I yield motion to approve second I have a motion a second Mr agar so on this uh item what account was it uh coming out of so when I look at these contracts we have one for

precision um Human Resources three or four down it states in the document it's coming out of account XYZ these don't have that and one of the things that when I was obviously upset that we had a a deficit and we talked about it I don't particularly blame Mr Pico because you were allowed to do this by other people with the finances so it's not like I'm not trying to beat you

up in any way shape or form you tried to do what you had to do to get these done as I said all I wanted was a chance to be able to say maybe we can't do all three all four we'll have to postpone because I didn't want to lose the PACE Center piece but I still can't figure out where the money was going to come from for all these projects and one of

the things I asked the superintendent which I guess is I guess God forbid now if you ask a question like that but one of the questions when I had $700,000 deficit it was what is how did this happen how do we not know about it she said she didn't know about it how do we allow this to happen so specifically related to this one where was the money supposed to come from for this contract

is there even uh an account or is it just sort of General so up less than 700,000 there was money put aside for playgrounds it was of that $3.5 million and it was what the the list of items that the school committee had approved so the so this was on this this was on the that list so the projects were approved my mistake again not the superintendent my mistake was is that

what you just said should have did three instead of four in hindsight absolutely I not sure which school would have been the Unlucky um one not to get a playground this year um but that but are you saying the account though was the because that's really all doll amount the dollar amount was on the list so5 million and out of the $3.5 million yes so there might have been a million

and a half of the three playgrounds and now it turned into 2.2 some difference of 700,000 if all the other items are on that account my question to the superintendent was what are we what is what are we doing now because so if we had an with 3.5 million in it and we had all these things to go and then now we spent 4.2 million what where is that money coming from now because in the

Precision home uh HR we have a a list I don't know and that's why I asked the questions by email amongst other things it's not the only question I asked but to try to figure out how was this happening because we shouldn't allow this to continue to go on and we have some flaws in our tracking of budgets obviously uh because we just don't get all the information ahead of time so do

you know where the 700,000 got cut from no I don't I no I don't can you try to get it to us sure thank you I yield okay I have a motion a second on um westall Deb could you call the all please Mr hag yes Mr Bailey Mr Das no what he voted no oh no okay no Mr Cory yes M lar yes M perea yes m c yes

next item on hold is the playground at fansa any question motion motion and second any discussion Mr Das thank you um and that's perfectly well I'm just going to vote no this because I just can't good and support this but um I think there needs to be just so we can follow through on um making sure we're um following through what we just said making sure this doesn't happen again can we I mean

um actually um I don't know I yell for now we have a motion in a second okay that call the role Please Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D no Mr Cory yes Yesa yes yes City GL Citywide glass 2501 South Main Street panic bars thank you um I have a motion so move I have a motion a second doesn't the person usually puts the hold on and get the floor first I didn't see you she

was right next to me I'm sorry no you you still get to talk right now all right very well um this um I just have actually an open meeting LW question on this so um for the um the only reason I'm I'm not supporting this because um says 2501 South Main Street and in the actual contract itself it's for um 2501 and I believe fosa is that correct the panic

bars no it's just for 2 251 so just 251 yes

um it's not for the stone school um I'm in exit doors throughout four floors of the stone school and the Farber Learning Center Stone school is 251 yes okay y sorry okay I a moot uh if there wasn't already a motion to approve I have a motion second any discussion on Citywide glass stone school Deb please call the rooll Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yes M lar yes M Pereira yes

mayor yes finally the last one in the top group is the Citywide glass for Spencer bordon for $35,000 so moved I a motion second motion to Second Mr Agia can I just ask what this is I know I can read it but it says uh to make two spaces out of a area just so it's a wide open area and and uh it's kind of a bump out in the um Chestnut Street entrance

hall that runs east to west there's an area that overlooks the playground uh the um Courtyard up on on that level there were two the area was wide open so we made two push in pull out rooms um and also can be used for office space right there out of glass so it's for student uh student or yes individual or uh counselors some exactly yes and it's taking a blank space and making two exactly thank

you I I have a motion to Second any further discussion Mr Das thank you um just on this matter um why are we um installing this what was did they give you like a reason why they wanted this place in there every room is bust every building is from absolutely no no no no this is not from the fire every building is cramming cramming for space they they're having a tough time um with smaller areas so

we've um come up with a quick and cheap solution this is extremely cheap um to put these small areas in they also don't ruin the Integrity of the building so if we have to take this apart it's just as easy to take apart um than it is it's a permanent as long as we want it to be permanent and it can be removed when we need it to be removed um if if we do

take it down do we and we put it up somewhere else do we have to to pay another 35,000 whoever well it won't be 35 because that includes the material okay um superintendent do we know I'm just the reason I'm bringing this up because I'm just trying to look for ways we can cut back on costs um do we know the reason why we're um there was a request for these custom offices I would

say that in short there across schools we We There is a a space issue and so sometimes classrooms that had been used for people to pull out small groups um and things like that are no longer available and we've had to move because we need the classroom space and so in this case that we needed to relocate people and they are so they're using the two office spaces to do so

this more for student use like the or this more for administrative oh no it no it's described in the um it's described as two office pullout spaces so it's it's where students will be servest I thank you okay I have a motion and a second de um discussion please call the r Mr AG yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yep M lar yes M Perera yes mayor C yes Robert's musical instruments

