8.10.2026 Fall River School Committee - Facilities and Operations Subcommittee

I'm going to call to order the Facilities Subcommittee dated August 10th, 2026.

Please call the roll.

Mr. Aguilera?

Here.

Mr. Diaz?

Here.

Mr. Moses?

Here.

Can we please rise to salute the flag?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.

Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived by those present, and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

There— is there any citizen input time?

There is not, and no one is here to provide So, there's no input time, so we'll move on to the agenda.

First item is 3.01, discussion and vote to refer the school resource officer MOU.

Superintendent or designee?

Chief, do you want to?

So, we went over the SRO contract, and I know that the former administration had worked with then the deputy, now the chief, and worked some of the language.

I last week met with Sergeant Brendan Bocico, who sort of oversees our SROs, the captain and deputy chief, and we met and we went over the language, went through the language.

I then gave it to the superintendent, who sent to Sarah Spadafore from Murrieta USD 2-Melee-Hane to take a look at it.

We also have— there's a template that the state has or DESE has that we go over, and then we sent it over to the chief and his— on his side, and they looked at it.

We changed all the— in your packet you have the new agreement.

What's in red is the new language that we came up with.

But I think one of the biggest things that I took out of this about a month ago, or when I first arrived, I think it was one of my first meetings, Mr. Aguiar, was that the SROs were getting overtime on a weekly and monthly basis.

And so, the chief and I discussed that, and I know that he had discussed it with the team the first meeting that I was in.

And we looked at that, and it came up that we would not be providing overtime anymore in the contract, that they would go to a 7 to 3.

I know that you had some thoughts on that, that you— and I did speak to the chief about that this morning, which I said that I would, so that you can discuss that with him.

We also talked about, I do want to say this though, the first 2 weeks of school, which I had spoken to the superintendent about, that the police would be there and have overtime the first 2 weeks of school to help us with traffic before and after school, coming early, staying late for the bus, for the rerouting of buses and where parents drop and pick up students and our walkers and bikers go.

So we'll have plenty of people out on the— and in the schools.

Want to add anything or you want to seek questions?

No, I think obviously we'll talk about the hours.

I know the last subcommittee meeting that I attended, you had raised the concern on the overtime.

We phased that out towards the end of the school year.

We'll enter into the school year using it for the additional support, and then we'll obviously stay in tune with the administration as the needs occur for certain things.

Obviously, things change during the school year.

So we'll definitely maintain an open line of communication.

Any questions?

Mr. Moniz?

I just want to make sure everything's safe, whether we need overtime or not.

Just make sure the kids are safe.

And it's needed, it's needed.

You know, we also discussed to Mr. Moniz in that we talked about the deputy brought up, or actually, it was the sergeant, Brandon, brought up during football games, they would like the lights off— the lights on out in back of the football field.

The kids were congregating there last year in the dark, and so they couldn't see them.

So to make it safe, we're going to be— I spoke to Mr. Pacheco about it— we're going to be having all the lights on around the perimeter of the football field in the back areas towards the garages and the Pace Center, and making sure that all parking lots are lit up so that kids are safe in and out and where people are walking to get back into their cars.

So we're going to do that, and that the first home game There will be, we usually have at the football games 4 on-duty police.

We're going to go with 6 at the first game to set the tone.

And then same thing with basketball when needed.

There's a couple of teams that come in that Fall River might sometimes have an issue with another local team or another city school or just a good Another team.

Yeah, another team, another rivalry.

So we've decided that we'll put some extra police on hand for safety.

We're more concerned about the kids and their families and getting on and off the buses.

And so I've had issues with that.

I think also we discussed the operational planning for the entire school year with events so that you would know ahead of time coverage will be there.

I think sometimes it was handled maybe too, too far close to the event where there was some who's going to cover it.

We'll have it all out there that way you guys will know that'll be covered.

And obviously from a fiscal management standpoint, uh, those would be additional costs because those could be overtime shifts.

I did speak to the athletic director as well and say that we'll get— we'll make sure that, that, um, that myself, the chief, the athletic director, Jeff Stevens obviously, um, and the middle school athletic director, regardless of what it is, that I will reach out to them and say, um, you know, let's make sure that we have the month of September ready to go that they talk to Brandon, that he knows what he needs to do, and then he can then go back and make sure that we're manned.

So sorry about that.

All right, Miss Lewis.

City buses, what are we doing about making them safer?

Is there anything we can do?

You're talking through CERTA?

Yeah.

So I mean, obviously, we've increased our patrols with the CERTA bus station.

They've also had their private security.

I get a weekly report on the calls for service there.

Obviously, the summer months, it's calmed down a little bit.

The calls for service are trending in the right direction.

So I think handling the day-to-day stuff.

We'll monitor that closely as we get back into the school year.

We also have other police operations going on in that, that coffee room neighborhood to help with supplanting the coverage.

So I think you'll see more eyes and ears will be available there.

Mr.

Dice, thank you.

I'm just going through this one more time.

So just a little question on the language here about the start time and end times.

It seems to be not up in the air, but it seems to be kind of— it doesn't seem to be straightforward.

So we have, um, the designated standard workday shall generally fall within the hours of 6:30 AM to 4:30 PM.

However, schedules may be adjusted as necessary.

So where is it the— what would be as necessary to change the start time?

So I think out of the gate we're going to work with a 7 to 3 schedule, and I think some of the miscommunication was the lack of communication and the understanding of where the police coverage was in the past.

So 7 to 3 will be the standard.

I felt it was necessary to keep them all at the same start time for the transmission of information that they're going to get from the police department.

So there is roll calls.

I know there was questions in the past, are they happening, are they deploying right to the schools?

I felt it was important that they all report for roll call, then deploy to the schools.

But we will go through the first month of school and get some feedback on maybe some adjustments.

But I think it's important that the officers do have a roll call in the morning.

We do have a lot of crime-involved juveniles that we want to make sure that we're having that communication in the morning to understand if there was an event that happened outside of school that would have extra eyes on stuff.

So I think you're going to see more communication from the police department through the administration so that you'll be in tune with what's going on.

Does the, um, roll call for the SROs— it takes place with all the other officers in the morning?

So it takes place within the Special Operations and Investigation Bureau, right?

