3.20.2023 Fall River School Committee

see Dad would you please call the roll Mr argue here Mr Bailey Mr Hart here miss laravey here Ms Pereira yeah Miss rodericks yeah maricogan here to the flag pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States

pursuant to the open meeting law any person and 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 of Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unconceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible citizens input we have a couple tonight first up uh Colin dies Race Street Fall River

thank you um thank you again Mr Mayor and members of school committee before I begin I do want to make a mention that um an individual contact me before the meeting um by the neighbor Jeffrey good godroy usually um comments as school committee meetings I didn't see his um name on the list I know he sent me his citizens input that I know he submitted to the clerk um I just want to make sure it's red

because I believe it's important that we give a voice to everyone in the community that want to partake give their opinion on matters of the of the school school committee in the school department so I first want to make uh make a mention I did watch this data City and I did hear the mayor's proposal for a home rule petition a petition I believe to change the formula for the city's obligation to net School spending

and I believe that is something that should be considered and of course after we see the proposal as she come to the public and I think that's something that could be that's something I've talked about for years now and I believe that is something that would be beneficial to the taxpayers of this community we need to change that formula it's not good for cities and towns across this across the

Commonwealth is not good for Fall River I think that is something the school committee and the city can all get behind on I think it's something that's good what I don't know what I don't believe is in the best interest of the taxpayers of this city is that I hear there will be a discussion tonight regarding a potential 10 million dollar cut to the school department budget and on top of that also on the agenda

tonight they want to reorganize facilities and operations they want to add all these administrative positions some even I believe would be six figures unneeded position and I believe is for friends all on the backs of the taxpayers I don't believe that is fiscally prudent and I believe that's something to taxpayers in this community will frown upon and I also don't know if how would we even pay for these positions

when we want to cut as I just said 10 million dollars from the school department budget I don't believe that's something the students of the school department will be well served with I don't believe the Educators support this I don't believe the general public would support this either I thank you for your time next up Nelson Vasquez Sunset Hill forward thank you hello good evening members of the school committee um

just like start off with my comments pertaining to the recommendation of that home repetition um after doing my research just to double confirm on things I looked at the requirements of net School spending and upon my research here uh transportation is not one of those requirements it is a local funded thing to do expenditure for our children so that's going to be something to think

about wanting to possibly take it on this boat I think what the uh what Colin just said um but you know I think I look at these another job going down there's more jobs being handed down high salary that's going to be unsustainable long term but I think the focus are to be with these uh performance scores from Desi you know grades three through eight grades ten across the board what we're

not we're not meeting expectations and superintendent this is by no means an attack on your leadership uh this is just me just framing this issue that people are contacting me about um you know at the end of the day you know the state is going to contribute I think 20 million dollars more and and I also believe the mayor pointed out that due to the increased funding into for the schools is going to increase the

demand forness we're spending on the on the city Side so my thing is we need to put the focus where it needs to be and it has to be with these test scores because I have a nephew who attends the school system and I'm not speaking here just on the behalf of my nephew speaking on behalf of all children who attend the public school system and they're going

to point to that we have a new school we have the funding from the state so the state is meeting their obligation and if these scores continue the state is going to ask the question what the hell is going on because if this if this continues they're going to take over they're going to take over and do what needs to be done but again you know the days of our funding is coming to an end

on the city side and that's when the real hard decision is going to have to be made across the board so it's beyond me that we're still handing out jobs with salaries that are unsustainable and it's time to put in more responsible physical management and do things the right way because in my opinion there is no excuses as to why we have this type of performance within our school system I just want to make

something clear before I end up in my comments uh according to this report there is approximately 22 of students with disabilities so they're dealing with their own personal challenges so I have to make an exception for that but overall things need to change and um because this just can't continue and I want to thank you for your time thank you item number three recognition Awards uh

we have three recognition Awards tonight I'm assuming we're going to go down in front of the stage Mr agar yes so let's go down there and do our Awards

thank you

thank you very much so this uh we have a few recognition Awards so uh we're accepting nominations from people that are making a difference students parents uh volunteers staff so please submit any of those that you have to the secretary's office so we can recognize more people because a lot of people are doing a lot of good work and we'd like to recognize them so I'm going to read each of the

nominations and once I call your name whoever's here representing that individual please come down to accept the certification in the award so on behalf of the Durfee High School and the Diffie Athletics a nomination came in for the Fall River Country Club and as president Eric Kelly for the support of the Durfee High School golf program for close to 100 years Deerfield has been playing their matches at the

Fall River Country Club with no cost to the district from late August to mid-october the team is allowed to play at one of the nicest courses in New England it's been an absolute pleasure for our student athletes a current head coach Mike Hunsinger and all the previous coaches have not only taught golfers how to play the game but more importantly the etiquette of the game it has been extremely important to our

coaches that our golfers learn to respect the history of the game and the members of the Fall River Country Club the Fall River Country Club has also made golf affordable for our Durfee Community Junior memberships allow our children to play at the country club for 300 a year or 100 if they are sponsored by a member this is an incredible opportunity for the Youth of our community which eventually translates to

our high school we can't thank the Fall River Country Club and President Kelly enough for all they do for our golf program in our school so I'd like to call someone down and congratulations and thank you to the Fall River Country Club

thank you so accepting that what is Eric Kelly the president and then it's the golf coach Mike Hunsinger thank you very much gentlemen don't don't be shy Eric don't be shy

thank you one more round of applause for the fall of our country club thank you very much appreciate it

and for the next award we have a student at Durfee High School that was nominated she's a sophomore in our Durfee community and demonstrates strong leadership skills both in and out of school she earned her black belt in karate and serves on the leadership team at her Dojo a Fall River business that serves so many of our students she often works with our younger students guiding them

and developing their listening skills ability to follow directions peer interactions in the martial arts practice she works with students from all backgrounds including our neurodivergent and disabled youth she adjusts their teaching strategies based on the needs of her students and proactively approaching challenges with empathy she is firm yet nurturing which is a balance many of us as adults even have a hard

time to achieve she exudes the leadership qualities we promote in all of our schools highlighting positive messages about hard work social awareness and responsibility respect and compassion her efforts in the community and in the classroom demonstrate her Natural Instincts for leadership and mentor mentorship and we are privileged to be a part of her journey congratulations to Cami Tucker foreign

can you just stay in the front for a picture please

one more round of applause For Cami Tucker thank you so much congrats in the last award we have the city has an employee who deserves to be recognized every day when I bring my son to school she can be seen on Ellsbury Street assisting students to make sure they safely cross this high traffic area although this is her job how she performs it daily goes above and beyond she has forged relationships with the

population of students that range in age and life experiences her friendly and caring personality shines through with every fist bump she gives to students waves to commuters as they pass by and conversations with students as they cross what a great way for students to be greeted as they get ready to start their day as a parent of a student who attends Fall River Public Schools I so

appreciate people like her who make it a point to be a positive part in the lives of our students I have had the pleasure of having a few conversations with her and Lynn this is her nature and prior to working as a Crossing God she worked helping children in the state of Massachusetts if you were ever traveling in that area during a rival dismissal I hope you're able to see her in action

congratulations to the Crossing Peg McGowan and Mr Damaris is going to accept it on her behalf there's nothing going on so she shouldn't be crossing the kids now but you know thank you all right thanks

and thank you all and please send in the nominations those are great Awards and we'd like to do a little more every meeting thank you

ah thank you everyone item number four subcommittee updates we have three tonight first up um Mr aguiar special ed and the in alternative Edge subcommittee thank you very much we did have a meeting it was very successful I think it was productive we had several different presenters from the Evolve program at Durfee High School presented they gave up-to-date information along with planning and things that are going on

within that program looking at expansion in the future and it was a real good presentation if you haven't seen the meeting I would highly recommend it we also had the special education department present they presented a variety of different things some of which were updating job descriptions that are definitely something that's much needed we want to make sure that we're getting people into positions that

they know what our expectations are and what their roles are and clarifying those roles is very important so Mrs Owen chain in her short time here has uh rolled up her sleeves and gotten to work on making sure we're doing the right thing with some of those positions as well we need to get some plans in place for some of the struggles that we're having with Staffing and that various

types of classrooms that we have so on your agenda tonight is a few items that the committee forwarded unanimously to get some outside help to try to get people to come in and partner with us to help some of the most uh difficult cases that we have in the district so I'm looking forward to working with Mrs open chain and the subcommittee and Mrs Ponce on that the Alternative High School RPA

presented they presented some some information to us some data I know the meeting was only a few weeks ago but we're still waiting for some of that additional data to come in we've asked for some clarifications and some concerns that we had with some of the data to date we still haven't gotten that so I'm a little disappointed in that but hopefully that'll be forthcoming and that was the meeting it

was very successful thank you thank you Mr yeah next up is facilities and operations subcommittee Mr Hyde thank you Mr Mayor the facilities and operations subcommittee took place on Wednesday March 8th there were three items on the agenda the man murals at the RPA uh currently at the RPA School in the auditorium the renewal of the lease for the Fall River Youth Soccer Association and the reorganization of

job descriptions the Fall River Youth Soccer Association was asking for renewal of their lease with the forward public schools for the Sylvia Fields Mr pachico informed the subcommittee that the lease language wasn't changing all the district was updating was the date of the lease the subcommittee voted to refer these uh this item to the full committee for approval uh for the man

murals Miss Joyce Rodricks attended the meeting and requested that the former public schools considered digital restoration on the paintings that were displayed in the auditorium at 290 Rock Street the subcommittee asked how much it would cost Ms rodericks was uncertain of the exact cost but knew a few companies that did the work uh miss the subcommittee referred to its item to the April 10th meeting for further

discussion and Mr pachico agreed and stated that he would allow him some it would allow him some time to explore the options to see what the cost would be he would able to bring that information to us at the uh at the April 10th meeting the third Mr pachico is uh was at the meeting for the reorganization of job descriptions in the organizational chart for his Department as it looked like an

like it looked like now in a proposed reord chart of what he would like his Department to look like along with the reord chart he provided job subscriptions he stated if the rear yard was approved that would mean that there would be some new positions he'd be creating if approved the job descriptions would be advertised item was referred to full committee that's it Mr Mayor thank you Mr Hart uh and lastly

is the technology subcommittee uh Mr aguiar chairman once again we had a successful uh meeting and there's a few things I think on the agenda to push forward so we talked about a lot of improvements with our Chromebooks uh some cases that new cases that are going to come in so we're making tremendous Investments uh in technology for uh students as well as our staff we're going to be protecting

them for the long term with protective cases all benefits to having the grant money and the asset funds that we have so we're using that money for one-time expenses I think that are very wise we talked about what happens when they get ruined you know we're talking about holding the students accountable to when they break the same thing is going to apply to staff so that we don't get

inundated with repairs that we can no longer afford to pay we talked about security cameras and the like we want to make sure that our district has the proper amount and protection both in and out of the building so that's going to be something that moving forward they'll be more proposed together but we're definitely on track Mr Cabral articulated to us a couple of pieces of Technology

that we we I think it's on the agenda here to purchase that we're going to be able to see in real time how how the quality and the amount of usage of a lot of the the programs that we have in the past we've been able to get that but we have a scaled down version of it it's not a technical term but basically we're going to be able to see a dashboard and see

exactly who's on how many people are on and whether we're using the technology in the past we've had it scattered all over the place and we haven't had that technology so that's a worthwhile investment as well as some safety on making sure we're protected in the case of any kind of uh ransomware attack or anything like that so it was a successful program a successful meeting and we are going to

meet again in a few weeks the only concern that I had at the meeting was the power school and we're going to be talking about that again I think on the agenda some of my concerns I'll raise at that time with that I yield thank you Mr Aggie um uh item number five is the superintendent's report thank you Mr Mayor so tonight we have an update on the DECA state competition we're proud to share

the success of the Durfee Deca team at the State Career Development competition that took place last weekend in Boston durfey Deca was represented by 17 Durfee student leaders in various categories which included quiz Bowl automotive services marketing food marketing Financial Services team decision making school-based Enterprise restaurant and project management in both Career Development and sales projects for

competition events our project management sales project team consisting of Emily Coelho Forest Melo and Evangeline Souza placed top six in their category and qualified for the international Career Development conference which is going to take place in Orlando Florida April 21st through the 26th the project management team and career development consisted of Cecilia depina and Catherine in Santiago they placed 12th

in their category and were recognized on stage as finalists in their category and lastly Maylin Massey was recognized for winning round one of the virtual business Hotel challenge that took place back in October 2022. additionally our school-based Enterprise team of Malin Massey Brooklyn Galliano and Isabel Ribeiro received a gold level chapter certification for their 36-page written

report submitted and presented on the Granite Grill they will be competing at the ICDC in Orlando by presenting the promotion standard of their paper Durfee High School was also recognized for achieving Thrive level accomplishments in deca's membership promotion and Community Services chapter campaigns where we received two Penance two flags two plaques and six allocations for students to attend the Thrive Leadership