we have a number of uh pieces of musical equipment there motion to approve with a question second I have a motion a second Mr Das thank you um I'm going to support this but again just looking at the price tag um I was just wondering if we looked anywhere else or searched anywhere else for the equipment yes I provided all the quotes for secondary and third quotes for the instruments they're in a package that I

submitted um with this original okay um I only saw one on there but maybe I could have misread that but um I yeld thank you Mr Chim Mr I just want to compliment you on um the document that you provided with the title one director it talks about what you were going to buy had various people places that said how much it cost and we went with the cheapest vendor so we

always look at did we go to the Fall River folks the locals you were very clear you are Mr faras creating this and that's what I think helps us to just approve things so great job thank you thank you sir okay any further questions do you have a motion a second give it a roll Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes M Pereira Miss larvi yes mayor Coogan yes under

continuations we have two there power school and precision Human Resources any questions on either of those Mr chair Mr di um just um one question going forward with the um special education contracts um just a Administration for see um us scaling back on um um H par par professional staffing going forward from outside agencies I think I would say that the goal is to be able to dial back on any

kind of use of any kind of staffing agency because it you know as people have said U it is actually more expensive to contract out but in high need areas we we do contract TR out because we are trying to provide services to the greatest number of students that we can um and so I don't our efforts are ongoing in terms of trying to hire people but I don't know

that we will be able to just stop agency Staffing I think that the need will remain I I guess I was more worried about budgetary concern was is there any pullback for budgetary concerns going forward sure so we have had that discussion internally where we making sure you know we're not hiring these par Professionals for the average kindergarten classroom or something like that they are in high needs areas so at

this we're at a point right now that if we're if we have a need if the need arises for an agency paraprofessional or there is an existing need and we have the agencies who are reaching out to us saying hey I have a person we have an internal discussion about the level of need and you can see in this case we moved forward with a higher I I thank

you Mr so I one of the items on the agenda for Wednesday's special ed meeting is Staffing I just think it's very clear I've been on this board for a long time we have never had to take any votes to authorize the superintendent when we cannot find someone in a high needs position which is all of these positions the 100 people that the union keeps coming up here and saying we got

all these vacancies we got all these power vacancies we got this when they're saying that there's money in the budget for every one of those positions that are vacant well there there that means there's money for about half of them because in some cases it does cost twice as much I know we have already talked about this there's a misunderstanding at one point I it was given it was stated

that I was authorized to hire up to X number of people we have maxed out I have since learned from you that I didn't actually need the authorization that you offered and so we we can move forward with the hiring of additional agency teachers in the same way that we did with this par professional we are not getting candidates from the agencies though it's it's not as if we are getting people and we keep saying no

sorry we don't have the funding there are few and far between at this point that we're able to get staff from the agencies but we will continue to partner with them um as candidates present themselves thank you so when we have 100 % of the budget and 50% of the Year gone by if the cost is double we still have the money to fund every one of these positions or we should because we're 50%

way through the school year basically so long and short of it is we have we should have money to fund these agencies and in my mind as one member I'm going to be pushing to hire as many as we have to whether it's the traditional way or a non-traditional way and we have no we have to fill the positions these are all high needs inclusion is high need power professionals a high need the uh sub

separates a high need so I know you get it I just want to make sure that this committee is understanding that don't come after you later when you've hired people at at a higher rate we need somebody to staff these buildings so you have my support to add as many as you have to as far as I'm concerned I yield thank you all right any anything further can I get a motion to approve both then

so movees do I have a second second I have a motion to Second Deb please call the role Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes M ly yes M Pereira mayor C yes now we're going to jump back to 12.4 first read superintendent recommended 2026 budget priorities is presented by Tracy Curley so we were able to um put together the draft budget priorities for FY 26 uh we did this of course using um

you know obviously the um you know internal discussion um we were able to reach out um to staff and families to get their input as well I would just point out that the the two biggest vote Getters um in everybody's top two uh you know majority of top top two for the um staff as well as families was really around the human resources piece and hiring um qualified teachers for our students and then also specific to

meeting the social emotional needs of our students those were two big ticket items I feel like they are well represented in these budget priorities and um so I appreciate you're taking the time on the first read motion approve first read second I have a motion and a second on first read discussion Dev call the rooll Please Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr di yes Mr Cory yes lar yes Pereira yesan yes 125 is discussion and vote to

approve the envelope HVAC request for qualification as referred by the facilities and operation subcommittee and presented by Ken pigo Chief Operating Officer so moved any discussion on that Deb call the role Please Mr chairman Mr is there any s um I guess no one else has a a question uh my question is just what do the answer that we asked at the subcommittee was for have the administration come

back to us with some sort of information relative to at the end of this project who's going to pay the bill and I'm looking for an answer because I for one don't want to fund stuff that just a waste of money because we are not going to be able to fund it in the end so I asked that at the subcommittee we got we that we received something uh I asked earlier to the superintendent the answer

was we got nothing um so I guess I'm asking is that true we have no information since the subcommittee relative to who's going to pay this bill so I again um until we do the survey I could as I said I guessed the millions of dollars that we're talking about in this particular piece and I would say that as we had developing a capital Improvement plan and we do that that Capital