Is that— is it all in like, um, that same— that— I don't know.

Well, you did a ride-along, right?

So it's not in the roll call room because there are specialized events and sometimes there's sensitive information that's being disclosed there.

I guess my question could be, could we potentially move the roll call?

I, I don't know what the internal procedures are at the police department, but either something that's remote or something like at like a designated school so it's, um, we can get the officers to the schools quicker.

Or I think with this changes that we're putting in place, let's do a 30-day kind of action plan and then regroup and see what we can maybe flex from that.

But I'm open to suggestions.

The big thing is I think it's important that they all have some type of communication and attendance check altogether.

I know because I was an SRO sergeant, there's been some times where, you know, people get missing in action and I'm trying to find where they are because they're running late to the school and I wasn't sure of— I want to stop that from happening and ensure that resources are deployed and checked on.

So sure, I guess I'll end on this point for now.

I think we've made good progress in responding to individual issues like, um, Tansy, for example.

I know we had, um, situation down there at the end of the year.

I know, um, Miss Aguiar and myself reached out, and, um, police department, I think, in hands with the administration, worked well to address that.

I think, um, I know this is kind of getting hand in hand to a traffic update.

However, um, I think the quicker we get those done and we can implement those changes.

Because going into the new year, I think we need to see whatever we can do to see less and less of that.

And again, without having to make sure police resources are going towards, um, what it needs to be going towards.

But, um, yeah, just hopefully— I just hope the— and I'm sure it will— the communication going in next year when these individual safe traffic safety concerns pop up, sure, can, um, will be addressed.

So thank you.

Yeah, this document that was in yellow, it's not any of the changes, or was everything just thrown out and, and the new model used, or how does that— how did that work?

I think the one that's in the yellow and the red was adopted through the, um, the template that DESE had.

There was some There were some areas that were not addressed as it relates to what POST wants in there.

So, I think that yellow area was highlighted because that was probably the biggest— that was the biggest area of where language was inserted and adjusted.

My concern is that we've, for years now, going back 5, 6 years, changed some of the language to be specific to Fall River.

And then now if we just do a template and our individualized pieces are not included, included in here, and I'm trying to read it and figure out what it was.

And so I think to your point, so one of the things I pride myself in is like these policy things, and in our agency, so we did adopt this as a guiding light, but it's formarized, so it's specific.

If you read that, it's specific because, yeah, no, what I'm referring to is when we made some changes previously.

So if the baseline was starting with that template, it, you know, we could have lost some of the discussions we've had in the past.

One of the ones that I've had, and this has come from having worked in the school, is that people always feel like as if the school resource officer is in the school, if there's going to be some kids acting up or mayhem or anything, you can stop it.

And the police pushed back at the time, going back 5, 6 years ago, and said, no, it's only if it's a crime.

And I made the point that I don't believe that.

We're paying for SRO here to try to help us contain, you know, behaviors and the like.

And just to actually say— and the sergeant at the time back at the Fonseca School at the meeting said, well, we've got to let it get out of hand before we address it.

And I was like, that doesn't work.

So we changed some language that sort of, uh, guided those things like that.

They can't— you're not doing daily discipline, but Um, yeah, that remains in this, this year as far as, uh, the different things is, uh, physical— the substantial harm to physical well-being of another person.

And it identifies where the SROs will jump to that and then become a law enforcement entity versus wait and kind of in the background of it getting out of hand.

And we've demonstrated that in the past where we've taken people into custody because of that, because it's risen to a crime.

But we're not going stand back and let it happen, we'll definitely de-escalate the situation.

Right.

But, and that was in the model MOU?

No, that's something— so the language here is— was built off of the original MOU, adopting some of the guiding light that wasn't addressed in the original MOU.

Can you just tell me what page that's on?

That's on page 3, uh, the 4th paragraph.

And that's where it talks about the professional judgment and discretion.

Yeah, I, I got it.

I just haven't reviewed it enough, but I'll take your word for the fact that we're not going to have that situation happen where, no, somebody's doing something and yet let them commit a crime before I can No, intervene to stop it.

That would be my first, uh, one of the questions.

The other one on the, um, the time.

So I have, you know, an opinion on the times.

So it's an 8-hour day, and we talked about this at one of the prior meetings.

So if the school day is only 6.5 hours and we're paying an 8-hour day, to me the most logical thing is to do 45 minutes before that particular school starts and 45 minutes after.

That will ensure that every— no matter what school you're at, you're getting it.

When you look at the times for the middle schools, it's 7:20, high school starts 7:55, RPA starts at 8:30.

Now they want to change it to 10 to 5, 10 to 6.

So, there's some nuances here that if we want to be able to control the overtime, we still need coverage.

To me, the most logical thing is the half, you know, the 45 minutes before before, 45 minutes after.

The other thing that changed since— I'm not sure how they got the 10 hours of overtime, as you know, I wasn't happy with that.

But there's language in the con— in the MOU that says superintendent has to sign off, or the designee.

I still haven't been able to find who authorized 10 hours a week of overtime, which is about $20,000 per person, almost $100,000 last year.

So it's not that I'm trying to take things back.

We need to be safe.

If we need to have overtime, I'm not opposed to it, but it should go through the superintendent or the principals through the superintendent so that we can control.

I think fiscally it should go through— obviously I need to be aware of it, so I've taken a stance not just with the school resource stuff but overtime in general in our agency so that there's accountability to that.

And I think, as I said earlier to Mr. Diaz, the communication we've had with this administration right now going through that in an involvement piece, I think you're going to see better communication of the needs we have.

And then obviously having you guys give input around where you feel there might be extra coverage necessary.

If there's somebody covering a school that's only a 6-hour day and they need to be deployed for their first 2 hours to help out at another school, that's something we can look at as well.

Because I know we've had traffic issues at Green, we've deployed more resources there.

As long as there's an understanding that some coverage is going to be moved We did the same thing at Tansey.

We had our motor vehicle unit, we had extra SROs there to help out with that.

And that's the fluidity of that.

And I think that's why we, we word that that way, so that we can have some dynamic deployment of our resources.

Sounds like we're close to being on the same page, just that I need somebody in the administration to explain if they're going to do 7 to 3 and roll call must take 10-15 minutes if you if it's not on site or virtual, like whatever.