Academy at the ICDC this year we're recognized for completing Mass Massachusetts better than ever campaign challenges where we received an additional three allocations for the leadership academy at ICDC in total 15 students are going to ICDC I look forward to watching and hearing about their success in Orlando in April also Verizon Innovative learning Labs there's been some PR on this and I will

quote from one of the students that we heard from at Talbot middle school last week the coolest room in our building that's how students at the tech team at the Talbot Middle School describe their brand new Verizon Innovative learning lab the unveiling of the lab was attended by City officials State leaders as well as Fall River Public Schools staff some of our middle school principals were there as this was the

culmination it was the ribbon cutting at Talbot but it celebrated the four learning Labs that we have in the district the right Verizon learning lab is a collaboration between Verizon Heart of America etson entrepreneurship Innovation Institute at Arizona State University and follow the public schools to literally bring opportunities to the fingertips of our students it really was amazing the way that place was

transformed into this state-of-the-art lab where kids learned Hands-On the lab is now one of the four up and running in our schools because Middle School also has one Henry Lord and Doran and these Labs will prepare our students for future careers in stem by equipping them with the tools and skills they need to become contributors and co-creator co-creators students not only have access to virtual inaugmented reality

but also they have the ability to create and print 3D items we actually saw them printing some coins um there while we were there the labs will give more than 2 000 students and more than 200 Educators Hands-On experiences whether it be by holding a human heart in the palm of their hands or visiting ancient grief Greece in a way that you never thought possible so as so appropriately stated by our

students they thank the partners and and really said thank you for investing in us and that's how we feel so a huge success at four of our schools in in empowering our students for Hands-On learning and finally a hiring update so since our last meeting we've hired 10 teachers three administrators 12 paraprofessionals 10 education support positions that could be clerks nurses CODIS SEL Liaisons and five operational

supports staff so um and additionally we've had 11 resignations five pairs two teachers two operations persons one principal and one nurse and five retirements three of those retirements will be end of year retirements um and summer dates we also have some upcoming recruitment events as you know we've struggled with Staffing our buildings so recruitment is a huge piece of the work that we're

doing as we move forward with hiring season recruitment event the follower Public Schools will hold one we had one scheduled for the day that we had snow and released early that afternoon we have rescheduled that to March 30th at Morton we also will have the Merck bu job fair April 20th which we will be attending we have a partnership with the Spanish Embassy where we have five folks

that are teaching in our schools that came from Spain and we're hoping to expand that partnership we will be attending the Bridgewater State's Job Fair May 3rd and Desi also has a virtual job fair on April 12th so been busy and that's all I have thank you superintendent uh we have no student comment tonight item six item seven we have six sets of minutes motion approved minutes seconds

I have a regular school committing two six two thirteen regular school committee special meeting 217 um alternative education subcommittee meeting three six facilities and operations uh subcommittee three eight and Joint meeting of the city council 314. I have a motion a second any discussion Dad please call the roll

yes I have a number of travel requests under item eight um any discussion on travel requests could I get a motion in a second second have a motion a second Dad please call the roll Mister again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Mrs Laramie yes Herrera yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor Kruger yes item nine is the acceptance of donations we have a number of them tonight we usually accept them

and then have this motion to accept I have a motion this second Deb please call the roll before the superintendent explains the question Mr aguio just had a question on the one about the sensory uh items for MCAS so they seem like they're worthwhile like I'm not questioning the whether it's worthwhile or not but sometimes I've been seeing that we do GoFundMe and I've said this before like

we have to have a policy on what what do we send out for these look like items that we should be providing to all our children that might need these items so if we could get something on it I'm not opposed to this necessarily but I think we got to watch out what we keep on asking for money and we're doing we should have this for all children that's just my two cents thank you I yield

uh Deb could you please call the roll yes yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Ms larving yes Mr Pereira yes Mr Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes Miss uh Miss Pond superintendent Ponce thank you from Bank five um on behalf of Prince from uh principal Cobb uh to Spencer Borden Elementary School uh 6 250 dollars from uh the Michael Troy foundation on behalf of Jackie Francisco in the Fine Arts

Performing Arts a six thousand dollar donation from the coordinated family community engagement on behalf of Kristen Faris and follower Public Schools eight hundred dollars and from Bonus choose on behalf of principal lens and Sylvia Elementary School there was 335 dollars and 29 cents I have spoken to principal um lens about that so I will have clarification on that thank you superintendent

item 10 is the approval of contracts we have a number of contracts here does anybody have anything they would like to see us pull out if not I'll accept the motion in a second motion to accept second I have a motion a second Deb please call the roll on contracts yes Dragon yes Mr Bailey yes Mr harp yes Miss Laramie yes Ferrara yes Miss Roderick yes yes item number 11 is the approval of Grants

we have two of them tonight um motion to it to approve second I have a motion in a second any discussion on those two grants Deb could you please call the roll Mr argue yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larabee yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roberts yes Mary Coogan yes Committee of the whole 12.1 is a discussion and vote to approve the renewal of the Far Over Youth Soccer Association lease as referred by the

facilities and operations subcommittee and presented by Ken Pacheco Chief Operating Officer any discussion on the lease with youth soccer promotion to approve second I have a motion this second discussion hearing none Deb please call the roll Mr yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laraveen yes Miss Pereira yes 12-2 is the presentation and discussion of the proposed fiscal year 2024 annual

budget of the Florida Public Schools as presented by Maria Pont superintendent of schools if you don't mind I'm going to join Kevin at the party sure

good evening so all of you I know I want to preface I know that all of you got your budget binders this afternoon okay this is the superintendent's um draft budget that I am placing in your hands for you to review for you to examine for you to reflect on and for you to provide us feedback at our follow-up meetings so I I know that that's sometimes a topic of discussion it is intended to be

presented to all of you at the same time so that you all get the same information at the same time so our annual budget this tonight we're presenting the superintendent's proposed draft Bud budget it was created in collaboration with all of our principals our department heads our district leadership this is a draft it's intended to be looked at and will make adjustments as we receive feedback

so our what is an annual budget it's what we stand for all right it's a moral document it's tells us what we fund and what we value it's a financial planning tool for our district a way for us to communicate what our needs are it's a living document again which means there will be adjustments along the way it's an acknowledgment of the work that is ahead it honors the work that came before us

as well as acknowledges the work that is ahead and it complements the district planning and it's a statement of what we value statement for us for our district as well as for our community as you go through this you'll notice some of the things look familiar and that's intentional I mean I'm glad that they look familiar we surveyed our principles back in November and some of the

priorities that are driving this budget are similar from the priorities from last year the budget should be to deepen the work that we've started it would be we would never get anywhere if every year we said okay we have a new budget we're going to throw everything we've done out the window and we're going to stop fresh again we need to continue to grow and to deepen the learning for the adults as

well as for the students this budget is rooted in raising student achievement because every single person in this room that is the focus of our work right raising student achievement the priorities are the drivers of the work as you will see you have the budget priorities that were identified by our principles by our leadership core instruction in a multi-tiered system we've made this committee we have

made heavy Investments on high quality instruction in Structural Materials materials we've adopted some great curriculum we have consistency for the first time in a long time across the district we have work to do absolutely some of it you know when you adopt anything new it doesn't just go as we want it to go there's a lot of growing pains but we have we are weathering through it and getting better our

teachers are doing some really hard work so we also uh part of this investment in in the core instruction is to provide support through tier three interventions instructional staff support staff we recognize that our kids are coming with needs that need to be addressed we need to meet them where they are out of school time programming we have provided camps during vacations after school

before school as well as in the summer another priority that was identified is special education Pro programming and supports and we know that assistant superintendent obenchain has been assessing our programs and is looking to make some changes and really look to see what's working and what needs to be adjusted she is working with her team to develop systems create systems that are going to be aimed at supporting

our most fragile students multilingual support finally we have a director at the MLL department has been a long time coming but we have somebody who's invested in our district invested in the department and is looking to also create systems of support to add additional Staffing to support inclusive practices we we piloted a co-teaching model at Henry Lord we want to expand upon that and all of this Professional Event

development plays a key role in every single one of these priorities because we have a responsibility to provide our staff with the resources and the tools so that they can be successful and professional development is one of the tools that they need College and Career Pathways expansion of Early College we are leading the states in our early college alternative Pathways dual language we have a program that is still

in its infancy at viveris started with kindergarten it's in first grade we're going to continue to Loop them until we have a full model Pre-K expansion not a secret we've had we've added classes we will continue to add classes because we know how important it is for our students to come in with those early numeracy early literacy that language acquisition so that they are successful instructional technology

we've created this department we need to continue to sustain this department and build on it so that we're using our technology putting laptops and putting technology in classrooms is not enough we have to train our staff to use it wisely we have to use the technology to analyze the data to make sure that we are growing as a result of that and we need to continue to invest in our

facilities and operations again Pre-K we want to expand but that includes sites right we we are looking to acquire site we also are investing heavily on HVAC upgrades uh we are um we want to make sure that we have a capital Improvement program where we are taking care of our buildings proactively as opposed to um uh waiting for something to break down and that's when we fix it right so

we want to make sure we have this cycle where we are improving our facilities and of course Safety and Security a primary concern for us that we need to prioritize in every single school every single parent every single adult wants to come to work wants to come to school parents want to send their child and feel that they are safe so that has to be a major investment for us family and

Community engagement again we want our parents to be involved we need to create opportunities for them to get involved it's not enough and and when we say and I think that Mrs roderick's we've had many discussions about this right because parent involvement and parent engagement is not just counting the numbers of who attends an open house who attends parent-teacher conference it's really it's about parents that are

invested in their children how are we supporting them to support their children what opportunities are we creating to welcome parents into our schools and to support them in the work and then Human Resources it's not a secret I just talked to you about hiring we have struggled with hiring we have still have some openings Recruitment and Retention is a priority we need to figure out think outside the box figure

out how we are going to uh um attract the best and the brightest to our district we are we need to talk up our district we need to support our teachers create ways that we support newbies coming on board so that they're not burnt out and they're not looking out and right now we're in a market where people are going to the highest bidder so we have to figure out how do

we retain how do we create a district where people want to stay because people don't necessarily always go because of the money unless it's a huge difference right but we need to create schools and a district that is welcoming and that is supportive and we need to work on staff attendance and student attendance so again these priorities will guide us on how we deepen the work that we've started we

certainly have we I think we heard from Mr Vasquez over there yes we're all aware of the data we are not where we need to be we need to make sure that we have a road map to get ourselves yes throwing money out of problems not always the answer but we need to invest and make sure that we have the proper supports so that we get where we need to go

I'm going to throw it over Kevin and I doing this together because he's going to talk about the technical side of the budget good evening so funding what we value and how we get there it's the foundation budget the foundation budget is the minimum amount required that as a district we are required to spend and that Foundation budget is determined by the desc each and every year

as part of that Foundation budget it's a required local contribution it's how much the city or town can afford to pay towards education and what's left over is chapter 70.

the factors in the foundation formula are student enrollment the wage adjustment Factor inflation on the on the city Town side is the property value income and the municipal growth factor and those six factors work together to determine at District's chapter 70.

this here is the essentially this is this is our budget this is our foundation budget here the foundation budget totals 226 million 544 926 for fy24 as determined by the state this this funding formula is broken down into 13 enrollment categories by cost rates in 11 functional areas this slide here shows you what the all the foundation rates are on the previous slide that I just showed you in

particular you'll know you'll see the last 12 which is the low income from groups one through group 12 ranging from 4116 per student to 7575 per student in group 12.

can I ask a question just the clarity was that an amount on the prior slide for the when you talk about the budget are you getting to those slides later about the total dollars sorry yes I'll wait till then thank you no problem this here is the state the Statewide calculation so essentially the Statewide budget is just under 14 billion dollars for across the state um when you factor in the local

contribution and they determine it by 59 being paid for by the cities and towns and 41 being state-funded um as you'll see as we move further on into the slides what our percentages are so the foundation budget is the again it's the minimum amount that's required to be spent on the school on the school side actual net School spending that includes the city indirect spending for the schools

so as I mentioned previously um the as far as the low income goes the local metric within that formula we fall in group 12 which is with our low income rate is 83.45 percent and we are getting reimbursed at a rate of 7575 55 and that makes up a large portion of you know our foundation formula so the final piece of of the costs and what we charge off is what What's called

the indirect costs uh the indirect costs are line lined up in our indirect cost agreement with the city and those are the costs that we charge off each and every year to the end of the year report to our schedule 1 and schedule 19.

the student Opportunity Act that came into came into law in November of 2019 and what it did was it identified that we were severely underfunded for many many years and what it did was it realized that specifically in the areas of special ed low income ell students and health insurance that we were under that we were underfunded and so what the student Opportunity Act originally was intended to do was to

fund us to bring us essentially back to whole over seven years and the first year we were not funded so they have now made it such that it's going to be funded over six years and FY 24 will be at 3 6 of the funding rate and so we should expect to see increases of good amounts up until FY 27.