Improvement plan every year year um we would be plugging these into that plan um which is how we've handled it um every year is the capital Improvement plan has what we think are going to be our priorities hdac um in light of everything that's happened over the last year um would rise to the occasion along with playgrounds and roofs that are going to be needing repair um and that would be again as you said

earlier um the $150,000 is what we normally $150,000 what we would normally take care of on the school side everything under that um which is boiler installations things like that and everything else would end up going to the city side and as I the HVAC stuff some of it um may fall under a grand opportunity as we did with um the S funds and and Henry Lord and uh talbet and the BMS systems that we

installed and Spen of bordon and Sylvia those were all grant opportunities that would have went over to the city to pay for those bills we had the grant money to take care of it I don't I don't believe that that opportunity is going to arise in the next four years we're going to have grand opportunities to do energy saving project so my guess is is that once we're finished with the

um with the survey audit slash look at everything we do um in the uh air quality realm we're going to have some major requests to the city um per year for probably the next five to seven years yeah so I guess the questions at the to towards the superintendent at the subcommittee meeting I thought it was quite clear I didn't think it was ambiguous I didn't think it was um rude

or I didn't think it was overstepping my bounds I don't think it was asking emails that are threatening or trying to give you a hard time what I did ask was that before this comes to the full committee that you talk to the city and get us some sort of document or some conf confirmation that says the 150,000 that Mr Pico just said is still in play because I said at that meeting I will

not vote for this if it's just a total waste of money that the city is not going to do their commitment to spend over 150,000 now I guess my question pointed is how did that conversation or dialogue with the city go since the subcommittee meeting and was there one I guess is the pertinent question so I think I misunderstood your question because the question that I put forth or the statement that I made was

that there is a question as to who is going to pay for this project so the question I asked was around coming out of the report who is going to pay for this Capital project and what's the answer that we needed to look at the numbers got to see what that looks like let's see what let's see so so are you asking me was there a commitment from the city we are going to whatever it is

we're going to cover no but I did not ask the question that you were looking for I I misunderstood the question so at the meeting we talked about it being conservatively $25 million we talked about 50 let's just cut it in half $25 million so we do this report which is probably going to cost a couple hundred, we do this report spend a couple hundred, it comes out and says we

need $25 million in repairs over the next five years to get these uh systems up to where they need to be who is going to pay for the $25 million if I could just interject one more thing that the capital Improvement plan is probably $45 million already our plan and some of the stuff that will come out of this report is already in our plan the new HVAC systems the operating systems we have 20-year roofs

on brand new buildings we keep calling them new but they're 20 years old 22 years old life expectancy on those roofs is just about done so we are going to need a million or two on a fansa roof on a um Spencer bordon I should say not F Spencer bordon green Sylvia those buildings need roofs they're going to be needing them very shortly it's all on the capital Improvement plan already and

some of that is going to come out in this report dhvc systems in similar shape it's all going to come out on the report some of it's already in there whether or not the the the school the C the city council is going to bite it each one of the years so to speak it's a fiveyear look ahead I don't know I don't know if this the city

is going to fund it or I don't I'm Our obligation is to put the plan together and that's exactly what we do each and every year and we're about ready to submit the next one soon and you know already we asked this at the meeting you basically know already a lot of this information this isn't anything but again totally I and and Miss agie I go back to the conversation

we just had 20 minutes ago I'm not an estimator I'm guesstimating as much as I possibly can with the knowledge that I already have and and to my best guess you're absolutely right it's a 50,000 $50 million Endeavor um when a roof today is $2 million it doesn't take long to spend $50 million um and the hvc systems are twice as much three times as much four times as much we spent 15

million1 17 million of EA money on two buildings and didn't finish everything that we could have finished so the I guess the finance piece is is where my sticking point is is that we have a indirect cost agreement slash City agreement in that agreement it states that 150,000 the first $150,000 of a repair the school committee would pay over that the city's going to pay and all I'm asking for is

an answer to Is the city going to continue to maintain that posture because that's what the agreement is and that's what I was hoping that you'd have dialogue with them to get is the city going to maintain that posture to the best of our ability we work with you guys every on all the projects I don't I don't you I don't know anything's changed once they roll down we look at the you we well we sit

down talk to people and say how effective is this how can we bond for it where is there money is there a grant around we look for we look for opportunities to fund all these projects and they're all worthwhile it's just if someone says to me can I Bond $50 million tomorrow I'll give you the answer right now I don't believe we can but if he comes in peace meal like he

does mostly everything else we can work together so you're not you're stating that the $150,000 agreement is still in place so this school committee is not going to be on the hook we can't afford to bond to pay the bonds or anything on these major projects so that's what I'm trying to get at is let's let everybody on the committee know what we're voting for and if we're not we don't have the

money like I said like like she said it's it's up it's a it's up to the city council I'll bring the proposals down and they'll vote on it whether they want to do it or not um we'll make our best pitch depending on how we we shake it all it all shakes out but there's a number of things we're doing right now and we're going to keep going to improve

the schools for the kids that's it how much is this going to cost Mr Pico and where's that money going to come from the um the survey piece I don't know I I don't know exactly how much you you may have hit the number 200,000 and where is it proposed to come out of is that a city expense or is that a school expense because it's over $150,000 is that so I guess we'll have

to make that decision when we negotiate that price yeah excuse me so we don't have a line item within our budget that's slated for this so we're going to create the survey figure out the money and then figure out afterwards how we're going to pay for it whether it's a city or us well we know know what the cost is I I don't know what that cost is going to