All of our middle schools start at 7:20.

So we need SROs at the building before the actual first start of school.

So the 7 to 3 just doesn't work when you look at the numbers.

I would suggest in a half hour, 45 minutes, because you get to the school, you should be able to report in, tell everybody where you're at.

We also, since the last couple years, we're paying for the sergeant, which we used to not pay for the sergeant.

So now we're paying for the sergeant all day.

So if, in my opinion, the sergeant should be checking in at all the buildings anyway, and it basically makes the— in my opinion, I'm not a police officer, but it makes it less important to have a roll call where you have to— if the sergeant's going to all the places because he's paid for by us all day.

So that to me is a, is a reason why I think we can do half an hour before school, 45 minutes before school.

But I don't know, additional time for overtime or just— no, out of the 8 hours.

So the 6-hour day from, from middle school is 7:20 to 2:15.

Okay, so if you said it's 7 to 3, they're showing up probably 5 minutes before school starts, which is not good in my opinion.

I don't know if the administration thinks that's a good thing to have them rolling in just before the actual bell starts to start school.

But that's what it would be.

Durfee High is 7:55 to 2:50.

So that could probably work from a— on the front end of the 7.

At the end of the day, it's 2:50.

So if they leave at 3, they're only staying 10 minutes after high school with 2,600 kids leaving.

So to me, the 7 to 3, just try it out, is not necessarily, in my opinion, the best.

So you're proposing you'd want it all staggered and have the sergeant drive around and brief everybody individually?

Julie, is that definitely— so from an operational standpoint, the consistency with the messaging becomes an issue because at roll call sometimes it stems into another conversation, especially when we're talking about sensitive crime matters and there might be somebody that could have identifiable information.

If you might say something that triggers someone else to say something and there's a, there's a groupthink that's happening there, when the sergeant's just going around to check on somebody that they're present, that's different than having an open conversation about maybe what the strategy is that, that— but operationally for us, there's no way to do what you're suggesting and not have not covered a lack of coverage at the buildings and keep within the 8 hours.

Because just right off the bat, we're at 7.

So if you get out at 3, for instance, if he's out at 2:50, you're not ending at 3.

And I don't expect the man or woman to work for free.

So You know what I mean?

It just, it becomes a, I don't know, maybe it's a, uh, using technology on Zoom or, you know, some other way to, to utilize technology.

When then you get into RPA, which on here is 8:30 to 3:25, then there's a proposal to go from 10 to 5 for certain kids.

And then, you know, so it's just We're trying to control the overtime.

I hear you.

I'm open to that.

Now it's like, whoa, what?

Like, how are we going to have, uh, control and coverage?

Sure.

At some— then I— do we have one that goes from RPA to Stone, or— yeah, like they cover both.

When you look at Stone, the Stone hours are much earlier, so they start at 7:40.

So how are we going to cover Stone?

I know you can't be 2 places at once, but if they If they're leaving at 3 and, you know, like, it just— to me, there's, um, I think there's some logistical things that— why don't you give me the chance to have some conversation with my side of things?

I do have some guys that are willing to be dynamic in that sense, so we could set a later time for a check-in, like a, you know, whatever, a briefing in the morning that where everyone's present at that point, whether it's at 9 or 9:30.

My only fear is that the day gets away from you and you're not able to, to commit to that because the resources get move in different directions.

In an ideal world, I, I don't disagree with what you're saying.

Why not use technology to be more efficient?

I just don't want the, the roll calls not to happen because they're— one school's already set off in motion while another one's kind of waiting for school to start.

That's where that troubles.

Yeah, no, I, I hear you.

I, I think we— the year's coming real quick.

We're 100%.

I mean, we met a couple months ago, so I think time is of the essence to get together with our school administration, figure out what's happening for that.

I guess we're going to vote on this anyway at the final on the 19th.

So we'll have some more questions.

Mr. Mamas.

So the 7 to 3:30, just so we can see how the dynamic works.

Well, I think it's becoming where we're just going to start with that.

We're removing the overtime element because that was always the fix.

I think that that 10-hour day gave you all that latitude to cover, but then it's not fiscally responsible.

So we're starting with 7 to 3 with some built-in overtime to cover for the traffic issues and just issues of school starting in general.

And then once that calms down, adjusting from there.

I'm open for, you know, adjusting to make this work.

I know that the patrol union is in open negotiations right now that are trying to look at different things.

I can't speak to that, but I'm willing to try it.

I mean, no, the biggest thing is safety.

Yeah, but not like I said, yeah, the money.

I, I want to make— I just know like it's tough even for me like to go around the building and speak to 5 captains and 10 lieutenants, right?

I'd rather have them all in the room at one time and just say it once, right?

And everybody, that's the message, correct?

Issue at the same time, correct?

Because someone might ask a question that someone didn't know.

That's this, right?

That's just meeting in general, right?

Right.

So the biggest thing for me, like I said, uh, it's not the overtime or anything, it's the safety.

Sure.

I want to make sure it's safe.

So whatever you recommend as we're moving forward and whatever we see, I'm pretty sure we're gonna move in the right direction as far as safety goes.

In that— can I just— in the ideal world, it would be great to have 18 SROs for the district, one in each building, and be ideal to you know, go on their time and be able to go in and out like we do that.

I think on our side, as you said, your side, but working together, where are the most calls coming from?

What schools are the most need?

Where is the most risk at?

Where's the traffic issues?

Where do we get a lot of calls from?

And that's what we can look at.

I'm going by you know, old notes and talking to Brandon, Sergeant Pacheco, the other day, and the old notes from the former administration that was on this old paper.

But I mean, you know, is Stone School a place where we need somebody there all day, or is it a stop-in and a check-in?

Yeah, I do think that, you know, RPA and Durfee Yes, you're gonna need some people there.

But, you know, do we need somebody at Watson?

You know, do you need someone at Westall full-time?

So I think if we look at that and look at the high-intense or the most— the neediest at the elementary— no, but they do stop there.

No, I get it.

Just that when, you know, I'm looking at page 13 where it says that somebody just read at 6:30, generally fall within 6:30 to 4:30.

We said this is the last meeting.