so this is just a student opportunity metric and it's changed over the years and now students are identified as of on October as of October 1st and it's done through the state systems and you know over the years the state has um you know the process has gotten much better where the state is actually the one that is identifying all the students originally we used to have to do paper forms and

everything else here in the district and that's no longer needed at this time this slide here is just a demographic of the last few years this just just uh just to point out this represents just the fall of public schools this does not include the charter schools within our foundation budget we do it's money is allocated to the Fall River Public Schools along with the charter schools

so this slide is just specific to Fall River Public Schools so as you can see all students 10 000 268 and FY 23 and 10447 and FY 24 a change of 100 179 students and this just gives you various demographics and different populations that we have here this slide here is a just a shift it shows you the shifts over the last five years in particular in our ell population

which has gone from 16.4 percent to 21.3 percent in the last five years low income which has gone from 67.1 percent to 79.9 percent students with disabilities uh 21.2 percent to 22.2 percent and our high needs students from 76.4 to 86 percent so as far as student enrollment goes we increased by 179 students based on the October 1 numbers 64 students were in the Pre-K and 196 students in the high

school and we saw a decrease of 83 kids in the middle schools this slide here shows you comparison of FY 23 to fy24 and the comparison is on the the numbers and the student enrollment for the foundation formula and the into the different categories and it shows you the breakdown and where we've gone up or gone down as you can see we've gone from 12 103 students last year to 12 238 students this year

this slide here shows you the dollars associated with those categories as you can see the you know the biggest chunk is the low income chunk there we've gone from just about 63 million dollars to almost 76 million dollars in that category as we are in group 12. and you can see on the last on the right hand side there so the foundation form and increase from just about 205 million to just over 226 million foreign

so I'm going to bring you back to the priorities I know you saw this once before we can't lose sight of these priorities because they are the priorities that are going to allow us to move forward we need to invest in these priorities as we continue to build the infrastructure for success as we continue to deepen the work this is not easy work true change happens it's a it's a process right

three to five years to really see good change it's it's going to take time but we need to stay the course to continue to invest in our in our schools in special education in our curriculum in in our folks right in in our special populations as we move our district forward every single one of these priorities works together to move our district forward every single one so let's not lose sight of that work

right the budget process I just want to take you through the planning parameters we use best practices for each School this year what's the difference I know that there was talk about it and actually the regs changed you will see cost centers right so you will see it you're going to see what it costs to run each of our schools that's new this year our student needs Drive our decision

making so we look at that data we look at where we are as a district we allow principals to make site-based decisions that said reform our principals need to staff their buildings and advocate for what their needs are and that's what they do they had a one-on-one with with us we had at least 20 24 meetings with our each of our schools as well as each department as they came in and advocated

so articulately for what they felt they needed in order to move their school I just want you to keep in mind as you're looking at this because you're to take this home you're going to look at this you're going to examine it you're going to dig into it and you're going to come back we're going to have follow-up meetings we we're asking you to set up three we may not need three but we want

those dates because that was part of the budget calendar right and you're going to have an opportunity to ask clarifying questions to ask questions of any department head any principle any of us and but I I want us to as we're looking at that though this document that you have in front of you the binder the big binder in looking at each School each School fair is not equal right because

we have to look at the makeup of that school the population because some schools you're going to look at and you're going to say oh it costs so much to run that school but you have to look beyond that number why does it cost so much they have a large strand of special populations or they might have multi-strands of special populations think about the cost of an inclusion classroom versus a sub-separate classroom much

lower numbers higher number of Staff right that drives up the cost so um let's I ask you to look carefully at the makeup of each of those schools makeup of each of those departments and keep in mind that we need to make sure we fund each School based on what that principal advocated and based on what the needs the identified needs of that school are okay so the FY Revenue house we've heard

Chapter 70 state aid we received or are receiving 188 million 24 477 dollars that's a 19 million 603 219 dollar increase over final FY 23 chapter 78. the minimum required increases thirty dollars per student that's the bottom right the city contribution 38 million five hundred and twenty thousand four hundred and forty nine dollars all right and that's what we hear it increased the city

contribution by two million one hundred and eighty eight thousand four hundred and Seventeen dollars over the final FY 23 required City contribution in appropriation if we look at Chapter 70 and we look at the city contribution that's our budget 226 million five hundred and forty four thousand nine hundred and twenty six dollars an increase of 21 million seven hundred and ninety one thousand six hundred and

thirty four thirty six dollars over the final FY 23 requiring net School spending that's a lot of money so I agree that's a lot of money look how much we're getting from Chapter 70 and look how much the city is contributing is a huge difference right um but that's very common with uh High need City Urban cities right um but that is a a big number we haven't seen you know numbers like these so

where is all this money going we're proposing some new positions for next year right from the operating budget we're proposing to add 70.5 teaching positions and that's going to range from interventionists to provide that tier three support uh interventions coaches that split their time doing intervention work as well as working with teachers in the classroom uh ESL teachers special needs teachers

ESL coaches we are looking we have we have been intentional at looking at the programming at each school when we were meeting with principals and then looking at numbers looking at how they the makeup of that school was and so if their housing let's say someone is housing a um uh an ESL foundational strand how are they staffed how are they supported we're trying to we know our L numbers have gone up how are we

supporting our data doesn't is not good we're not moving our kids so what do we need to do in order to support our teachers in supporting our students right so that's how we made those decisions and allocating those positions we are also proposing to add 48 new paraprofessionals so last year I said to this committee we want to make sure every kindergarten classroom and every first grade classroom has a

paraprofessional and that's needed I will say some of them may still be open because we've had trouble recruiting but you're seeing 48 new paraprofessionals and that's to those paraprofessionals are Pre-K pairs we're expanding Pre-K so that comes with Pre-K Paris we also looked at our sub separate classrooms some of them had one para and we needed to have two pairs in those classrooms and we also have some additional

inclusion pairs to support classrooms and some of our principals asked if they have strands in their classrooms they wanted a floating para because if somebody's absent instead of pulling from another classroom we have somebody who can sub in that classroom so paraprofessional support this is in the trenches in the work that's needed to be done we also are adding 12 SEL liaison slash support Specialists I put support

Specialists there because the high school is asking for one and then we have other student scle Liaisons I want to be clear every single time that when these principals came in and asked I asked them do you need them now or do you need them you want to wait for the budget some people came to us and said and it's on the agenda tonight right they said I could use them now all right

so we'll add it now to the budget and some people said I'd like to wait until the budget goes through I want them for next year so that that's the remaining for next year we also have seven director supervisor positions and I want to be clear on that some of those positions are from the the facilities and operations reorg that we are proposing so and then a couple of those are supervisors for the special

education departments um assistant superintendent Obin chain is um requesting to add two supervisors to support the needs of the schools because the numbers have grown and there's such a widespread we are proposing to add six custodians um five safety officers our goal is to have a safety officer in every Elementary School in addition to the ones that we currently have at the middle level and at the high school for

groundskeepers we have a bcba and cluster coordinators edition of three again as assistant superintendent Oban chain reorganizes or assesses the programs that we have in our buildings she's trying to make sure that we have the appropriate supports for those strands so in some cases they're sharing a bcba or a cluster coordinator um this year we are making an effort to really make those positions to to refine

those positions so that they are supporting teachers in the classroom and uh doing doing the work that we need them to do uh through um and not being so spread out that they you can't do anything if you're if you're trying to do too many things um additionally we are proposing two vice principal positions last year we added a vice principal to cuss Middle School that model has worked well uh the

the school structure they're able to create these mini teams sixth grade teams seventh grade team eighth grade team we would like to replicate that model at Talbot as well as at Morton because uh is Talbot smaller numbers that's true what I said before fares not equal but they also house five uh social emotional classrooms need the support you need to have some administrative support in the building we are proposing

in the operation operating budget a department head we have one of our schools that only had one in ela department head they had made due with no with the math coach and Ela department head and that principle is asking to convert that position from a coach to a department head and an additional nurse technology staff one additional position in the finance department we are proposing to add a

finance specialist we would like to convert the admin the clerk position at the CTE program that program has grown there's a need for some an admin assistant to to work there so the request was to convert that position and we are also adding another Clerk and we currently have a 0.5 athletic trainer this committee approved last year we have a need for a full-time athletic trainer so we want the remainder of that

0.5 so we have a full-time athletic trainer because the games are all over the place and one person cannot be at all the games and we have a thriving elementary middle and high school athletic program so on the operating budget the grand total is 166 positions that are being proposed to be added again I know it's a big number we know that okay well but every single one of those positions has been intentional and

has been thought out certainly I know that you're going to be able to poke holes in it and and question us and that's part of the process but um we feel like that that's what we're advocating for that's where our needs are and then from the grants we are advocating for eight teachers additional and again that's a combination could be an intervention this could be ESL a teacher a special needs teacher for

additional pairs uh and another department head um there so 13 positions from the grants and 11 cafeteria workers that are coming out of the Nutrition department so that's our those are that's where we're going to spend our money where we're intending to spend our money here's the comparison from FY 23 to fy24 shows you the enrollment increase of 135 kids overall the foundation budget increased by just

by almost 22 million dollars two point almost 2.2 million dollars on the required District contribution 19.6 million dollars in chapter 70. uh Chapter 70 is 188 million 24 477 for FY 24. it's 83 percent which means the required contribution is 17 of the total sorry this here just a graphic of the required contribution in the uh Chapter 70 over the last five years you can just see how it's grown

so this is our budget we are proposing fy24 a budget of 226 million 544 926 as compared to the budget from FY 23 of 204 million 753 290. again the increase is just under 22 million dollars and we are proposing a 100 net School spending budget so our concerns for FY 24 and moving forward our transportation charter school and school choice expenses the auto the auto District special ed tuition expenses as

we've been told that those rates are potentially inflate going up by 14 percent moving forward uh utilities Capital infrastructure health insurance and what the effects of a home rule petition would be to the schools this slide is just an update on the federal coveted relief funds so we got three allocations the third allocation ends September 30th of 2024.

sr1 has been spent as of 9 30 22.

we have about five million dollars left in sr2 which we have until 9 30 23 spent to spend that down uh sr3 we've got just under 35 million dollars to spend by September 30 to 2024. as part of that 35 million dollars we have 17 million dollars in HVAC upgrades that we are working on to spend that balance down and we are working on the um on the Pre-K and the expansion there from those Monies

this here's just a breakdown by category of our budget as you can see this is just the operating budget so the operating budget includes the school operating and transportation the indirect costs sit outside the operating budget there on the city Side so the operating budget side is 173 million 920 197 one including transportation um salary benefits make up about 77 percent of the budget

so the increase from 22 I'm sorry for 23 24 is just under 15 percent and just a thank you to everybody involved for all their hard work

so as we wrap up I I know that your there's a lot of information absolutely I know that you're getting it today as I I turn it over to you so the process is that you get it we'll look at it we'll go back when we agree on after our meetings we agree on a budget and we that's voted on and then we'll ready to send it uh to city council

um we're going to once we do that then we'll post it publicly Etc but um it's we know it's a big budget we want to continue to put systems in place we want to deepen the learning learning we we need to remove every barrier so that our teachers can maximize every single minute of time they have with children that are in front of them that's that's where this budget is coming from and that's what it's rooted

in raising student achievement by having solid systems in place by having solid supports in place there's really the work that is the what you see in this budget is really about Shoring up all of our schools as we move forward thank you thank you thank you any questions and I just wanted to make a comment that the budget will be available online tomorrow uh we'll we'll put it out tomorrow by the end of the day

all all rationales for all positions it increases will be sent to the school committee by the end of the week so you have them in hand prior to our meetings that we schedule thank you Kevin thank you superintendent Potts any questions Mr agya Mr just a comment and I say this every single year I can appreciate Mrs Pancho saying that we just got this today the problem that I have with the way

that the system in the process works is that this school committee received this document when we walked in this room today so when I walked in today I hadn't seen anything with the budget so now we get the budget and I can understand you said that we're going to have to weigh in and try to make some suggestions and whatever we can tweak some things Ms omita just indicated that this budget

with all these line items is going to be released to the public tomorrow morning so what ends up happening is by doing it this way and I've said this every year that I've been on this school committee is you box the school committee into a corner so that you've already met with your principals you've already given your recommendation for what to spend it on and I know as you say that we can tweak

things we can change things it's a living document but now anything that we suggest to be changed is going to be taking away from somebody that met with you whether it be any school or any program it can be whatever it is now we're pulling back because we're releasing this to the public without this school committee that's elected that one of the biggest things we do is talk about the budget

now there's probably not much in here that I disagree with I'm not suggesting there is but in times of like Building Systems when we don't have the luxury of having extra money now if I suggested no I don't think we need that at X school we needed this over there I become now making an enemy out of the school rather than just having a say ahead of time so I for one don't like getting it like