be the RFQ is is not a price yeah I know right you know it's it's a qualification piece so basically you sit in front of the person who is the person you think is most qualified to do that job and that firm would come in and negotiate after talking about what you're offering what you what you're asking them to offer would negotiate that price and how much I can't approve that it's coming

here how how much money does the superintendent say that we have to fund this of the 50 million no of the of this uh what's before survey stud of the study so the survey let's say it comes in at 200,000 where are you proposing to fund that from and is that going to be uh sort of a back and forth with the city because it's a city capital projects they own the buildings you know

is it going to be the city side or is it going to be our side and are we going to have to come up with let's just say 200,000 where is it that we are proposing this money come from before this gets before us for the vote I guess that's a clear simple question and I don't have an answer for you that's also a clear answer um disappoint like you get what I'm saying

it's very like frustrating we're going to vote for a $200,000 expense and we don't know right now what's coming from them from us I don't know like I I don't know which line item it's coming from I don't yeah or do we even have it but this I guess this is my hot AE to try to say we're going to vote for something we don't know how much we don't know where

the money is going to come from to pay for it and if they tell us that we need $50 million I don't know where the money is going to come from from that but I just have a hard time with how we don't know we don't project forward how we're going to do that so are you thank you Mr Cory Mr D Mr Pico I'm sorry for this line of

questions but I I know that at the subcommittee meeting we looked at this as a very proactive plan given the heartache that we suffered last summer given the failure of the HVAC system and a couple of our schools create a mold issue and a plan like this is coming out of that to try to improve our situation moving forward into the future and at the subcommittee meeting there was a

general positive attitude about adopting this stance I had just have a basic question are we available for any msba funding in regard to projects like this no okay so the money's got to come from somewhere but we know that once you put something down on paper then it will be enacted at that point is that correct yes and and and my not was kind of quick so as of right now there is no program

that would be able to help us out what what the hope is is that depending on what this looks like it's not going to be a major bite it's going to have to be very very methodical yes as to how we attack this absolutely it's going to come out one one project at a time yes and and we're going to have to pick and choose and again part of this report is going to be

for that company to help us prioritize what we may already know but to prioritize our worst worst to our best so that we can lay out a capital Improvement plan that makes sense I I got to say this because I think it's important we are terrible tenants because we pay no rent so even though the responsibility for the schools falls on the city Side we are the ones using them so we don't generate any funds we

don't in any way help and over the years this committee along with other committees have tried to help on the city side where we had funds where we had one-time money that we couldn't put into a budget situation we used and it was helpful a lot of the work that we got done across the district some of the playground work and other things were not funds that we could end up putting into the

budget I don't think that that totally goes away forever but I understand that we are going into some uncharted waters here and we don't know what our future looks like so I can't argue with the $150,000 is what we have mind you like everything else $150,000 today is not $150,000 five years ago and I could put in two boilers and three boilers for $150,000 and today I can barely do one

so I'm I understand the the the line of questioning and and it it's true $150,000 is what we should be spending we wouldn't have a lot done so Mr Pico when when the former building when the former dery High School building on Ellsbury Street was built in the late in the in the 1970s nobody could project the disaster that that building ended up being as far as the design of that building in the

HVAC systems in that building was a complete disaster I spent 27 years working inside that building went home many days with sinus issues because of the failure of the HVAC systems with the windows not opening and the systems functioning it just wasn't the best as far as efficiency is concerned but when the when the improvements necessary to remediate those conditions existed then the city

and the school committee came up with the money at those Junctions I know because John Johnson Controls was the company that the city used to remediate that situation and my office happened to be on the roof level where they accessed daily so I saw the work that was going on to remediate those conditions on a daily basis so I know that at the at last week's subcommittee meeting when

this plan was proposed everybody felt really good about it because what we went through last summer was just awful and this is what we're trying to prevent moving forward we have these buildings we're responsible for their upkeep their efficient upkeep and I think you're doing a great job at mapping that situation out I'm not here to praise you I'm here to say that we will find find a

way to fund this moving forward but it's all very necessary I yield Mr Das thank you um so this going back to um the 150,000 um or whatever the price may be um so if it go I thought I heard something about if it goes to a certain threshold the um city council could take this up on its own is that accurate at all what normally would happen is we would go to the city

council and request funds over the 150,000 if a project came in at 10 at $10 million then we would ask them for the full $10 million to fund the project if it came in at $300,000 we would ask them to fund the project it it it's been done we've done it before and we've been successful um but it we are an entity that has a lot of asks and um the school

committee the city council very seldom said no they also are good partner with msba so when we need 20% of a project then we have the ability on the city Side to help out much more than we are with these smaller projects over the years the city has been the recipient of some extra funds from us because we've had the extra funds to to do some of the projects but we don't know what that

future looks like so right no as I understand um and City isn't doesn't have a l lot of cash we I understand that um so we if we approve this we're basically for lack of better wees appr proven a blank check we when you go out for the qualifications you wouldn't bring that final um quote before the committee for final approve so what'll happen is is we will advertise this piece once the piece

is advertised we will interview the firms and this is done on the city Side so we're there as one representative of the designer selection board and we will sit in the room and interview each of the companies when we get to that point when we pick when we number them one two and three for instance then we will interview the first company which is how we do this the number one company gets