My interpretation of that is within that window, if the school starts at this time, there is the possibility to just do the staggered schedule with different people.

Sure, but I think it's a collective agreement between myself and the administration on what works best for the safety and also— No, I get it.

I'm saying about timing.

So like if the administration says, you know what, we need to have X before, and you know, instead of it being exactly 7 to 3, I don't think they can say, well, no, it says here 6:30 to 4:30.

I think they use this to get paid 10 hours.

I'm being honest with you, that's what I think this was.

That's where they got the 10 hours of time, and we paid $197,500 in overtime because of that language.

So it's— it looks like it's still here.

I don't think this is getting out of it, right?

Like, that's still going to be here.

Yeah, I don't think it's baked in though, because if it's baked into 6:30 to 4:30, I get what you're saying.

Is that they were getting overtime.

But I'm telling you, as the chief of police, I'm not going to give them overtime that isn't authorized through the superintendent's office that is baked in here.

And that was the biggest issue we had in the past, was like, who authorized this and what's the frame?

Yeah, correct.

I'm just going to tell you, I got to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

We did that at the end of this school year, and moving forward, the control mechanisms are in place.

Giving that window of 6:30 to 4:30, I think, was to cover all of the different timings of these schools and then be able to work out with the administration what was the best thing.

I think from consistency we said 7 to 3, let's try that.

We'll entertain potentially staggering, but we've got to look at the operational impact from our side too.

The first sentence though, this isn't changed, Shelby signed a 40-hour work week.

So, I don't think, and I'm not saying that you did this, you weren't there.

They finagled this to get the 10 hours because it's 6:30 to 4:30 at the bottom.

But right up above it says 40 hours, right?

But we paid them for 50 hours.

So if, if what they've been doing was so-called agreed to by everybody, it would send school resource officers shall be assigned to a 50-hour work week.

It never said 50-hour work week, but in essence we paid them 50 hours for every week.

So it's— I hear what you're saying, it's 40, maybe we should just bold the 40 or something.

But I mean, what's going to satisfy your mind?

I'm a little confused because I get it how it was worked and interpreted, but I think the interpretation has been clear now that they're not going to get overtime that's not authorized by the superintendent's office and that you're aware of that's coming through.

It's not going to grow legs and all these things where, you know, how much more can we get?

Like, I, I'm all about fiscal responsibility, but I'm bigger on communication.

So when there's needs, we'll put things towards the hot spots or the areas that need attention, but we're not going to do that blindly.

And then next thing you know, in a meeting, you look and go Hey, what the heck, we just spent $60,000 in overtime.

Why?

I think the why is you'll know the answers to those questions before the questions arise.

Okay, I guess you're missing what I'm trying to say.

We're in agreement on the 40 hours.

What I'm trying to let the administration know is that when they look at it functionally on our side, there is no— there's no ability for your side to say, oh, they don't want to do it, it's not within their contracts and negotiations, whatever else.

Because within this document that we've had for years now, it says from 6:30 to 4:30, there's 40 hours of work.

So I'm articulating that because when we leave here between now and the 19th, we can't have on the 19th somebody come back and say the union said no, they're not going to do it, and we have to have 7 to 3.

That what I'm suggesting here is based on this language that's been in, if they said and you all agreed, like, this best functionally, anytime between 6:30 and 4:30, that's 8 hours, 40 hours.

To me, I think it's doable.

That's, that's my only point.

You have something else?

I do.

I just want to follow back up on your, on your first point about page 3 and looking at addressing issues that happen in the schools.

So looking at the language on page 3, just want to get clarification on what low-level offenses would mean, because I think that speaks to what, um, Mr. Aguirre was speaking about.

So I don't know if the chief can answer that or the administration.

What would be some, I guess, um, examples of a low-level offense?

I think a lot of these things are discussions between the school administrators, the counselors.

When it's like a low-level thing, somebody stole somebody's lunchbox or somebody stole somebody's electronic device or something to that degree, and it was resolved in the school.

To charge somebody with that larceny, you have to discuss through that, like, what's the impact?

We have great success through diversion programs like Youth Corps.

So there's been a lot of discussions, a lot of the referrals, and then having discussions with Terry that runs Youth Corps go through there.

So those low-level discussions, the low-level crimes is like that, or offenses, I should say.

No, I, I don't, I don't disagree.

I think, um, I guess what my concern would be and why I asked the question is more of, um, if there is like some, some something physical.

I don't know if that's an automatic, even if it's just something small like a push to shove, but that can escalate quickly.

So, um, I'm not sure if we should, in my opinion, have zero tolerance for any violence in the schools.

So I just hope hopefully that will be something that could I wouldn't just be passed along if it's some sort of physical— you have to be careful in, in putting that like that because there are restrictions in the law of who's culpable of committing a crime to that degree by age.

So if you did that unilaterally across the district, you put us in a liability situation where if you say, hey, we don't, we don't discuss— if somebody pushed somebody, they're getting charged criminally.

No, I know there's an age of— yeah, I understand.

So you got to be careful with that.

I think it's always up for some discussion and discretion.

I think de-escalation obviously is tantamount, and then the impact it's going to have on that student and their progression through the system.

I understand.

Um, last 2 items is, um, first I'll just mention, uh, Deputy Superintendent mentioned Watson.

I think that's the school actually especially at the end, is something that we should have an SRO.

I don't believe— and Chief, correct me if I'm wrong— that traffic control officers are allowed to stop traffic.

I don't believe they're allowed to.

They've assisted, but I think the Watson issue has been a problem that's landed on my desk because it's a very busy thoroughfare over there.

You've got that split divided highway, essentially.

No, I've seen it.

And this is before you became chief, but I've seen situations at Watson where there's not— the traffic just halts and there's, um, there's no SRO there.

And that could be a liability itself.

You've got crossing guards there too because you've got a lot of people crossing, right?

But even like with no one crossing, the traffic is just, just stopping just because the kids are getting on the bus.

Correct.

This is, I think, the same thing at Green.

The faster we can work as a team with administration getting the kids flushed on the buses and out of there— that's the biggest stop is when the buses are in the areas.

Once everyone's gone, then you've got some stragglers, but nothing that's impacting it to that degree.

Okay.