this I think it's unfair to the school committee and when we release it as I said now we're pulling back just my two cents if I can just clarify first of all um this is the draft budget the superintendent's draft budget that I that I my job part of it is to meet with our principals and to get feedback from them and so they can articulate their needs then we put it together and we

bring it to you and then we have a process that happens that we're going to meet our principals know that nothing is final and they are well aware that they're gonna it work you you may not agree with every single thing that's in the budget they know that I was a principal I know that sometimes sometimes there's a discussion and we we know that all right maybe that's we think something differently after we

have a conversation and that's okay too I I assure you we have 16 professional principals who if the school committee says well can we think about rethink about this position we will be able to have a professional discussion next week or whenever our meetings are and they will agree that it's not they know it's a draft they know that it's subject to change it's okay we all know that we know that we expect

some changes I understand but when we're talking reality here and you said you were a principal and I fully understand that if you're a principal and the school committee at that time cut something from the budget that you were already told was part of the superintendent's budget you wouldn't be happy about it and you're right I that's my only point I'm not suggesting all I'm seeing is that the sort of the horse is

out of the barn already and then we have to pull it back in if we want to make any changes like I said thankfully most of this stuff is probably we're spending money wisely for the reasons that you said I'm not denying that just system wise I don't think it's a good system to just throw this on our desk today I just don't think it is with that being said as we go through the budget

one of my concerns it always has been when we received the money from the student Opportunity Act it was meant for righting or wrong of giving the money to urban districts like Fall River that they needed that we need in order to service the needs of our children big time that was said by every politician State House mayor school committee everybody said the same thing this is right or wrong and yes it's a

lot of money but it's doing what's needed to be done to make the gains that we need for our children that's what I understood when this came out at the same time Mr Almeida has articulated how are we going to pay for all these positions last year and in the future in a document for this entire school committee to see in that document it indicated we were going to get the millions like we're

talking about in that same document it said how much money the city was going to have to put in towards education so this 19 million 20 million whatever it is is not a surprise to anybody it shouldn't be so my concern though is I believe and I haven't added it up what I know Mr Almeida knows how to add you're spending all the money you're spending that 22 million dollars

that we get for the needs that you just articulated is there 11 million dollars in extra stuff in the budget that you could cut right now in your budget proposal that says what you what we are going to show what we value well um obviously and that's a big blow to a budget 11 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at I that money is supposed to go to our kids

if we were going to cut 11 million dollars this is why we put it in there as one of our worries we don't know it's very early in the game we don't know where it's going to take it could be something that happens or doesn't happen but if it's something that is going to happen we will have to make some very hard decisions because what we are proposing is the budget we are

proposing in front of you every year is a budget that's to support our schools and our our students right there's a reason why we have a student Opportunity Act there's a reason why our children we are we are a high needs District um so to cut 11 million dollars it will hurt we will have to cut positions we will have to um do some some um we'll have to look at

um our decision making and and figure out how um how we prioritize and if we needed the 11 million which I think you articulated in your slides and the principals have articulated the needs and the school committee always articulates that we need more money from the state in order to fund the education I don't think anybody was lying right but what we're sitting here today wondering and I'll

tell you I'm wondering it because when I sat at the state of the city and for the first time I see on a slide that the mayor wants to take 11 million dollars and push it off of net School spending or push the transportation into net School spending immediately in my mind was that's an 11 million dollar cut to education any way you slice it it's 11 million dollar cut to education and I'm not sure why

it doesn't appear that your Administration is that worried about it like I am I know you're saying that it'll be a tough decision and everything the answer that I fully expected was going to be there's no way in hell we should be able to we should cut 11 million dollars from this budget because the slides over there that just said we fund what we value that's what I'm looking at right

now so we fund what we value but I could cut 11 million dollars if the mayor gets his home rule petition well I didn't tell you that we could cut it I told you if we had to cut it it would be hard to do I am absolutely not going to sit here and say when I just advocated for a 220-something million dollar budget that we can say oh we're going to take 11

million right off the bat and say it's got to come from somewhere what I'm yeah it is a worry but I I don't I can't tell you where I've cut it from right now but I have to go back to the drawing board I understand and I think in johara Huts you agree with what I'm saying it would be a devastating cut to the progress that we're making with our budgets what

I'm asking though is as a member of this school committee it's a it's going to be a real cut if that goes through that we need to as a school committee you need to as an Administration Advocate against such a disastrous proposal to cut 11 million dollars home education I need you to step up and support it because I'm going to keep on telling everybody that I talk to that it's an 11

million dollar cut and we can't afford it but I'm asking you as the superintendent and the CFO to articulate to us what does a 11 million dollars look like not today but I'd like you to tell to uh to this committee what does 11 million dollars look like all of the new positions we said I'd love to know how much money that costs the cost of living giving people raises that they so definitely

deserved we spent that money we voted for those contracts that were going to cause millions of dollars in raises every year under what premise I know what I voted on it under the premise is what Mr Almeida told us the SOA and the 8 9 10 20 million dollars whatever it was that's the only reason why I voted for it so as we go through this budget I'm wondering when are we

going to actually say well where would the 11 million come from because it it it it it could shouldn't come from education that's all I'm saying and I'm asking you to Advocate honestly for that and if you disagree with me so be it but I happen to know what like I can tell by just looking at you that you know what 11 million dollars and if I look out there and see the principles and the

directors they know what 11 million dollars is going to look like so I'm really disappointed in the way that presented in a very surprising way to you especially I asked you at the at the state of the city if you knew about that beforehand and you said no you talked about it the day before in an agenda meeting that's unacceptable as well we need to be together on things and at

least say if we're going to cut it we're going to cut it call it like like it is and I'm telling you right now if that goes through it's an 11 million dollar cut to education and I'm not in favor of it and not anyway whatsoever but that I yields I guess because of the volume we have to respond to that and I do want to be crystal clear what's going on in education right now

for a city like Fall River that is reaping the benefits of the student Opportunity Act that I know I fought hard with both our legislative delegation I know what I did to help pass this bill and I'll do it again people that are now crying the sky has fallen with the same people that ran around the city during the last campaign telling everyone we had a 9 million dollar budget shortfall

I have no idea where that went because it's not true what we're going to do with this bill I've talked to the teachers is we are going to try to push the needle so that school transportation is funded properly in this state when you look at what happens with Transportation it's a travesty now I know that Mr aguiar was a state representative for a number of years and I'll bet you he filed legislation to try

to change the way this bill is written because it is totally unfair to cities like Fall River we can put a kid on a bus to go play basketball in Brockton and that's net School spending eligible but if I take a kid from Bay Street and put him on a bus to go to Durfee for math it's not net School spending eligible that's not right I value the academics and the teachers

in the classroom Sports is great but that's ancillary to the education if a kid from Diamond from Bay Street in fall river goes on a bus from his home to Diamond the state picks up 80 percent of that bill if a Durfee kid does that we're reimbursed at zero now I will not as these people try to frame the argument as 11 million dollar cut I will push this bill through if I can to get

everybody in the State House on board to address education transportation across the state do you think that any of these other communities whether it's Lawrence Quincy New Bedford Brockton are going to say oh good Fall River change the Transportation laws good for them that's not how it works in this state the MTA the teachers union is going to say what's fair for one is fair for all

let's fix a bill that is horribly flawed that's why I'm trying to do this if we're successful we'll get this done if not you'll have people saying it's an 11 million dollar cut which I do not believe will ever happen the same way there was a nine million dollar budget shortfall that didn't happen this is not going to happen we are going to work with our legislative delegation I have

already been on the phone numerous times with the both the governor and lieutenant governor on how we can get this done to rectify School transportation in this state this is the first steps and we're going to go through it and try to get it done I hope everybody supports this we will not take 11 million dollars straight out of Education okay that's not the intent of the bill the intent is to make school

transportation equitable and fair for everyone not just the kids that are getting picked up by the state and that's my position on that and as Mr aguyan knows this is a long long road and these are only the first little baby steps let's see how this plays out and where we end up and let's work together to make school transportation in a city like Fall River fair for everybody wherever you live in

the city thanks anything else on that piece in a minute you'll go next um I I hope that I truly hope that what the the mayor is saying comes to fruition in terms of us not having to make cuts um because I'll be honest at this the state of the city I thought the same thing when I heard that immediately I thought yeah great I guess for taxpayers not great for our students

and maybe it's going to play out differently but I'm certainly concerned but I'm certainly willing to listen and go through the process which would be which will be very long um but I do want to say thank you for your time the two of you I'm putting this together um I feel that you did mention the possibility of that cut in black and white I thought it was enough I appreciate

um advocacy I think sometimes in your position um when you're sitting in front of us discussing a budget there's a time and place for how excited or you know passionate you're gonna probably get about something which I think is is respectful um but you did bring it up so I know you acknowledge it I certainly know you're not going to be excited if you have to cut anything because that makes your job a lot harder

um and then the last thing I want to address I don't know this is only my second time right going through this process so I don't know how it can be done better or I I'm okay I don't know if it's just me or my colleagues can speak for themselves I feel like I'm okay getting this today that I have enough time because our meetings in like what two weeks or I feel like I have enough

time to get through it um I'm not saying it's the best way again this is my second time um but it is a draft at some point we have to be given it and as far as putting it out to the public I'm glad you're doing that because as I recall last year that was like super controversial right and it was my first time and we were saying and you Kevin I

believe said well this isn't precedent normally we don't put it publicly until it's an official thing and this is a draft but we had so many constituents who were saying hey no that's not fear we're actually sitting here watching the proceedings and we really kind of like to go along and see what's going on and we all I think voted unanimously if I'm not mistaken to make sure that was put

up there so thank you because you did it without us having to ask you because we decided to do that last year so I'm not sure why that was an issue um but thank you for this I I agree with my colleague you know Mr agya I am concerned um I understand whether me is coming certainly for the taxpayers this is a good deal because the structure is unfair and bizarre and strange and it

needs to be fixed and the state does need to help us with Transportation I'm just in fear that the helping us is Gonna Hurt our kids so with that I yield anything further Mr Mr yeah yeah just uh sell me I'm just going to ask you uh if the home rule petition that the mayor mentioned at the state of the city goes through is that an 11 million dollar cut to education yes

that's to me it's very clear that that's what that is so I'm glad that we're getting some at least Clarity on what it is and what it's not and I don't think that the mayor wants to cut education by 11 million dollars but at the same time what you're presenting what he presented would be a cut of 11 million dollars because we can't we can't absorb that now there's an issue in the state with

transportation and you know from we've been on this board for a long time I've been one of the chief advocates for saying that we need to have more money from the state to pay for transportation I've been fighting like to get the mckinney-vento transportation 100 funded things like that but at the end of the day the formulas as they are right now do not include transportation that 11

million dollars into it so when I'm looking at this I'm saying it's clearly a cut so all I was asking for is that you all take the initiative to say we got to figure this out in my mind all of the unions I know the mayor mentioned that he talked to the teachers in the union and all this stuff I bet you the teachers aren't going to be in favor of putting the

transportation in net School spending I'll just go on a limb and say that because that's going to be an 11 million dollar truck but we need to have you all rally everybody together and say where are we at with this so that we can stop it before it even stops I don't want to sit here and wait for a home rule petition to go up or go to the city

council that's going to equate to an 11 million dollar cut I don't even want to have that discussion because then people are going to get mad and say well why you why are you arguing why I'm not arguing I'm advocating I'm on this school committee to advocate for the funding and for the kids you're going to cut 11 million dollars and I'm just going to sit there and say oh thank you very much just move on

that's not what we do so all I'm asking you first is to keep communicating as you hear things because uh you know a cut like that would be totally totally devastating the only question I had on the um I looked at this briefly but this at the beginning is the um generic number and then I think the um the actual salary so the people are underneath it correct when you do all

the cost centers they all crossed out to the number that we're talking about yes they do so without adding them it'll it'll yes um articulate that so when I'm looking at a person's salary for any particular line item when a person gets automatic payments let's say for service out of rank is that reflected in here yes so their salary will be higher by whatever that number is yes no matter what yes

with that ideal thank you go ahead Sarah I'm Sorry Miss Rogers that's my first name I don't do that sorry Miss Rogers that's how I roll I roll that that's all right it's my fault um so I just a comment on the 11 million dollars that I can appreciate that the intent of that bill is not to cut 11 million dollars from the schools but we know that impact is different than

intent and so we have to be very well aware that that 11 million dollars is the equivalent of the entire operating budget of at least two or three of our schools so just to put that into perspective it's not just 11 million dollars from Transportation it's 11 million dollars that actually equates to real people real kids real supplies and real services and supports for our kids and so I we do need to there there are

things that need to be fixed in terms of how Transportation gets funded in the state there is no question about that but we've got a way out how do we do that while also not pulling from our kids because we do have one of the neediest districts in the entire State and so for some districts that might not be as much of a hit but for us it's going to be huge with that I yield