interviewed if we don't AC don't accept that company we go to number two okay but the by qualifications not by Price okay price comes in after you pick the company if you can't negotiate the contract with the company because it's way out of whack then you would move on but you you can't keep going down that list because you don't they don't have to disclose the money until you technically have chosen them that's the

idea for the qualification because if this was a bid process it would be totally different but you don't pick engineering and design people by bid you pick them by qual qualifications okay no I appreciate that explanation thank you I yield anything further Mr Agia the um have we ever done a survey like this before or um the equivalent of this for like the window projects or whatever so the window projects we

wouldn't because msba does that work for us but have we ever done a survey similar to this over the last whatever years if so who paid at that time on the school side I don't remember us is doing uh a request for qualifications no I mean pay for a survey or some kind of uh engineering uh for buildings whatever else we've had some work to do yes so and does the city pay that so it it's

small money though it was only at $3,000 or $25,000 U so because it was we paid we were looking at a we were looking at a high level so what I'm saying is is that this is this is scratching the surface this is not a 30,000 foot yeah what I'm saying is the 30,000 we paid out of school department if it was 180,000 the city would have my guesses is that we would

have went to the city if times were different yes my I have a question for Mr almea through the chair sir if this came in at let's say 200,000 and I'm assuming because it's January it's going to be in this fiscal year we're trying to get this moving quick do we have $200,000 in an account that we can can pay this I will get you the account by

the end of the week yes there is a an account just yes you don't have it right here but you do have an account yes where we could pay the 200,000 thank you I yield okay anything further I would ask do we have a motion in a second we okay dead please call the role Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D no Mr Cory yesy Yesa yes yes 126 is a discussion and vote to

approve the transportation invitation for bid for yellow bus services motion approve second second any discussion Deb call the all please Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yes yes Pera yes yes 127 motion approve second the renewal request for trembles I have a motion a second discussion hearing none Deb call the all please Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr D yes Mr Cory yes M lar yes M Pereira yes

mayor cop yes 128 is a second read and vote to approve the proposed 2026 budget calendar as presented by Kevin almea so you have the uh budget calendar in front of you the uh budget calendar follows roughly what it's been the last several years um the school committee presentation will be held in February um the weeks following February vacation uh there will be departmental meetings and

school meetings that we will hold um we will then have a uh release of the budget to the public once we do that um they we'll post the we'll advertise the public hearing we'll have the public hearing on scheduled tentatively for April 14th um where the school committee will adopt the budget around that time um prior April 15th uh we typically have the uh joint meeting with the city

council at that time where we discuss the budget with the council at that time the uh budget will then be submitted to the city clerk uh honor before May 15 and we go to the city council typically in June depending on whenever we get called down motion to approve second have a motion to second on the calendar Mr Das thank you um just real quickly on on the on the budget um if we just a

simple request um if we could just put the budget up most I don't believe the most upto-date budget we have on the school department website is there um we can I I believe that it is I think I think it is but fy2 yes yeah there are there are two links on the CFO page and one of them I mean at least two links but I know that there's one link to the

budget presentation and then there's a link that says updated fy2 budget okay I I I you then thank thank you okay so can we get a vote on this one D give it a call please M yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes M lar yes M Pereira yes mayor KGAN yes 129 is a discussion and vote to approve the end of year report as presented by Kevin almeer Chief

Financial Officer motion to approve with a question motion a question second I have a motion to Second Mr D thank you um I don't know if you had a pres you actually I'll yeld if you if you have a presentation you want just the the quick the quick presentation is that the uh the report was submitted and uh for fy2 the budgeted amount as we we've met the city has met net School spending um

typically the process is the state will uh certify the report and when they certify the report it's typically around like February vacation February time frame at that point the numbers do Ty change a little bit uh a lot of times we'll see changes in the chart of school assessments at that time due to enrollment and it changes as the year goes on but um at this point we've the budgeted wise we've met in high school

spending um if I still have the floor um just um just want to get understanding of um some of the finances um and I put this in a request and I think it's very important um I know the city is required by Charter to submit a 5-year fiscal plan of fiveyear fiscal forecast do we have any um document like a fiscal forecast for the next couple of fiscal

years I do um do you foresee a FIS uh deficit uh in the next few years the next couple of years no next five we in the next five years we'll we'll see we'll have to tight we've started the process of tightening the belt but uh I think we're okay as of right now okay and and that's um in the forecast includes the most up to-date um negotiate bargaining um numbers we have

it was it was done uh couple months ago couple months y so it's not the the most up to- date um that's not including the most up to-date numbers that we have it's it's as updated as it can be at this time I I'll you for now i i y anything further Mr Agia just uh uh we are on the end of the year report right yes sir the only question I had is uh if

we could get some further clarification not now but through the the discrepancy in the um Staffing you know the retirement cost y if we can get some further detail on that I'm just curious of how that goes because I think we sometimes um don't understand that we add more staff there's other things that come in so if that didn't happen and the city was just basically at a 100 % we

would have a million dollars extra that so I think just getting for the edification of everybody how did that happen it'll help us moving forward thank you I yield you got it anything further Deb please call the role excuse Mr Dr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes Miss laraby yes Miss Pereira yes mayor huggan yes item 13 is informational retirements appointments um transfers are in there