Last 2 questions is, so what is— what are the procedures right now?

So, new administration took over April, May.

Since then, who is signing off?

I know you mentioned, Chief, that the overtime was being staggered down, but I'm assuming there was some overtime at the end of the year that was used.

Who was— who signed off on that?

Who would have signed off?

We have not.

There has been no— like he just said, former administration had whatever they were doing.

We did not sign off on any of it, right?

And I'm talking about when you all took over.

There was no— that's what I'm telling you.

There was a different process in place, and starting from this September on, the process is now in place that these Superintendent of Schools or designee, when it will come to us every Friday through the building principals and up here.

Who signed off beforehand?

I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you that I don't believe anybody in the superintendent's office signed off.

So how was it paid?

Who submitted it?

I believe they're probably— probably the principals signed off on it and sent it up, and it never got to central office.

So technically what happened is the overtime slips came to our agency.

Our accounts manager would send basically a bill over to the finance office of the officers and how many hours of overtime.

So, so it went directly from your office, Chief, to the— from my financial, uh, to us, account manager to there.

So there's got to be some in between.

We can do that electronically, that's easy.

Unbelievable.

And in essence, the MOU was not followed, correct?

And I said this multiple times in public meetings, so we just basically— they got 10 hours.

So when you're going to send over the payroll for all SROs, they all got 10 hours automatically.

In the documents it said superintendent or designee.

We had public meetings, we had emails where I asked this former superintendent, where are the signatures?

Who signed them?

What's this?

She didn't even know that you had to sign them.

That was part of the language in here.

So it was basically a situation that got out of hand.

I appreciate everybody trying to get it back in hand.

So see, the short answer to your question is it just wasn't followed, and nobody at this table you know, was sort of to blame for it.

But right now I'm feeling hopeful going forward it will be followed.

But I just wanted to get an answer to what the point that you raised so we can just, you know, get to the bottom of what happened.

But I, I think, um, like the chief said, I think we're going to come to an agreement.

And I think, um, there's been a lot of good things that have been happening on both police side, administration side to solve many of the issues here.

And I'm hopeful it'll be good moving forward as well.

So I'll make a motion to refer.

Motion's made.

Seconded.

Mr. Mones.

So I have 2 more questions.

So I was trying to look through this quick.

There was language in the old one that said any overtime would have to be approved by the superintendent of schools.

Is it— if it's not in there, like, as part of this motion, can we make sure it's in there for the— it might be buried within one of the paragraphs.

Um, we need that because this is a this is going to outlive potentially people at this table that are committing to do it.

So I'd like to see that in there.

And the other pieces of the, um, uh, MOUs were like the evaluations were done with the cooperation of the superintendent, principals, and things.

Were those all done?

And are people involved in it?

Do you know?

Yeah, we just actually had the deputy superintendent sit in on a couple of the interviews because we had transferred some people out due promotion and then move another one person back to the day shift.

She participated in all of the interviews to get that and gave her feedback.

But I mean, the evaluation— it says in here about evaluation.

So like, the— I'm the SRO at a certain school, like at the end of the year, like the super, the principal, yourself, whoever, the sergeant gets together to talk about it.

I don't think that's been happening, right, in the past.

So I think that's something that we'll have to work through because obviously the CBA would be police union is that the supervisor of those personnel do the evaluation.

And essentially, they can listen to some input, but the performance comes from our side.

Absolutely.

The metrics from— yeah, right.

So if we looked at the MOU that you're asking us to approve, it indicates that they're going to work with the principal and the superintendent to go over it.

Sure.

That those 2 things are not congruent.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, is there a timeframe that you're doing your evaluation?

January and February for the year prior.

So that's where you have the operations of the police department is not necessarily in line with the timeframe of the school year.

Like superintendent saying, yeah, she agrees.

Page 6 says, in accordance with state law, the chief and the superintendent shall annually review the performance of the SRO, including the success and effectiveness in meeting the goals and objectives of this MOU.

The review shall be conducted at the end of each school year in a meeting amongst the SRO, the chief or designee, and the superintendent.

I'm reading that to be like they're participating in a review, whatever this says here.

This is counter to what you're saying, but I do think that they should be involved in some— sure, I think we can bifurcate that in the sense of their performance in their role of the SRO and then their overall performance from the police department.

So yes, they have a specialty assignment as an SRO, but they still do perform other police functions that we have to evaluate on.

But to your point, yeah, I think it's important that there's some feedback that's received on their performance as an SRO, because we're not going to keep somebody there if they're not fulfilling the spirit of the program.

Yeah, the second paragraph, I don't want to read it, but it goes into detail about acknowledging the, you know, the contract, but also they shall jointly develop and implement metrics.

So I think it's going to be better for sure.

It's just that if we have it and we're going to change it.

If we're not going to do it, just take it out.

But with that being said, that's one more quick question.

Do we— are we up to date?

Like from past administrations, are we up to date on evaluations?

This has nothing to do with SROs.

Of SROs?

Oh, SROs.

Yeah, he just mentioned that they— that wasn't in practice.

But Mr. Agnew's point, if you're not going to practice it, then entertain taking it out.

But I think it's important that there's some feedback that's provided to that SRO just in their own professional development, if they're doing a good job or not.

As far as past, I can't fix the past.

No, I, I guess— all right, so I guess the better question would be, is— so on the police side, is there not like on the school side, there's yearly reviews and stuff?

Yeah.

Is that the same on the police side, or is it like a different— Yeah, it is the same, but you're saying they do them on the police side?

They don't— So it's against their contract to have us being involved in their stuff.

So, but if they're in a specialty assignment, I think it's important that that just gets married together because it's a part of their professional development.

It might just be a writing thing.

It might be something relative to like feedback.

You're going to have better communication.

I think we're formalizing it too much to what it is.

It's not a form.

It could be a meeting between that person that just boiled down to some notes, and then that gets added.

And there's plenty of things in here that I feel confident that the chief's going to make sure that it's happening.

For It says in— I don't know if it says in this one because I haven't read it, but the last one said they will strive to have, when he has 2 SROs at one building, 75% of the day they will not be together.

So if I'm the principal of the high school, I should not see the 2 SROs together more than 25% of the day.