and I will thank obviously all the members for their comments but I do want you to understand that repairing something that is horribly flawed sometimes it's a little ugly to get going as I said this this bill has been written this way for far too long it's a severe question of equity for students in our district we have to correct this bill it's it's going to be a Statewide Bill we're not

going to I'm not gonna allow us to be singled out but I am not afraid to take the first steps to rectifying some serious wrongs and if anybody knows me um I'm pretty much considered pro-teacher and pro-kid and I'm not changing that pattern we are going to fix this bill we're going to help with transportation in the city of Fall River and we're going to solidify the city budget this is just the first step and I

have no other intentions than that thank you everybody for your budget presentation Kevin and superintendent Ponce I really appreciate it thank you item up on the agenda is the discussion and vote to approve the instructional calendar for school year 2324. any comments on the calculator second second all in oh Deb I'm sorry could you please call them and say hi I'm already getting into

trouble for that let's drag yeah Mr Bailey yeah yes yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes maricogan yes 12.4 is an update in discussion on PowerSchool as presented by Scott Cabral Chief Information officer good evening everyone we sent you a little verbiage on where we are right now um we are in our second year of using PowerSchool enrollment on the kindergarten registration side that's been going well

um today we have um as of writing this on March 16th you know last Thursday uh just over 200 kindergarten registrations that have been processed in the system when we talk about the student information system itself as a whole um the operating system is it's it's been working correctly to process attendance conduct and grades there is no surprise that it has gone down numerous times over the last 30 to 40 days

with some much back and forth with PowerSchool Engineers they moved us to a new operating system before we were sitting on a Windows based system now we're on a Linux system and we'll bore you with the tech talk much more stable system they also noticed that a couple of the plugins that they use for attendance PowerSchool is a shell and then you use outside plugins just like you do on your

you know your smartphone some of those plugins seem to have been slowing things down we turned them off however when they did one of their weekend updates it was known to us that the plug-in was not the problem our plug-in has been turned back on and knock on wood we have not gone down yet as far as our March Sims DSE deadline we intend to have that done in time our team is diligently working on

fixing errors and again we've talked about this errors can be as simple as a decimal point a different number so Mr Michael Isaac and his team have been working on the um the errors the master schedule building process has begun at several of the schools with the goal of having all schedules completed before July 1st this year we're intending for July 1st last year it went a little bit

later because again it was a new system so this is going to be the second time around now people are getting a little bit more comfortable we're learning from our initial rollout of the schedules and making corrections as we go a few months ago you approved an additional Department member in The Sims team she is coming from the North Attleboro School District she has a ton of knowledge she was their

state reporting specialist she's been um a tremendous asset to the team she's fit right in she's already you know working very diligently with the team and we expect you know big things with the team that we've created in this department um special programs the special programs again has been a lift it's pretty much where most of the data was again with the IEP process that we've been talking about at nausea

um you know over this course of this project special Educators now are in the process of creating many of the new IEPs solely in power school a year ago most of the data transferred right over from Aspen I will say it has been time consuming but this is not something that is new to us when we were in Aspen and we rolled out the grade book it was a learning curve it took time people were paid

stipend hours to do those things so again we're learning it's taking longer however we're expecting that this time next year everybody's done it once as we move forward everything gets easier the area of concern for me and The Sims team has been in the health module we still have some lingering issues here not to say that PowerSchool has just shut us out they've been working with us

some of the things that the way that they presented it is not the way that it works so they're working with us to try to change some of those things we've been in contact with other Massachusetts school districts using the health module many of them have the same issues some of them have changed the way that they've done business to you know work with the PowerSchool module we're not

satisfied with that we want them to to change the way that they input the data and they work with the data sets to what we want to use so Mr Michael Isaac and his team have been working with PowerSchool and Karen long and her team to work on these issues again this has been a long year I've come up here and given you guys updates I can tell you that I give you an update and

it literally changes before my eyes and The Sims team it's continually ongoing you think that you fix something and then another little error pops up so we're not only fixing State reporting areas daily to the minute we're fixing errors that come in and out with the system as a whole it's been a learning Pro you know process for all of us involved from the central office right down to the teachers in the Paris

this time last year I did not think that we would be where we are right now with PowerSchool um again huge learning curve they have been tremendously forward in the last few months with their support there were pieces that we did not even know that we were able to use for support right down to if their system goes down we didn't know how to be notified you would think that you would

be notified you have to be logged into a certain web portal to see that I now get real-time updates as the CIO as well as the Sims team so if something goes down in one of their group above products we actually are aware now we don't find out with a building principle texting myself or Maria saying we're down again so we're getting there again this is a slow process The Sims team has done

tremendous work and they continue to there will be questions as we go we're going to start getting into the part of PowerSchool now where we may look at doing some customizations I know one of the members of the committee asked to see some of what we're looking at for customizations again these are just quotations we may not even move in that direction we're in the process Now The

Sims teams is creating a survey to send out to all of the people that use this from central office right down to school-based people so that we can get a better idea looking forward to see what we may want to change what works well and moving forward so that everyone just like when we moved over to PowerSchool we had a group of 24 individuals that sat in a room and

this is the product that they wanted to go with and some of those people that were in that room that chose that product are now seeing that they don't like certain things that the product is doing but this is you know these are the growing pains that we're going to go through with this project so I'll answer any questions that anyone has any questions for Mr Cabral Mr agya yeah so uh

when we when we went to and you you said oh we had uh a group get together to talk about switching that was controversial at the time I'm not sure if you remember that time but it was controversial it wasn't something that was just okay we're going to switch a lot of people liked that what we had we had a very beneficial Financial arrangement with them because we were there from the beginning as you recall

so in my estimation round numbers we used to pay around fifty thousand dollars a year they're about for our entire program before give or take a few grand yeah we were grandfathered in around 50 Grand so then we went to this thing and I'll say it when nobody else wants to say it Matt Malone didn't like certain people that were favoring aspirin so he made it a big issue with his folks on the administration to say

let's go and change this so we want to change because Aspen to use his words he said it sucks and I was like what are you talking about but that's what he wanted to say so we we switched well we were sold a bill of goods so we now were paying how much per year for a power school yeah it's roughly 260 000. right so we paid 40 000 to deal with our system

that we that did have some deficiencies I'm not saying it was a perfect system but we paid 40 000 for that so now when we went to switch over that was a tough vote for members of the committee myself included but I had to take a judgment at that point to say the people that are sitting down like yourselves and whoever looked at it and the people from PowerSchool came before us in the Crest Middle

School and gave a presentation and in that presentation that I've sent you videos that said exactly what these folks promised us was that the system was going to work just like the other one whatever they did for Aspen we're gonna do every single thing they said it in the videos and you have it she has it and everybody has it so they promised us that this was going to work everything was going to be fine

everything was going to be fine so Andy if I'm watching that as a principal a director or person that works in the schools they say great we're going to go to a better system but everything that we currently do to manage our buildings is going to be done under the new program and then some that's what I felt we were told I went back and watched the videos when I watch

it it's even clearer that they promised us that that was what was going to happen so we paid instead of forty thousand we paid 260 000 per year then we were told because special education and the IEPs were screwed up sorry somebody that's no longer working for us didn't look at the fine print we had to pay 30 grand more 26 Grand more then we had to pay something else

so as a member of the chairman of the technology committee and somebody that tries to do his homework and pay attention I'm sick and tired of seeing all these bills come in so then I find out that we were told by you in a memo to us that there was going to only need to be a few customizations for special specialty items that we would have in the Fall River schools

going back six months ago when we first started only a few okay as we're going through the process it's more money it's potentially more money so I'm the one that asks you for say why is it and how are the customizations going so up until this point zero money has been spent on customizations and those are wish list items and they have not even been spoken about at the central admin level and

once they do if the superintendent and her team decide that it's diligent to move forward with any of those customizations will then come to the technology subcommittee and or the full committee and we'll discuss it at that time but up until this point there has been zero money expended for customizations those are wish list items and in full transparency share those with you because you asked we have

nothing to hide so we gave those to you because right now those are wish list items get it I fully understand it I fully understand that none of this money is spent right now but when you write in the first in the first sentence of your page it says the main school information system which I would consider to be what we used last year has been operating as intended as intended is the key

so unless the principals felt that as intended was going to be worse data and information than prior year I don't see it running as intended I'm looking at the customization list some of these things I don't even know exactly what they are but they seem valid to me class discrepancy or attendance report we shouldn't want to have that so that is a that is a plug-in that is a customization that was done over 20

years in X2 that was created in X2 when we purchased PowerSchool as has been said since the beginning we purchased the base model and as we move forward if we wanted to add any of these pieces however at the central office in superintendent and I we did not want to get into the same predicament that we did with Aspen where there were so many customizations done and then if there was an issue we had no

way to fix them I get it but the point is is that the programs that they're asking for when I'm looking at that it looks like something that was existed in Aspen it says this report existed in Aspen and has been highly requested by High School staff to identify attendance as a customization in Aspen right so when they came to us and sold us a bill of goods they didn't look at what we had

and what we were using it for but they never talked to the high school people and say what types of reports do you need to run that never happened when we converted going into the purchase everyone knew that we were purchasing the base model and when we got to this time in the project that Mr Michael Lasik is here in the audience he can back me up we were going to talk to the

end users and start to talk about customizations and full transparency through the whole time every time that I got up here when the superintendent spoke about it we said that there may be money that was spent in the future to add some of these customizations so that's one out of tennis the second one talks about individual attendance review this existed in Aspen and is my number one customization requested on

behalf of my schools in since it mimics the dese formula for calculating attendance and chronic attendance PowerSchool does not have this vision of the leading the manual calculations or whatever how did that how does that even happen in speaking with the other Mass districts some of the stuff that we had set up in Aspen those other districts didn't use so a lot of these customizations that we're looking at now

are trying to mimic some of the things that we had in Aspen Mr Michael Isaac will come up here and tell you he's trying to make some other things easier because people were used to having those tools in Aspen X2 that PowerSchool in Massachusetts does not use in other districts how much would it cost an aspen to do something like that a customization I'd have to ask Brian to come up here and

discuss it we had we don't need to have him come down but I'd like you to get a copy of how much we used to pay okay what's on this list is 29 000 for the first report that durfee's asking for 29 000.

the next one is twenty thousand for an attendance review to do a customization it's going to cost us more money than we paid for the entire Aspen program in the past years for these two customizations I don't understand how we can say that this is not a problem that's why we haven't spent any money yet and we are 20 years Aspen was 20 years old we are so the cost of those customizations was a lot

less than what it is now but we did spend considerable amount of money in customizing Aspen to the point where people struggled to get it to figure it out I get it this is not cost effective in my opinion and when I asked for the report and I got it it was very shocking to see the amount of money that is look they're looking for to customize anything and I'll just point back my

last comment is to go back to the video when we were sold a bill of goods by the PowerSchool folks we was promised that they were going to do everything that we did before does anyone want to challenge that that's what they said everybody's seen the video so they lied to us and said they were going to do what we did before and it's clearly not accurate and it's clearly not working

and that's why I asked her to get a survey from the principals to see what they think if they give their honest answer on whether they think it's a good program or not because now is the time to figure it out but when I'm looking at this and I see that they need it at the high school they've probably been waiting all year for this and how much longer are we going to wait

and then we say they need it but let's just not give it to them because now it costs thirty thousand it's just an unfair thing and I'm tired of having to keep on spending more money for PowerSchool and 40 000 per year versus 250 000 plus all of these things and then some we're going to be spending 350 000 a year for something that we used to get for 40.