also now motion to accept and place on file I have a motion and second Deb call the RO Please Mr chairman Mr agar on the um I had emailed earlier today about a position not being on the agenda is there any response to that or yes so it it doesn't end up on the agenda until a letter is received um in the school committee office and the letter wasn't received

time to get it on the agenda it'll be on the next one yes thank you I yeld Deb call the rooll please yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes m l yes M perero yes Mayan yes item 14 is new business anything to come Mr Das thank you I I have two items um to come before and I I put in a request and um it was

not on the agenda tonight so I wish to bring it up now um I I I personally believe um and I believe it would benefit this Administration it would benefit um all parties involved it would benefit the entire city that we undergo the facilities and operations an audit an a an audit of the the entire department but it was sent over 48 hours before the meeting yeah was it was sent several days before the

meeting to you personally yes so not really new business is it well wouldn't be it's only something within 48 hours I'm I'm schol we can't here just so you know I I'm following school department policy which requires me to submit an item to go before on the agenda go ahead I'm sorry go ahead okay thank you um with that being said um I believe and it was said um before we did the reorg

there would be some sort of comprehensive review or audit I don't believe the col Center achieves that goal there is a lot of different things we could look at and help improve the impartment and help Mr bico and help the superintendent so I like to make a motion at this time that we authorize the superintendent to search for auditing firms including the state audit to audit the facilities and operation

Department I make that in form of a motion second we have a motion a second um I believe all of our accounts are audited um I have no idea why we're going to be going down this road let's wait for the Collins Senate report and see if it points light on anything that we may be able to do better but um I won't be supporting this I just want you

know Miss per that was my question the Colin Center did we what have we gotten back from we haven't gotten it back yet no so we are we they are actually going to come out to do the in-person interviews focus groups and things like that um early spring so we are getting documentation together and things like that but they're not coming out until the spring and what specifically are they

specifically are they looking looking looking at procedures protocols and the way we like do business um in the facilities and operations in Human Resources departments it's not a financial audit and they you know I did speak to them early on in the process when I first came on board to to get clarity around it they make it very clear clear that they are they're Consultants they're not Auditors um they are they're

looking at kind of helping districts and other entities get to best practice and that that's what they're coming out to do so they're coming in to look to see are we are we at best practice if we're not some suggestions on how to how to get us there different all right thank you I we have motion Mr AA so the rationale for my second is what I've said multiple times

here we over the years have had a discussion amongst the committee with the prior superintendent we had a reorg that was suggested of the facilities and maintenance departments during that discussion it was proven basically to all school committee members Superintendent at the time that we have a lot of issues that were deficient in those departments relative to management things that were happening well relative

to spending policies all kinds of things the superintendent at the time indicated to this committee quite clearly that she was not going to bring back a riog unless it made sense three months later she brought back the riog with zero changes to the riog at the time she promised this school committee that if you vote for this riog we're going to have an audit to make sure we look at every single

thing that's been happen happening over time how it's been any kind of discrepancies or anything we still won't acknowledge the fact that that existed and she stated that to this entire school committee so the reason why I'm supporting this and now I continue to speak to the superintendent about some of my concerns is that we can't forget that there was issues moving forward isn't the only way we can try to figure

things out if we just keep doing the same thing we're going to have some of the same problems we need to do a deeper dive I would encourage you to look at the scope as I said earlier for the review by the Colin Center which was born out of the superintendent telling us she was going to provide an audit of that these departments and it was this department and the human resource

department and both of those departments had a lot of deficiencies we will promis something we didn't get it but what we got was something that was totally generic it's not sufficient and it's not going to get us where we need to so I would implore the superintend to try to get the a combination of an audit so we look back a little bit to try to figure out what happened as well as a plan

going forward I hope you support this I'm suspecting to Mr D's motion because this issue has been ongoing for over a year the facts brought it out that we will promise something that we never got and we still need it our yield m m Pera um I don't I don't feel I was promised something I didn't get we need to start using the word I not we because we don't always agree um I I honestly thought

what we were getting is what we're getting we were looking at the department reorganizing it to be the most most efficient as possible so what I thought I was promised is what I'm still waiting for um I think that if the if our super our current superintendent if Dr Curley uh takes a look and feels that in order to something that she deems necessary I'll be happy um to support her than that with that I yield

anything further one comment Mr AGA yeah just uh if you just look at the conversation that we had today about the procedures and uh overspending in that account and all that stuff this should tell you something certainly tells me something I yield over oh sorry over spending in what account you're talking about the 700,000 what account may I answer yes well yeah go ahead I'm just waiting for

the chair to say yeah so what I was saying is just regardless of who's at fault we're not trying to do that but we had a situation where there's been a lot of spending that overspent by 700,000 under those departments now what I've asked for in the past and what superintendent Pon had said she was going to do was to look back to try to figure out what are those things at that

time if we did what she had suggested the policies and procedures would have been delineated more clearly so we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today passing contracts after they were done all I'm suggesting is I'm not saying anybody did anything illegal what I'm suggesting is is that department is so vast that we needed to look have a deeper dive to look at what happened that's all all right thank you I yield

call the role please Deb Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory um can you state the motion again please is to authorize the superintendent to search for an auditing firm to audit the facility no Miss lar no Miss Perera no mayor no Mr chair um one more um one more item I wish to bring today um and this is actually this it's within 48 hours and it's in regards to um what was discussed