It's just me as a layman reading it.

If that's what's in here, in practice, if everyone knows that, they should be separated unless it's obviously they're dealing with something.

Those little pieces have been overlooked in the past.

I think it's important that we send— when we approve this document, we send it to the principals.

The administration should send it down to— they'll see it, I'm sure they'll see it.

But the point is that I do think that the chief's going to do what's in here, and if not, then they'll negotiate it out.

Once this is— if I may— once this is affirmed on the 19th and we get through this, the superintendent and I will meet with the principals.

We meet— we're meeting with them monthly now on a, on a in-person basis that wasn't, I don't think, prior to us coming in.

They didn't have in-person meetings as much.

We're doing it pretty much a lot right now.

We were with them today.

We're going over this and we'll talk about the SROs.

I can only say that the short time I've been here, I think I've, I mean, I texted you a couple of times and the chief has called me right back.

I've said, can I bother you for a minute?

And he calls right away.

Last week I was invited, 2 weeks ago I was invited to be part of the interviews for the new SRO.

We did them last Tuesday.

I was there at 9:00 a.m. and we were there for about an hour and a half.

We went through, I think, 4 SROs and we came up with a good candidate and that's on their end and then we'll know when we go through.

I just got the list of SROs And I'll be sending that out to all the principals once this— I'm waiting for the 19th and then we're gonna send it out.

But I think the point is made that if there are things in here that— and again, it is all about communication, and I thank you for the job that's being done.

But I agree that the principals need to understand if it's something in there about 75% and 25%, we make sure we have a list pulled out.

I don't want them to have to just read a contract.

We'll pull out the things that they— if I'm gonna hold them accountable, I need to know that they understand clearly.

If it's about overtime, they need to understand that clearly.

So we'll work with the chief, we'll create a document that we go over with the principals when we meet with them so that they're not willing— I don't know what the practice was in the past, but if this is the practice, they'll understand.

That's right.

You know how it operates.

So it doesn't go to ALDO without a whatever that process is.

So, so in addition, just so let you know that I showed the chief this as we came downstairs.

So DESE is still getting to, to know that Dr. Smith and I are here.

So I received an email, I think on Friday, that we need to provide the superintendent's report to the Department of Elementary Secondary Education and publicly present to the relevant school committee the cost of of the school district of assigning school resource officers.

So you're not the only people, you're not the only school department that's going to look into this.

It's across the state.

But, um, I asked Aldo's office and Aldo to, uh, give me the chart.

I got the chart.

We know, I get— give it to the— I gave it to the chief.

So we, we're all in this, um, and this will be going to DESE tomorrow.

Sounds good.

Mr. Dyson, the last point I want to end on is really important.

So, with the lack of a staggered start time, we mentioned prior we seem to be as a district rapidly changing our alternative education.

We just heard that there might be like a 10 to 5 start/end time, and that doesn't conform with RPA, and that does not conform with the agreement.

Not sure And I understand, um, police side wants 30 days to take a look at this for the staggered start/end times.

However, I'm looking as one member of the committee, we have an alternative program where we're moving in different programs into that school, and it's new.

And I think it's really important on a public safety aspect that we have, um, SROs there, especially, especially in the beginning, um, at all times at that school.

Um, that school time from start to end.

So if, um, that's something I'm asking for, is one— I think they're gonna, they're gonna work on it for the 19th and report back at that point.

The final comes out, we'll know more where everybody's, uh, where they landed on it, you know, because the chief probably didn't even know that it was a 10 to 5 school potentially.

I knew there was some dramatic changes, you know, so like we got to figure it out.

And at some point when the administration comes back to us and says, you know what, this is a quagmire, Whoever's assigned down there needs an hour because of that.

So yeah, but at least we know everybody's on the same page.

It's transparent.

So motion has been made and seconded.

All in favor?

Right.

All in favor?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Have a great night.

We're going to skip to 3.04.

Next, the service agreement for the Green Elementary School.

Superintendent or designee?

I'd like to introduce Stan Smith.

From Cam Maresco, here to give you an overview of the amendment, which is on the Green School.

You have a document that is the actual amendment.

And Mr. Smith is handing a quick presentation for you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cam.

So there's a lot to celebrate in this meeting.

Again, I'm Dan Smith with Ameresco, headquartered in Framingham.

We have a long-standing partnership with, with Fall River and Fall River Public Schools.

We've been able to deliver approximately $30 million worth of work over the past 10 phases, but what we're really here to celebrate is the partnership, the strategic partnership to drive opportunity and not have this team go to the taxpayers of Fall River year in and year out looking to offset their capital spend.

So strategically working with Ken, we're an extension of your team, right?

We've been procured through, um, the enabling legislation is 25A11i, which Amoresco competed for and was awarded that partnership.

And what that provides is a tool in the tool belt for both the schools and the city side to make strategic decisions whether or not they want to utilize us to move projects forward.

And those projects could be anything from energy savings to renewable energy to anaerobic digestion, right?

So in meeting with the other core partners, because we don't work in a silo— National Grid, Unitel, the utilities— we try to come up with strategic plans to leverage every grant opportunity that we can and every incentive dollar that can be incorporated into a project, i.e., the Green School, bringing the green.

So we We worked with Ken and came up with a strategic plan starting with the Green School because of the, the metrics around carbon reduction, the, um, the existing conditions of the Green School.

Uh, it's a high-need building that's got some antiquated, very expensive systems to operate and maintain.

So the collective decision that, um, you know, Mr. Chico, myself, folks from National Grid decided is let's start with the Green So we competed for a very highly competitive MassEC grant opportunity, and Fall River was one of 19 awardees across the state.

So we take a ton of pride in the collaboration and the partnership with, with, with the schools team and Ken particularly to identify that opportunity, to collaborate with multiple stakeholders, to put together a winning proposal, and And fortunately, we won this round.

So the— and I don't want to go too quick, and I don't want to be too much presentation, but if you have any questions, please, please, please jump in.

The existing conditions around the green was the primary driver in making sure that we hit all the metrics that the Mass Clean Energy Center had for this project.

Opportunity to apply for and get awarded this $2.7 million, $2.9 million grant.

So, um, the enabling legislation allows us to, you know, hit the ground running.