I don't know my math is not that great but I think we're spending an awful lot of money and we're not getting the services so I'm really disappointed and I know you know that I've said it over and over but really this can't continue with that I yield anything further for Scott thank you Scott 12.5 is a discussion and vote to approve the additional SEL positions at the following schools Watson Spencer Borden

Letourneau cuss this is something we've been doing any discussion on this issue yes I'm believe it's Watson uh reading the top part here are you asking for two Liaisons or one at Watson good evening I I believe the original um intent was to look for two however since it's a pilot at this particular School the motion uh the request was to go with one and potentially convert a position during the budget process

so it so our original rationale was written for two but at this point after the budget meeting took place we're switching it to one um following that change okay that's not what it says in our documentation but okay that's why I was asking it was a little confusing I have no more questions anything further on the SEO positions Mr AG yeah yeah just doing the same thing I know we talked about um

equal fair and equal as the superintendent said but we have to Glow glaring on that particular one is the 250 students and their level of um counselors that we have now and the staff and all that stuff so as you go through the charts and look at the stuff that just really telling for that's a really great caseload some difficult kids I'm not questioning that but at the same time I'm not so sure that that

I'm not so sure that we're seeing the results that we should see beforehand as well as how much more money can we keep putting into that you know with that small enrollment it's not anybody's fault it's just that's the fact so when we look at it we're spending an awful lot of money to try to you know move 250 students and you're talking a caseload of 100 something in each of the

councilors and then now we're going to have an assistant with them it just seems to be glaring so as we go through the budget process that's going to be something I'm concerned about what I do think it's important to add these positions now I know you mentioned somebody said they'll do them later right right I don't know what that rationale would be but my advice is to do it right away why not

you know but some principals wanted to wait in for next year as they restructure their buildings and their building needs that's why as this is a new position I think some of them also want to look at the effectiveness of it and see how they can leverage that position and and see the see if it's something that they they need to expand or that they can you know work into the

model that they're looking at now so I think this this particular one going back from two to one for the time being is a good move have we have we made any Headway on the salary piece of uh I know I've requested an multiple times to have that put on the agenda for a rationale for how we hire and what the salaries are is there any progress with that issue when when you asked for specific

appointments and the rationale Who provided that rationale to you in regards to why that person started higher than what the rain where the beginning of the range has to it's based on experience as well as the credentials that's what we've been doing reviewing each one documenting before signing off on where we start them yeah that's not what I was referring to is we that did happen that we did have that discussion

so we had somebody working for us that was making Thirty One Thousand in a position and then they got hired for a different position which the scale was let's say 40 or 45 to 55. so when you're making 32 in the same school and then you go to get the position logic would indicate that you start off at the lowest range of the new job at forty thousand because that's already a

nine thousand dollar raise and when I questioned that was because the person got eight steps in the middle and I don't think that that's a rational thing to do at that point if you're already working but there's no Rhyme or Reason why we do it so what I've asked you for on the agenda is to look at something like the administrators Union does so that it actually articulates a policy that says if you're making a

certain amount you go on the next step up from whatever you made it's a pretty good rationale for a structure and so everyone knows it's not just your opinion on giving credit for certain things and other people don't get credits it would so I've asked that multiple times I'd like to once again ask that that go down the agenda so we can fully vet it well that would be going through the policy

agar which we're setting up yeah no problem just how it gets there is my point so like it would have to get brought up by you to say let's look at this if this Merit to it great if but I think it will help with the um I just don't know if you just I guess you can just bypass the you don't have to bring It Forward first but somebody could refer to the policies

yeah you know what I mean the timing is just now we wait another month and then we wait another month this has been going on for a little while so that's all right with that I yield anything further on the SEO Miss rodericks so

to other schools have we do we have a plan to do that or have we been able to do that just yet I would say not in a like a uniform fashion across the district as you see through some of the rationales that go with each position I think each school has a little bit different vision for how they're going to try to integrate that position into their program

um and I think that as we get to the end of this year you'll see you'll see that take place but at this point I think the position is pretty new as you've seen over the last couple of months we're adding them in ones and twos each month uh in different levels in different schools depending on what the division for the principal is in integrating that position we are but I want to be very

careful that we don't do kind of

and then we bring them into you know say the school a school a uses them in this way and then School B uses them in another way that should be some uniformity with with room to wiggle obviously based on the needs and population so I would just ask that towards the end of the school year that we take a look at what are some of the best practices that we've had and then

kind of create you know a sort of a a general set of Standards about what that's going to look like in each building thank you anything further can I get a motion and a second on addition of the four SEL position I have a motion a second uh Deb would you please call the roll Mr Dragon yes yes Miss Pereira Miss rodericks yes mayor Kruger yes 12.6 is a discussion and vote to approve

the potential specialized program partnership for the 23-24 as referred by the special education alternative education subcommittee and presented by Laurie obashane assistant superintendent of special ed motion approved I have a motion second I know they vetted this is there any discussion on this item Dad please call the roll let's drag him yes Mr Bailey yeah yes yes Miss Pereira yeah projects yes

yes mayor Coogan yes 12-7 is discussion about to approve the spending of one million seventy one thousand seven five nine appropriation is presented by Maria Ponce motion to approved second I have a motion this second any discussion on the spending Mr agya just had a question on the geography athletic fields hi Nancy

just uh I know we had spent the some of the last money that was in can you give the committee an update on how much money is still needed to continue uh to complete all the athletic fields at the high school currently if we don't have any issues on the projects we have started that we should be able to complete all of the artificial turf fields and we have a decent amount of money sitting

for the um the JV softball JV baseball field which is a natural Turf so at one point we had gotten like whatever the number is for so I'm just looking for an update so as we vote to spend nothing on here is that I'm opposed to but to me the priority is to make sure that we take care of the projects that we still have outstanding and we've been piecing together money you know to get

the fields done but having sitting on the committee there's other things that need to happen that are to complete the project totally yes so that's my concern is when we spend this one-time money are we are we not funding those pieces that we would have to like you had mentioned uh one of the plans was to do something to tell but with a different field or you know are we

not doing those like I'm just trying to figure out what what we still have outstanding so the The Talbot project is going to be sitting on the back burner for a little bit um the fields are being used by Diamond for uh football uh practice I'm not quite sure if it's soccer also so rather than invest some money in that field right now we're going to hold that in a

side while that field is being used and then we will work on those fields when they have it all and all the Jeffries are complete can you just send us a memo on that just so that we can kind of get an update to see I I happen to think my gut tells me that we still shot money to finish up up there that just from having sat in meetings

with you but I'm sure that we have other money this one-time money is a lot easier to spend on things like that versus the other pieces like so if we wanted to buy a few Vans or whatever for the that can be done by Esther funds a little easier than this so I'm just not um you understand what I'm saying I don't want to take the money that we have free we can spend whatever we want

so as long as you think it's good then it's the first thing we asked are we all good at Durfee first right so when that report comes out I'm sure it's going to say that we're I hope it's going to say that we're all flush with it thank you I yield Deb please call the roll that's Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rodericks yes uh 12 8 is the discussion a vote to

approve the playground Renovations at the Dorman Community School in honor of Alfredo Alves emotional proof secondary a motion second any discussion Deb call the roll please Mr argue yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Herrera yes Mr rodericks yes yes 12 9 is the discussion about to approve the reorganization of the Phyllis facilities and operations department is presented by Kendra Chico Chief

Operating Officer motion approved SEC a second I have a motion and a second any discussion Mr Adia I'd like to hear the full presentation sure so um this has been before this committee before it's had two subcommittee meetings and in between those two subcommittee meetings and since the last school committee meeting that this was on the agenda we took a step back and the superintendent

and I uh we sat down with all of the individuals that are currently in administrative roles in the uh in the facilities and operations and we wanted to take a good look at what we had the good and the bad the ugly what we were doing correctly in those departments uh in the individual departments what we felt we could improve on and what the future looked like in those departments so one of the riog charts

that you have is current a current look at things and the current look is important because um the department was built with only a few people controlling so once you got past my level some individuals had a lot of work on their shoulders and others didn't have as much but also didn't have a lot of help to maintaining that group the department is close to 300 employees and a lot of moving pots a lot of locations

maintenance division for instance 2 million square feet of building to maintain that's a lot of building that's two Amazons that's an incredible amount of work inside and the age is from 1904 to 2000 and 21. so a major amount of work to be done in that one division um take a look at the custodial division about 100 custodians taking care of those buildings again various degrees of age and responsibility

one person in that division will look at nutrition because it is in the in the operation quite a few employees in in that particular department and again servicing all of the schools with various degrees of service provided by those schools we look at the building and grounds section so we have a district that that is pretty large we have a lot of athletic fields both Turf and regular grass we have a lot of

grounds to take care of and um on the city Side I was involved in building most of the schools that we have not all of them but most of them and the buildings that we have today on the outside of those buildings the grounds look a lot different than the day that the city turned those buildings over to us and I have to say that Durfee currently is the only one that looks

just like it did two years ago and that's because we don't have the Personnel to keep that look up durfee's been maintained by a landscaping crew that was part of the construction that particular piece will expire sometime in in July so I give you that background only because I feel that we're starting behind the eight poll we get a building that's brand new inside and out grounds look absolutely amazing

and then we have to take care of it and we don't have the Personnel to take care of the outside and we're slowly building the Personnel to take care of the inside but one of the pieces that have been missing for quite some time and I've only been here for six and a half years so I'm a short timer but I can tell you that oversight is a big problem again too much work on one person

with no backup and that is a a situation that you look at in many departments we wouldn't ask a principal to run a print a school without a vice principal or a Dean or department heads or any kind of layer but we are asking the facilities and operations Department to do that and we're asking one person to take on the major load of all of that work it's not for the lack of positions that

were in place one position was eliminated quite a few years ago I was here maybe my second year maybe going into the Third one position has been vacant and the thought of filling that position has been there except that the reorg seemed to be much more important than filling that one position because to be totally honest that one position isn't going to change what we were doing

and it may not align with where we want to go so when I look at the riog we sat in that meeting the superintendent and I and we brought in all the people who are going to be affected that we currently have the ones we don't know we don't know but the ones that we're currently going to be affected by this reorg we wanted to be sure that they felt comfortable we wanted to be sure that

my eyes weren't the only eyes on this document and we did four meetings they were very enlightening as far as what people thought about the individual group what they thought of what was good in their Department as I said the good the bad the ugly what we can do to improve it how can we improve it the one thing that I've always maintained is it's not numbers alone it's the amount of work the um

the kind of work okay some of this work requires a lot more on the uh contract side or on the planning side doing work in schools is hard because we can't work where kids are we can't work sometimes during the day you know we try to jam everything in during summer so a lot of this work that has to be done has to be well planned on the flip side some of this work is

growing and growing every day as I said with the Landscaping piece we're not doing what we should be doing with the buildings we spent millions of dollars Durfee alone if you look at that one of the major compliments we always got was the curb appeal of that building and it looks really nice I can tell you that that will not happen not just because of the reorg but it won't happen because I don't have enough

people to do it that is a job in itself taking care of Durfee proper was spending 11 million dollars on athletic fields that's not going to be the athletic fields we have today the two Fields try as they did they couldn't be maintained with the amount of personnel artificial tear field takes a lot of work takes equipment man hours and a lot of work to maintain and the amount of teams that we have

that need to use these fields is huge so when I look at that I look at Durfee almost Standalone but I look at that saying this is not the only place I've got Henry Lord with acres of land that needs to be caught and maintained I don't know the last time it was seated I don't know the last time it was aerated um I couldn't tell you that I don't know

how many lights work I don't know all of those things and if I don't know it and that's all I'm doing every day there's a problem some of this falls on me and I know that but I just don't have the time because I'm too busy in the weeds doing other work for the lack of administration to do this work it's a huge sum of money to do what we need to do with spending

an awful lot of money on maintenance no matter how big this department gets we will never be able to get rid of some of our major maintenance contractors because the work is too technical it's too large a project to take on in-house and I say that now because I think that we have probably one of the better maintenance groups as a whole than we've had I can't say too far back because I as I

said I'm not here long enough to know that but I can tell you that they do work hard but the quantity of work that has to be done can't be done with the group we have solely so we're always going to have subcontractors we're always going to have those outside contractors who are going to take a take major chunks out of facilities and operations I'm all over the place because so is

this department it's all over the place and on a day-to-day basis I can't tell you what I'm doing the next day other than the ones that are in my schedule but my schedule is never that way and I know that the people who work with me in these departments are saying the same thing the phone rings and the day is different bad weather days all of those things not even counting that so

through those four meetings we asked all of the individuals what those changes were what they thought were the important things and a lot of good conversation happen a lot of good conversation um the layout of the department as I see it as it is currently doesn't work and it hasn't worked for a year or so a year and a half when we have retirements we didn't fill the positions immediately and those

positions didn't look like anything they were there were some people who weren't doing the job they were hired for they were doing other jobs things that were added on to that individual over the years which is always the case and I'm not saying that isn't happening in the schools because I'm sure there are many people who are working in our schools that are not following exactly what

they're supposed to do because most of the time it's all hands on deck it's the same thing here so when I look at the superintendent and I looked at was that I have to make this department efficient I have to make it cost effective and I have to be able to do this work confidently I have to be able to say to you that Durfee High School is going to look this way for quite some time