um with the power of the school committee um I just want to state that again I'm a firm believer in democracy and city of Far River and the Far River Public Schools I believe has a duty to stand up to my opinion authoritarianism and centralized power and protect the autonomy of this body the opinion that was read before us today if followed would diminish our ability for school committee members to vote in good

conscience and do our job I believe it goes too far I do agree with the superintendent I believe there is ways that we can work together to request information in a more organized fashion but that comes with communication not going to others but going to the individuals you believe are requesting too much information about um with that being said I'd like to make a motion that we add to policy bdb which is

school committee officers that states the chair must add any item to the agenda if it's requested by a school Committee Member no question about it I make that in the form of a motion second with a question I have a motion a second with a question go ahead Mr can I ask the parliamentarian what the current practice is for getting something on the agenda uh our policy traditionally I receive the

information and then if I I look at it and I look at the value in terms of what it is for the whole um meeting and I go with that and we then we have our um meeting before to go over the agenda items and that's where it's uh hashed out so what is the uh school committee policy related to if we can't get something on the agenda as the parli it's coming up now in new

business so the process just anytime you bring it up you don't have to do anything else just bring it up and we can discuss it now the chairman makes the agenda doesn't he yeah yes chair does there is a a policy in terms of if something does not go on the agenda for it to go on the believe it's the next meeting I don't have it in front of me

but it but there is a uh a detailed section on that and it was done several years ago as an amendment I think you might recall that yeah I'm not sure of all the technicalities but I I believe that's what I was informed of so if we if we pass the motion I don't like uh if we if we can bring it up on the new business anyway I guess there's no

need for a motion no so anybody want if we want to bring something up in new business we can bring it up basically what you're saying as chair I that's that's what's going on right now no I'm saying that's what you that's what's going on right now right so based on that I'm going to withdraw my second yeah you're GNA withdraw you're GNA withdraw your second okay M Miss perea I think there is a difference

between bringing it up a new business and putting on the agenda I think my colleague all the way to the left knows that he's trying to pigeon hole you and something but that's fine you play that game I know um you guys can do that I don't care um my point is I am all for I agree if we're on here we should help chman what's on the agenda but I would

be more comfortable if it was like three at least three committee members want to see something on the agenda I will never vote for each Committee Member just deciding what's on the agenda like that's to me doesn't make any sense that's why we have a chair and a vice chair now with that being said if there's something that a particular Committee Member wants on the agenda that's not happening on that's not

getting on the agenda then that's a conversation to have because we should all of course be heard and have a voice but if you don't have a significant amount of people agree with you then bring it up at new business or go a different route but I'm never going to vote for like yeah everybody gets to pick what's on the agenda kind of meeting with that be with that I yield

all right thank you Mr Mr chairman hold on Colin and then you have if I may if I could be mistaken but that's just basically the way um most governing bodies work that's how the city council Works they submit any resolution that they can and it goes on the agenda and again this isn't this is something that I wanted to bring up just now just through the this conversation it wasn't

I know you mentioned you guys it wasn't this wasn't some sort of conspiracy to bring this up this just happened because I heard about the opinion so and I believe it's important that we address it this isn't a critique of the chair himself it's just a critique of the process which I believe is authoritarianism not allowing items to be placed on the agenda from Individual school committee

members that centralized control and that's the very definition of a form of authoritarianism but to that yeah Mr Mr AA so I I appreciate what Miss Pereira said and I think it actually makes sense so I'd like to make a motion that we authorize if any three members of the committee email the uh the chairman that they'd like to request something beyond the agenda that it gets put on the next

agenda that's exactly what she said and it made sense look at us working together second that's fine go ahead um DB call the rooll please State the uh it's three members get together and uh or talk about an issue that's important and bring it forward as an agenda item do we we have a motion in a second give it a rip thanks yes Mr Bailey Mr Das no Mr Cory yes M larv yes M Pereira

yes may cgan yes that's fine I guess all right U Mr chair one more one more on this topic um can I ask you what that vote was I think I missed something what can I ask what that vote was cuz I think I missed something you made three three MERS three members get together goes on the agenda no I I didn't know the vote I didn't I was missing no that's what it

was so pass forward yes thank you have to have oh I don't know who the two was I think yeah I I I I I thought ibody else said yes go ahead thank you and the only reason I voted no because I again hold the opinion an individual member um should be able to but I I do believe that is a I do appreciate the collaboration um secondly on this point

um I would like to again request if there is a memorandum of agreement again the opinion that was provided again on its face just wasn't accurate because it did because it says besides the superintendent the the charter misquoted in the opinion that was never provided to this committee so I also like to make a motion that we suspend Mr Das Mr Das what you talking about yeah Mr chair you read a uh an opinion from your