We, we have the award, we have the contractual vehicle in place.

I believe, um, Ken shared that with the team.

It's compliant with Mass General law, it's compliant with procurement law, and it really does allow the, the school district to go after not only this opportunity but future ones.

And speaking of the future, MassDEC does have a few other grant opportunities that are about to hit the street.

So we've, we've had this for a while.

It's gone through some, some reviews.

The amendment language is very consistent with what you will see industry-wide across the Commonwealth, across every school district.

But yeah, a lot to celebrate.

$2.9 million in funding from the state.

You're going to have a 60% reduction in energy spend for that building alone.

Again, it didn't cost the city or the taxpayer in Fall River a penny to— from the rate base, from the tax base— to move this project forward.

So you're ahead of the game, we're ahead of the game.

And then also National Grid, once we have the authorization to execute the amendment, we'll have the applications in place with National Grid And there's hundreds of thousands of dollars in utility incentives that National Grid will be providing.

There's some long lead time equipment that's a part of this project, about 30 weeks out.

So once we have the authorization— we do hope that we'll have the authorization this week to execute the amendment— prior to the execution of the amendment, we will submit it to DOER.

They have 15 days to review the documents.

And come back with an acknowledgment.

And then at that point, the, the schools are allowed to execute the contract.

We'll submit the applications to get the utilities buttoned up with National Grid and have that formalized.

We'll continue on with engineering.

Once we have the utility incentives back and memorialized from National Grid so we're not at risk, we'll start procuring equipment and getting subcontractors ready to begin construction in, um, in April of next year, probably off hours, school, uh, school vacation weeks, and then finish the project in, in the summer of '27.

Um, there's a lot of other stuff that Superintendent— Assistant Superintendent McCall and I have talked about as a part of this is educational enrichment.

We're doing it in other communities.

I had 4 students from Brockton High School at the Wilkins School in Stoughton to take a look at, you know, what is the construction trades and what do these type of projects mean to them.

We're going to do that here in Fall River.

So there are employment opportunities in Brockton paying 5 students $30 an hour to implement some energy conservation projects.

Not really implement, but work on the logistics.

They can't turn the screws, they can't actually be like the tradespeople that complete the work, but learn about coordination construction coordination, communication, and then knowing that there are meaningful pay, you know, well-paying careers that can come out of this, it's prudent of all of us to try to do that.

And, um, looking forward to doing that with, um, with your team here at the Green as well.

So hopefully I wasn't too long-winded.

The building is going to be more efficient.

It's going to be— I know breathing the air in here, right, we turn the air conditioner off, it's getting a little warm.

You can kind of feel like your energy may be going down.

Fresh air hasn't been coming into the Green School for quite some time, so that fresh dampened air coming in at a cool temperature is going to help performance, it's going to help students.

And then strategically going after a few other schools that, um, that we've highlighted for these future grant opportunities, we're going to be that tool in the tool belt to aggressively go after it.

How do you fix this one?

I know, but yeah, sorry if that was too long-winded, but, um, we celebrated You know, the competitive award, not too slow.

My only question is on— I think I followed somewhat.

The timeline in here wasn't followed.

Like you said, April, you're going to start doing the controls?

No, no, I'm sorry.

We're going to start this coming April.

So we're going to finalize all the engineering over the next couple months.

I thought you already did that.

No, no, I'm sorry.

You haven't even started that.

So, when I see in here April, you're talking next April?

April the next year.

Year, correct?

April of next year.

So there's starting construction, the engineering has started.

But until we get the contract, I really can't step on the gas too much.

So we'll be done with the engineering come November, December of this year.

It's like another year.

So they're gonna— the green school is gonna go through this year, survive for a whole year, whatever's happening, correct?

Correct.

And when you said Amendment 1 in here, all those other big numbers were other projects.

Other projects, yes, both on the city and school side.

It's just I was a little confused.

We got the contract and then I had to— oh, I'm saying Amendment 1, so it wasn't like $13 million or $18 million, all these other numbers have nothing to do with this.

Correct, this is a standalone project on its own.

The benefit of this, Mr. Chairman, is, um, you can do multiple amendments for buildings, uh, for the next 15 years.

So as opportunities come up, it, um TANZI or any of the other— we're gonna— part of the plan is to start walkthroughs and update some of the information we have to pursue some of these other grants that are coming up imminently.

So there's 5 schools that I think we've prioritized to just, you know, update some numbers and be prepared for when these grant opportunities hit the street.

Mr.

Dice, thank you.

2 questions, 2, um, 2 quick, quick questions to begin.

Um, you mentioned at the beginning Um, you're looking to get authorization to execute the amendment this week?

Yeah, if, um, so procurement— you're— all of the Mass General laws around procurement are— have been met.

The grant funding is in place.

There's no appropriation coming, being requested of City Council or the, the tax body in the city.

So the funding is in place.

In the, in the amendment document is consistent with all other amendments that we've done.

No, I understand that.

Where would you get that authorization from?

Uh, it would cut— I believe the schools would be signing this one, so it would be Superintendent Smith, Dr. Smith.

I would say it's on the 19th.

So we— I think the point is this subcommittee, we have to forward to the full committee, which next meets on August 19th.

That's the next meeting for the full body to actually vote on authorizing something.

Okay.

I think that's why this is here, correct?

Yes.

So the idea would be the 19th would be when we could prove— we could officially as a whole body vote on it.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Oh no, that makes sense.

That's exactly where I was going with the question.

Um, last question I, I have for now is, um, do you, do you have like a list of sub-vendors you usually contract out to?

Yeah.

So the, the power of 25A, without getting on a soapbox, very different from 149 and 30B.

It's not predicated on— I'm not asking a procurement question, I'm just asking like, who are your, um, like, do you have like a list of sub-vendors you work well with?

Yeah, there's a few of them, including Fall River-based vendors and subcontractors.

So we'll— so we were pre-procured, right?

We can bid out the work to multiple sub-trades and equipment vendors, right?

Which was my question.

Do you know off the Do you know who you would work with, or who are you going to work on?

So I, I don't know yet.

We're going to go over the equipment selection with, with Ken and the team to make sure that, you know, what we're recommending and what we plan on procuring is, is meeting the team's expectations.