I can't tell you that today because I don't think it will because I don't have that Manpower and I don't have the ability to put that many people on that one particular project and maintain it if I was to say we're going to stay with four groundskeepers then I would say we just keep the contract going and have Perpetual care done by outside contractors and we'd pay that bill but

that doesn't do anything for my athletic fields it doesn't do anything for the other schools and the help that we want to do so when you look at the reorgan you look at the second page it breaks down the divisions smaller so that it's manageable again not equal because some of these departments the intricacy of what they do is different and it requires smaller I can't equate it to anything on

the education side because I don't want to take away from anybody who does this work on that side but I can tell you for 43 years I've been doing construction in one way shape or form for three different employers three different jobs two different employers and in those years give the people the amount of tools that they need to do a job don't overburden them with work that don't belong to them and that they can't

do effectively without taking away from their current job and you have success so sitting down with this reorg the best I can say to you is that it was well thought out in my opinion it is exactly what it should be and I'm willing to work as hard as I possibly can to make it work but it is going to take some work and obviously it's going to take some money to put this into place

but we will have a Workforce that is not going to overburden any one particular director and if that director has more employees than we feel one person can handle then we will add an assistant director which you'll see on here and we'll add add other supervisors there's equipment needs that we don't even know what we need at a particular time some of the work that's going on at Durfee High School is going

to provide us with some equipment specialized equipment for the fields and the hope is that with the training with the proper training those individuals will have our Fields always looking in Tip-Top shape the grounds department does a little more than just those fields it also does all of the lining of our regular grass fields it does prep we because our fields are not ready we'll be doing work down at North Park

to prep that field for our baseball team until the new field is ready we are working at the softball field at um Sylvia so that we can use that for the JV team so they all have a place to play and then the varsity team will play cuss again another artificial feel that has been neglected not through anyone's fault it's working the tools but the fact that we just don't have the time to

take care of it all with the amount of people we have so I ask you to um to look at the new um the current and then also the new some of the positions we're asking for there are portions of it that exist currently and when we're looking for that money will be obviously put into them into the mix so the current job is available um right now and is filled or vacant and

when we do any kind of transfers that money will just move over so the new positions and all of the additional positions are listed on on the that other page everything in red his positions at a new and um everything that's in black is current and this will affect every department is has some kind of change in it it may just be the director it may be Personnel it may be the way we

conduct business in that particular Department I'll ask any questions you have any questions Chico any questions Miss laravee thank you Mr Pacheco like you said this is one in part of the facilities and operations committee a couple times now and it has been referred to the full committee it's been been going back and forth for a few months now and I know it's been going back and forth up at the ad building and

there's been a lot of uh work being put into this I appreciate your your transparency in your presentation to us um but I'm going to refer to the superintendent and just ask her what her feelings are are on this reorg I know um I think it was about a month ago maybe two months ago when it was brought to us she she was a little iffy about a couple things I just want to know what she

feels how she feels about this right now thank you um I agree that this has um I I will say this is um uh looking at this department and looking at what is needed has caused a lot of discussion a lot of uh back and forth Mr Pacheco and I have had many many discussions I I will say that this has caused me some angst right because in the beginning I was not

um and and I was reluctant because I feel like first of all we we when we first brought it um and I'll say this here because Mr particular and I have had this discussion I felt like we needed to be more inclusive and we needed to bring the leads in to have that discussion so that we could hear from them about what was working uh currently what the challenges were and what they thought

they needed in order to make their departments more run more efficiently so we had some good discussions about that in and I've weighed this back and forth a lot because I know the department needs structure needs systems in order for it to work efficiently I also know that it takes a lot of Courage for one of my department heads to come and say I need help yes there are things that need

to improve and I can't do it by myself and we need to to look at it and say what do we need to do and that's exactly what we've been doing right looking at okay so what kind of help do we need how do we reorganize and so that we have the systems in place and so that we can have systems for in order to have productive departments as well as systems to of

accountability in place so that we can measure whether whether the department is in fact more efficient so you know there's been a lot of back and forth and I think that even at the last meeting that we had as a group we were talking when we reviewed all the job descriptions and talked about how they would function in each of the divisions as Mr pachico has articulated I I had concerns because

I think that we just heard you know oh Watson they only have 250 kids we're going to have two scl Liaisons it just seems like it's not Equitable right and as you look through across some of it you know I said like let's look at the equity here you know uh look at all these numbers and look at these numbers and then as we talked about the scope of the work

um then it made more sense uh I do think that we still need to there there needs to be a piece where we're going to monitor its Effectiveness as Mr pachico said there's no guarantee we don't know how efficient the Department's going to run where we're putting systems in place because we know that um the way we have it now it is impossible for the Department to for one person or three people

um to do the work and and do it really well where we have a high performing department so yeah I I am going to recommend that because I think we have to do something differently we have to put these systems in place we have to reorganize so that we become a high performing Department anything further Miss roderick's groundskeepers on the original organization because they're on the proposed reorg but I don't see them

anywhere so if you look at um they would sit actually they're currently sitting with me okay so they did not they did not transfer a little bit of History so when I started there was a director of engineering and other services and everything in the maintenance department sat under that director when that position was eliminated out of the budget I want to say it was 2000 and 17 or 2018.

the job never went back into place at that time I asked the assistant director of Environmental Services to do triage work for me at that point that person took over the campus I say campus the groundskeepers and took over the maintenance part basically triage because I would sit with this person and do all of that work that person was still the environmental assistant the environmental assistant was under

the director of Environmental Services which was in charge of custodians if you look at that first sheet that person was in charge of custodians that person was in charge of um the distribution that person was in charge of facility usage that person did all of the um Pest Control asbestos management security it was a massive Department that did all of that work impossible to run

too many people too many places too many different things going on at the same time so Grounds was never under that particular site but it was under um the gentleman Who was the maintenance engineer I assume the role of running the grounds group along with the maintenance group as the lead and this assistant assisted me in doing the triage work on all of those things assisted me on the grounds and assisted

me with the maintenance group so there was no as I say the current 19 I mean 2020 and 2021 actually in 2022 that group was all together with no director it hasn't had a director since that person left because the maintenance the director of maintenance services did not exist that's a new position right brand new so the the district never had a maintenance person they had a director of engineering that

had a whole bunch of things with it and then the environmental piece right just when I'm comparing the two charts I'm just seeing it it almost looks like the grounds the groundskeepers kind of come out of nowhere because they're not in the current organizational chart so I was trying to place them like where did they come from and how did we pull them out so the groundskeepers were never pulled

out of anything they were never part of it but we've had them they were there and they existed under that original position of the engineering the engineering director that's where they existed right that's what I was trying to understand because they weren't in that one so it looks you know as someone so technically they should be in yellow so someone who's new on this committee yes I'm looking at it trying to

understand like where did they plug in before because it looks like it just kind of pops out of nowhere yes but I got you on that one and then the other question I had we go from at least for now we go from 54 full-time positions under director of nutritional services and then we moved to 49 but then in Red so a new position we have five full-time food service positions

so some are full-time some are part-time and some are utility workers and some are Food Service people so two different groups but under the same nutrition the utility person is the food service equivalent to a custodian but they do a little bit more than custodial work for Food Service they help unload the truck they may do some other handling of moving boxes for the cafeteria folk so in that

break up or break down I'm sorry of the direction director of nutritional Services Under that director these positions exist two separate positions both having full and part-time employees okay maybe

stand how it flows and I see I just see 54 on one side and then it breaks down to 49 and 5 which equals your 54.

because on the front page it wasn't broken down between utility worker and um food service worker full-time so on the second page it's broken down into those okay separate jobs okay so I see what you did there okay so we have 49 full-time positions five full-time utility workers those were the total 54 in that first one and then you're adding five more full-time utility workers and

five more food service exactly okay I got that for now for now I use Mr agya so uh I think what Miss rodericks is talking about is on the page that says current with all the blocks that org chart it doesn't have the groundskeepers anywhere on there I think it's just an error they should be in they should be in yellow right it should be yes like when I look at the

one that is the paragraph one the other four groundskeepers right you've indicated that they work for you yeah supervising them yes in charge of good better and different whatever they do unto you yes and that's one of my biggest uh concerns about this and I've had some concerns since this first came up so I guess I'm having a hard time with I've compared the documents from July October now um

I had a conversation at the between the meetings I was I brought up some concerns I got legitimate concerns about all those departments and you know what my concerns are I think superintendent does I had a meeting with the mayor and the superintendent to go over some of those concerns that I don't think this was brought up the right way I think these departments have been run terribly

over the last several years terribly totally so I brought those concerns directly to the superintendent and the mayor in the meeting at that meeting it was talked about that we weren't going to bring something forward until it made sense that's what Mrs Ponce told me 10 times because I keep on asking and she kept telling me we're not bringing it Forward till something makes sense because as

presented in October it's all we could go on it didn't make sense so when she said that to me I take it hot that she said it doesn't make sense I'm not bringing it forward until it makes sense so along the way I've tried to help to say here's some of my concerns with those departments I met with the mayor and Mrs Ponce a few concerns that I had one is we were running an auto body

repair shop out of the groundskeepers garage obviously a consent for anybody brought that to their attention we were running fixing op projects with our welders totally not what we should be doing in out of the groundskeeper's office so I'm wondering as we're going through that how in the heck is this even possible that that happens investigations Galore people being treated poorly the whole

bit it was just unbelievable for what I was getting reported to me and I brought it directly to the superintendent and the mayor to say this is what we have in the problem you know I've had concerns over the last two three years that not one person in those departments was evaluated we've shared that before I wanted to share that as one of the reasons why I was Voting against the contract that we

have to make some major changes not so much with the positions I think with the people that we have in place I think we have some good people in place but I also have some people that I think were very deficient and cause there's a lot of headaches that we didn't need and the people didn't need to be treated the way they were treated by directors and I'm not referring to you Mr pachico but I

understand I just if I could one second sure um I'm an open book and I in executive session I told you that they weren't that they were not um evaluated by sheer time and I freely admitted tonight that I can't do the work when I don't have anybody to do the work with me so as much as I would like to sit here and be evaluated in public I would have

liked the notice for that sure and I and I understand that you said me not included but it's tough when you say they've been handled miserably and I'm that person in charge of misery and and making those bad choices um so I would say I I have no problem listening to everything the saggy out but I do I would appreciate if you have things to say I can't answer most of them because I won't use names

and I think that most people can figure out exactly what we're talking about when we mention positions so that's all I got to say I understand so I brought those concerns to them to try to figure out what we're going to do here so my question is to the superintendent what is different in this proposal versus the other proposal so that I can try to make sense of what um what has changed well what what is

different is that we've had conversations and clarified what each of those positions what they would be doing before when we brought it we haven't we didn't have those conversations so we were adding those positions without having a clear understanding of where they fell who was going to be leading that work and who they were going to be supervising so that's the work that's been done

it's an operational piece that we're saying that we know that we need to have a system for operating that department that is going to uh thrive and and we that's what those discussions were part of and and the additional positions how do we make those that department become successful that's a result of that we clarified all of those things during those conversations so I don't see that as much of a change

because this is an oak shot that's the same exact org chat that we saw for months my concern is that we've said here that we've talked about with the directors and the assistant directors I'd like to hear from the assistant directors to see what they have to say relative to this plan and if they go along with it and say that everything's great I guess it's everybody's in it but I would like to

ask them a few questions if we could call them to the uh that's not fair we wouldn't we wouldn't be doing that to a VP bringing them up to the podium that's not fair to do they were part of every single one of those discussions Mr agyar we have to trust the people that we put in charge that's like you doing that to a principal you wouldn't do that to a

principal I just think that we need to be careful about that stuff that that's wrong plus it's operational and we're not doing that Mr right yeah so what's before us is the org chart it was developed by the superintendent and Mr pachico that's where your questions so in order to make a sensible decision something that makes sense what I did was suggested to Mrs Ponce on Friday and I I asked her to say uh

last couple days and I said did they did the people that are in charge miss Mr cutting Miss Borges and Mr Moniz as they went into you to try to figure out what was it that they were going to recommend that with changes so that they could say okay we're getting input and you're actually believing in their input I asked you for a copy of anything that came out that anything that they

submitted Mrs Barnes did I not you did and Mr agyar you know I mean by the question you know that I didn't ask we didn't ask anyone to come in with a document one person came in with the document what we did it and this was not a one-on-one meeting we had a collaborative meeting with all the leads including us Mr Almeida Mr pachico where we talked about the Departments what were the successes of the Departments

what were the needs of the Departments what would make it uh stronger and more efficient we had a discussion I was writing on the board that's what we were doing okay so they identified professional development we need an onboard onboarding uh practice so we need to have better communication we need to work as teams that those are the discussions that we had in the in that room and we went Department by

Department that's part of our process that was an operational process that we we wanted I wanted to make sure that we heard from everybody and we talked about what's working what isn't working how do we support you what's going to make us be better anyone to come with the document did anything happen so you talk to them well did you take their feedback and make any changes yeah well so you would say they

endorsed this plan well all the under middle management directors that are part of this you would say they endorsed this plan they don't have anything that they suggested what I what we are going to do is we have to have the structure and the framework and now we have to look at how do we create an onboarding process how do we create a uh uh a form of communication with every single

Department setting up meetings regular meetings with each department we have to have the reorgan place so that we can put those systems in place so that the Departments can work efficiently that's that's the result of the work that we're doing sometimes we're not all going to agree on it and I can see that we're not all going to agree on it but that doesn't mean it's wrong it just means that we

differ in our opinion but do I believe that we need to restructure the department wholeheartedly yeah I don't disagree I think the department needs to be restructured I think that's pretty clear one of the issues that I have that I think isn't necessarily as efficient and as lean as what we we can do is that the groundskeepers they used to back in the day when I think when the first time