Corporation Council and they they quoted certain parts of the of the charter section and they just included they just included the most important part which is instead besides the superintendent we we can't order around give orders of directions to the superintendent staff but we can direct a superintendent I just believe that the opinion itself is just not accurate Mr D this is this will

be discussed for another day but it's it's ordered directions of any school department employee even with the approval of the entire school committee so the superintendent that's that that's the document we we can vote as a group to get her to do anything but you can't call her up and say I want the last four years budget sent to me it's not going to happen she's got work to do well

again maybe there should be a contact person but just to say we have to go through a normal foyer request I understand that happened once with the city council earlier but this shouldn't be well plenty of school committee members have requested information before besides myself and Mr arar I believe it's just being placed now because I don't know why but in in terms of working together I like to make a

motion that we refer the policy subcommittee um a a request that the superintendent look at a way a caveat of requesting information by school committee members okay we we can have policy subcommittee look at that I'll put I'll get the package from Mr Rumsey and send it to policy okay anything further Mr chairman yes Mr AA I please ask that attorney Assad wait in on this tonight on the

spot if we can have attorney Assad just weigh in on this as well he already read it um the one I gave you from no I don't mean today I'm saying like in the fure I thought you said right now you no no no I'm saying it just brought got brought up today I've never seen it just have him give us his opinion thank you anything further do we have a reason to

go into executive session Mr Assad I can't imagine we do can't imagine can't imagine why Master general laws chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve executive session minutes for November 18 24 2024 regular school committee meeting M Law chapter 38 section 21 A7 to review and approve executive session minutes for November 18th 2024 grievance subcommittee meeting uh National laws

chapter 38 section 21A threee to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining agreement including uh hearing grievances relative to All Professional teaching employees of forward School System including coaches Title One teachers nurses occupational physical therapists and specialists in the teaching profession represented by the for educators Association as the chair is determined the Open Session may

have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee Mass General Ro chapter 38 section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective bodying relative to all administrators and employees represented by the for administrators Association as a chairs ter the Open Session may have a detrimental impact on Bing position of the committee Mass general laws chapter

38 section 21A three to discuss strategy with respect tole the bargain relative to all cafeteria employees of the forward school system represented by the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees Council 93 local 11:18 as the chairs determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on Bing position of the committee m Law chapter 38 section 2183 discuss strategy with respect the

bargaining relative to all maintenance employees of the forward school system represent by American Federation State County Municipal Employees Council 93 local 1118 as the chair is determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee M Law chapter 3A section 21 A3 discuss strategy with respect to Collective Bing relative to all cial

employees of the former school system represent by the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees Council 93 local 1118 as the chair is the no session May detrimental on the Bing position of the committee M Law chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect collect Bing mod to all Safety and Security Personnel employees of the for school system represented by the American Federation

from State County Municipal Employees Council 93 local 1118 the chair iser that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the K committee uh M Law chapter 38 section 21A three to discuss strategy with collect the body and relative to all Civil Service clal employees of the for school system represented by the for Department of Civil Service clerical employees Association as the chair is

detered an open session may have a detrimental impact on the Bing position of the committee M Law chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collect the Bing Ro agreement relative including hearing grievances relative to all par professionals employees forward school system represented by the forward Federation par professionals as the chair deter Open Session may have a

detrimental impact on the barging position of the committee we would reconvene the may may stat is at that time can I get a motion and session uh Deb call the RO Please Mr Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes M ly yes M Perera yes mayor cougan yes recess we're back in session uh Deb please call the rooll Mr Mr Bailey Mr D here Mr Coring president miss lar here

Pera here mayor cgan yep uh anything further to come before the committee yes Mr Mayor uh I'd like to make a motion uh to approve the executive session minutes for November 18th of the regular school committee so moved second second any discussion Deb call the rooll please mram yes Mr Bailey Mr yes Mr Cory yes yes yes Mr Mayor there another I'd like to make a motion uh to approve the executive session

minutes for November 18th 2024 of the grievance subcommittee meeting second I have a motion and second any discussion Deb please call the role Mr yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Cory yes yeser yes may yes motion to adjourn second Mr chairman Mr AGA didn't we have we we happen to hit it just right on the 30 minutes a citizen input yeah actually it was because a couple of them gave us a

minute back and I added two minutes on for the discussion we had but I'm saying we don't we're not missing any no what we had that one letter we're fine I told him email us the letter where's the letter so if we got a letter bang out now well if we got a letter for citizen input time at tonight's meeting I didn't think 30 minutes out out we make it

official it was going to be at the end of the meeting yeah well I don't remember doing that we made a motion that said we were supposed to continue anyone and we got one written I don't know why there's only one left and we we'll get it out of the way go ahead Deb hang on guys for the adjournment we have one letter from citizens input that was left over it's from Kiren Anderson from 2082

Robison Street good evening I've been voicing my concerns as a former for public school student as a future educator as a child of an educator a sibling of a for public school students and a concerned for a Community member enough is enough we need to stop going back and forth about teacher pay these teachers are here because they love their students and care for them and their education they go above and beyond

for their students and yet they are still bargaining but you don't bargain you never offer what they are worth and bring things to the table that have already been tentatively agreed upon the educators of this District are not asking for the world they are simply asking for what they deserve what they are worth a fair contract that reflects the hard work they put in every day and the commitment to the future of Fall

River students it is unacceptable to continue playing games with the livelihoods of those who dedicate their lives to shaping the minds of our youth every day that is that this drags on it's the students who lose it's the communities that it's the community that loses it and it's B river that loses we need to act now to ensure that our teachers are supported and valued so they so they can

continue to do the vital work that they do without the added stress of an unfulfilled contract hanging over them the time for empty promises and delays has passed our teachers deserve better and our students deserve better thank you so I have a motion to adjourn the second de call the role Please Mr AG yes Mr Bailey Mr Das yes Mr Cory yes m l yes M perero yes may yes thank