I was on this committee they used to report to the director of Maintenance or they used to be under the same as the plumbers the electricians and the like and when we have four of those folks I think that the director of Maintenance should be able to manage those folks as well including in the continuity of his job making sure that he's doing the other thing so sometimes we need that

department to work in hand in hand with the electricians and this and that I think adding another director is an extra director that personally I wouldn't I wouldn't vote in favor of at the same time we have groundskeepers that are by contract paid pretty well they make decent money more than a first step teacher makes I would recommend when we're going to add some more laborers to do what Mr

machico was talking about that we add the position that we just hit uh created of Labor like a new entry-level labor so there's something to grow on and we could get more people doing that for less money than what we would with a full groundskeeper but the there has to be somebody in charge I would agree with that so when you have in here director of make campus whatever the wording is there has to be somebody

in charge of them I get it because they've been doing whatever they want without any direction I just feel like that that could very easily be shifted under the director of Maintenance so that person would have 25 employees rather than 17. where you talked about the assistant director of custodial couldn't agree with you more I think we have a hundred and some people you need like a system in place of

people in charge different shifts and the like so make sure everything is getting done so I think it makes more sense if we took those groundskeepers and put them under the director maintenance and eliminate one of the administrative positions in the riyog and I I see a lot of the yellows here and it's the new one Mr Chico that I think they report to you yes the school resource offices and stuff I

when I'm looking at this I would think that that would fall under security so if we're going to have a director of security only they're basically it's just a placeholder because the school resource offices answer to the superintendent the superintendent only so they have a chief they have a sergeant and it's the f as just a placeholder but they're not going to answer to a director and a department

that that much when I look at it I look at it as sort of who they're working with on a more regular basis would be the director of security I would I would think as you're creating a separate director of security would 35 38 people or whatever it is so when I look around I say look I look at it as maintenance could have 25 or 30 security the same nutrition that's a whole other

ball game there's people all over like that whole piece you know so that's some of my feedback the the other question I had on the current the 2022-2023 the director at administrative Services wouldn't that person be under you and then have the departments on the under them like separate from the if you're doing a current org chart the current which position are you asking director of administration

administrative or engineering or whatever they called the position so environmental so in an org chat wouldn't that fall under directly on the midst of a chico and then under that person would be custodial safety I think that's your point is that that one person had three departments with all those people but when I'm looking at what presented here it looks like like it just goes straight across

so it is a change that I agree with that we needed to divide it up but why would it not um they said I'm just I'm missing it that that position even exists under you it's a director of environmental um and then those three departments should be under him that's what he's the director of Environmental Services and then the assistant director of Environmental Services was the way it's been broken up for quite some time

but under those people were the three departments no right yes they were they weren't no there weren't any other departments so they were just being managed by the same person that's what I'm saying I'm just looking at this org shot saying that that would the box would show three people under it three departments under um under that particular one so as a point of just uh moving forward what

Madam superintendent if the if we add the groundskeeper positions isn't that a budget item so if it was more cost effective to do the laborers for instance wouldn't wouldn't that be a budget issue so I'm not necessarily looking for Laborers so because if we have the turf I need to be able to have some people who are going to be trained on the turf not a laborer the turf person and that's going to be

treated as a groundskeeper so I'm not saying I wouldn't at some point come back and ask you for Laborers but I think the eight positions for the groundskeepers is important and I also failed to mention um that we're trying to get some of the work away from the custodians that are currently working on that and you and I had that conversation about their time is better spent doing the work inside

the building than it is doing the work outside I agree so making that department a standalone allows much more work to be done by this group when they're only focusing on that and they're the reason why I say a director is needed is because it is an awful lot of work to plan this isn't uh today I need you tomorrow I don't it's I'm looking for two leads one lead

that's going to take care of the actual Landscaping group and one lead that's going to take care of the artificial turf we will have five fields at that point to take care of and that's a job in itself to take care of those fields and to maintain them and to do the testing and to make sure that the fields are game ready that we have that gmax testing that I was the first person to do in

15 years so what I'm saying is it it's a position the groundskeeper's position is going to take a much bigger role and it has to take a much bigger role what I'm saying though is the number of positions is a budget item so we're proving that we are going to direct this pieces more so than the people under what if we didn't have money before we needed to like we can't

commit through this to do it we would have to do that through the budget adding new positions which is on the superintendent's budget yes so that's what I'm saying is we could have that discussion during the budget for each department here and I've got and the next item is the job descriptions the um when you mentioned the leads and the um whatever they I think they're all called

leads and there's no work informant and District yeah so I think we need to look at that I asked a while back about the for the job description of what's required for that and we didn't have them for those these departments so I would recommend that we look at either something or like a foreman you you can't have a lead that doesn't have any Authority the lead is to distribute work so we never had the

the intent of having a lead was never to have a foreman because the groups are too small they are too small to have a foreman so a lead is all that's needed and the lead is to be the liaison between the director and the rest of the group so if if a director wants to have a meeting and there are four divisions so to speak with with the need with in that group

then he doesn't need to meet with 16 people he only needs to meet with four and he can get all the same work done that way so it was never meant to be a working Foreman because our jobs are not big enough to require a working Foreman we don't have any projects that are big enough we shouldn't be doing projects that big because it ties up the workforce for too long and we're not

at that level maybe we will be someday but either way we would have a job description you're working on a job description for the lead but at that point we can debate whether it's it's strong enough or what are they getting paid for all that stuff is the different a different story um I raise my concerns I think you know my concerns superintendent knows my concerns I think we can do better in

these departments and I really think that uh we need to take a hard look at what's been happening and as the superintendent says we've got to do what's right I don't disagree so with that I yield anything further Miss Pereira I just want to say clearly we're hearing that there's some disorganization among these departments which is causing problems probably in in retention morale

productivity and all of that I look at this as you trying to remedy that situation um and maybe I feel more comfortable with it because I'm on that subcommittee and I feel like I've heard you tell me this story five times which I appreciate four times pretty close we're not done yet but um so maybe that's why I've asked a lot of questions and so it's making sense to me more

um but I think this especially if we're talking about departments you know we're questioning that they're not being you know run efficiently enough to provide people with again the most productivity and and morale and and what have you that's what's needed if we want evaluations done on time and appropriately if we want people not only supervised but motivated um you know then we need proper

management and I I certain you have how many years experienced because I can sit here and I can give you an organization chart for like the DTA or my house but I would have a hard time doing it for this because I've never picked up a hammer I've never I I don't know what any of these jobs really require I I barely mow my lawn so I don't even know how long that takes I'll

be honest but I know we have a lot of new fields and we've spent a lot of money on those fields and we want to keep them beautiful and wonderful for our students so we're going to see um you know more positions um I'm totally comfortable with voting for this today because again I've heard I've heard it so many times do we know if it's perfect well no how do we know

until we try it you have to put something in motion and see if it works but I know what we're doing now isn't working um because I have colleagues who have gotten a lot of complaints I haven't had those nobody no constituent has come to me with any of these these issues but I've heard them through the grapevine of things so if they're out there they must exist and if this is a way to stop

remedying that and making sure that we have proper not just supervision but motivation and help for for our our workers here I think it's a positive thing so I I just hope we just vote Yes and let's go and let's talk about the job descriptions next with that I yield and thank you for your time with this Kenny I know it was married to me well just real just real quickly Mr Mayor and uh

Mr pachico thank you very much and the superintendent as well as chairman of the committee of the subcommittee we did meet several times we discussed that we discussed this at length um you came back to us a few times with with different ideas and I know you brought it back to the superintendent like he was saying so like Miss Pereira was saying and I think we worked really well Mr prayer Miss laravey at the

subcommittee meeting at this at the level at regards to the riog and I can honestly say that I'm comfortable with your work and with the superintendent's work and I think uh Ken that year um not just great at what you do but you're a Class Act and I'm glad we got you on board here so thank you for that thank you Deb please call the roll this drug yeah no Mr Bailey yes

Mr Hart yes Miss Laramie yes Miss Pereira oh yes Ms rodericks no mayor kogan yes next item up 12 10. it's discussion of vote to approve the following New York job description is referred by the facilities and operations subcommittee and presented by Ken Pacheco motion to approve I have a motion a second any discussion on the job descriptions question Mr ragio suffer from the new

ones I haven't listed there but the old ones like there was some in there that already existed are there any changes to those I was just sort of just a date so this is the one that existed um that's filled the position that's existed and filled has not changed from the date of hire that's what I'm saying there's no new changes to that one so that technically doesn't even and technically the the other one

um the two directors the two the two people that are here the job descriptions haven't changed from the from the time they were hired to do the job so there's not necessarily any new changes to those it's basically the new totally new position I'm going to tell you the only thing that's changed is there's a small portion in that job description that um now says evaluation it's called

quality assurance it's in all the job descriptions and it basically says that they're responsible to evaluate and provide guidance to those who work with them and the process of how exactly you work it out so there's nothing necessarily nothing at all change so we don't need a mocked up one because right I think that's exactly the same it was added to but it's exactly the same and just those items thank you I yield

anything further on the job descriptions all right we're going to call the roll on um on all of them except we're going to take out the director of custodial Services we have a conflict um can I get a motion do I have a motion a second I already have one right Deb yes Dad please call the roll leaving out custodial services yes yes Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes now I need

a motion in a second on director of custodial services so moves

just uh I want to say that when I looked at him briefly the amounts of the salaries were vague were blank on the ones I saw so is that just a future budget issue like we're going to talk about that in doing budget time not necessarily right so if the positions are approved then we would like to have the opportunity to set a range and then bring it back but that's not now voting

for this I'm not voting for ranges nope nothing we're going to figure that out exactly we go forward thank you okay so we have the vote coming up on custodial Services Deb would you please call the roller yes Mr yes last shade Miss Pereira yes Ms Roderick yes yes items 13. obviously we have a number of retirements resignations appointments motion to accept fall 13.12 three and four seconds and regretfully a few

people have passed away that worked for us um Deb could you please call the roll ER yes Mr harp yes Miss laravey yes Mr Pereira yes Roderick yes yes uh new business any new business to come forward Mr aguir yeah so I've asked a couple times to try to get some things on the agenda and um for whatever reason they won't get put on but one of the just general issues I think that we have

to have is when a person gets hired on an individual contract the practice should be that when the month before their contracts up to be negotiated again it should be on the agenda I think that's a fair uh practice for anybody and if it can't get done by the time but we don't even make an effort to know when they're up so the committee votes for a certain structure and time

a month before that's up out of respect to whatever employee it is we should talk about it the month before as a system and that's not happening so I'd ask the superintendent to make sure that when the contract's up we at least get it on the agenda to be able to discuss parameters in executive session moving forward yes with that I yield thank you thank you Mr Aggie um Mr Assad do we have a request for

executive session it would be um National laws chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes February 13 2023 regular school committee meeting master of Lords chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes for February 17 2023 special meeting for the forward school committee National laws chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session

minutes from March 9 2023 technology subcommittee National laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with these threat to Collective bargain relative to all the administrators employees represented by the Four River administrators Association as chairs in terms of no possession made a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee Mass General lawyers chapter 38 section 21a3 to

discussion strategy with the respect to collective bargaining relative to All Professional teaching employees the forward School System including coaches Title One teachers nurses occupational physical therapists and Specialists the teaching profession represented by the forward Educators Association as the chairs determined the local session may have a detrimental impact on a bargain

position National laws chapter 38 section 2186 to consider the purchase exchange release of valuable property located at 2501 South Main Street Fall River Mass as the shares has declared that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the sub of the school committee National laws chapter 38 section 2182 to the conduct strategy sessions preparation for negotiations with

non-union personnel and or to conduct contract negotiations with non-union Personnel including Scott Cabral Chief Information officer who would reconvene they may have made up your statements at that time I need a motion in a second please have a motion a second attempt to call the role to go into executive session please let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Mr laravey yes mrera yes

Ms Roderick yes yes in executive session

um back in regular session Deb please call the roll here here Mr Hart here miss Laura perfect here is Pereira yeah Miss Roderick here mayor Coogan here uh anything further to come before the committee Mr Hart uh mayor motion to approve the executive session minutes for February 13 2023 for the regular school committee meeting please call the roll let's try again the minutes for February for the regular meeting yes

yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes come here motion to approve the executive session minutes for February 17 2023

.

it's executive session yes it is yes it's executive session uh Deb call the roll please Mr I guess yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larabee yes Miss Pereira yes Ms Roderick yes mayor Kruger yes mayor Mr Hart motion to approve the executive session minutes from March 9 2023. second second please call the roll Miss drag yeah yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes larabee yes Mr Herrera yes Mr Rogers yes mayor Kruger

yes and mayor Mr heart this motion to approve the contract with Scott Cabral as negotiated I have a motion a second Deb please call the roll let's drag him yes Mr Mr Hart yes Miss laravey yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Roderick yes mayor Kruger most to adjourn second I have a motion a second to adjourn Deb please call the roll that's right yeah yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Authority yes Miss Pereira yes

Miss Roderick yes mayor Coogan yes