And that's been the process from the get-go.

We're not even at that point right now.

No, we're not.

So the expectation is if we're able to execute contract, get that authorization within the next couple weeks, we'll roll right into final designs and getting that done.

While that process is going, we're going to have equipment manufacturers kind of selected, which we'll review with Ken.

And then as long as Ken and the schools are good with that, that system, that manufacturer, the plan is to, to issue a purchase order to that manufacturer, which could be up to 30 weeks out for delivery of equipment.

Now, this overhaul, is that including removing moving ductwork and all this stuff that's had mold.

The ductwork in the Green with mold?

Well, there was mold within the building, so I'm pretty sure you got mold in the ductwork.

Yeah, I'll have to follow up with you as an action coming out.

Just like you said here, as soon as you shut this down, you can feel the temperature difference and everything else.

Yeah, Green's had nothing but a problem.

Yeah, as far as that goes, as far as equipment being down all the time, controls not responding.

And, um, and to me, the mold is definitely a factor as far as is it still there, is it not, are we going to remove it, are we going to remove any of the old equipment.

That's— yeah, we're removing old equipment, absolutely.

So that's ductwork and everything.

So I have equipment.

What I will do is confirm the duct— the ductwork itself is being removed or cleaned or remediated, which I don't know sitting right here right now, but I know we're not handing over a system that's got, you know, issues, health issues related to it.

We're not doing that.

So I'll, I'll confirm that with you in writing notes on that account.

And one of the things I read in here was about the condition of the current, uh, green.

Yeah, like as a factor.

Yeah, we all know we've been here for years doing the same thing.

So over the next year, is there anything that can happen to help it before this gets— the controls work is something that can probably be accelerated.

But none of the mechanical, like there's lead time on the equipment.

And I'd be lying to you if I told you I can do it any sooner.

So if I could just jump in for one second.

So the BMS system, the control system for the— is one of those pieces.

That's not a long lead time.

Before we can get started on actually changing the valves that those controls are connected to, that may take a little bit at the engineering side to finish up.

But there is a chiller that's also being installed in this building, a new chiller, which will correct a lot of the AC issues.

But the BMS system is the main thing we need to get corrected because it's controlling everything.

Now some of those controls are being operated manually, And causing some of the issues that we have.

And that chiller was purchased on the different— that's a different project.

It's this project.

Yeah.

And we can accelerate, like Ken said, we can accelerate that work.

The work that isn't dependent on lead time of equipment, the controls can go in fairly quickly.

And I know, yeah, that's— I mean, I think we're just— I'm tired of talking about the Green School HVAC and systems that aren't working and all that stuff.

So the sooner we can get it, the better.

But once that's done, we're not going to need additional— this is going to take care of the Green.

This is going to take care of the immediate issues with the Green.

The Green is 24 years old, 25 years old.

We don't have new buildings anymore, so these buildings are going to require other things.

We probably are not going to handle all of the the individual intake units.

We are going to handle the ones that are having issues, so there are going to be some issues that are going to still remain.

However, Green's problems, most of them are controls.

The fact that we don't have control over the building and the, the air-cooled chiller will definitely be a big change for that building.

Obviously a major cost saving.

Cost savings for the building too.

Thank you.

Can I get a motion?

Um, you make a motion first.

Motion to refer.

Second by Mr. Moniz.

Now, question, Mr.

Dice.

Thank you.

Through, um, the chair to my colleague, um, you mentioned about just going through the scope of work.

You mentioned the ductwork, is that HVAC?

Correct.

Um, sorry, go ahead.

No, basically I just want to make sure because, well, we're getting rid of the boilers and everything, so we're going with everything heat pumps.

Boilers are staying.

The boilers are staying?

Yeah, that's not part of it.

That's not part of it?

You're saying that we're getting rid of the fossil fuel, we're going to bring everything up to— well, we're not getting rid of 100% of the fossil fuel.

The grant wasn't large enough to do that kind of work.

So what we're doing is just read that.

Yeah.

I thought I read something about that there was secondary, like if it's, uh, if you'd have basically a backup, or like to, um, you're not getting rid of the old, you're just making this new so that you'll have less reliance on the old.

Uh, yeah, that's a fair way to say it.

Yes.

So all the unit vents and all that stuff is staying in the hot water?

Yes, I believe so.

So the heat pumps are only for Just the rooftops.

Mini splits, are you guys having— I thought— yeah, let me— a point of information, I just don't see— I'm looking through, so I didn't give a detailed scope of work in the presentation, so I can follow up with it.

I think he's got it on the screen.

That's what he's reading.

I have the scope.

I'm looking at the scope of work right now.

I just don't see anything about the ductwork that Mr. Muniz was asking about.

So the ductwork will not be replaced unless it's damaged.

The ductwork will be cleaned, we'll prepare it.

But as Mr. Smith said, there's— they're not going to let a sick system exist.

We are going to take care of it before the system goes back into play.

And the mold issue at the— was a dehumidification issue that we took care of.

And we take care of every year now.

So we the complaints of that kind of situation in schools hasn't come up this year.

One of the hottest summers we've had in a long time.

So, so mine, for that reason.

So I guess my understanding is everything in the scope of work, that's not all the work that needs to be done to fix the— it's not— we're not, we're not turning the system, we're not, we are not replacing all of the HVAC design equipment in the building, that this is a third of— a quarter of what it could possibly cost to do a building this size.

This is the largest elementary school we have.

And hot water staying the same, the hot water delivery?

Yes, yes.

We do have boiler needs in that building, and accepting this is not necessarily saying we wouldn't accept an MSBA project to follow on a different time.

But right now, MSBA is not an option for this building while we have this one in play.

The main piece of this, to be totally honest, the main piece of this project is the BMS system as far as I'm concerned, because we don't have control of the building that we'd like to have.

And if we were just to fix it, on our own, how much would that cost outside of this?

So this whole project, $2.9 million, it would probably cost us a pretty penny to fix all those controls.

This is— you're getting over $3 million in value for the upgrades being made to the school, funded by a grant at no cost to residents of Fall River.

But in order to get the controls to work, we have to pay $3 million, whether it's through a grant or through us, because the controls don't work the way I— yes.

Yes, have to pay a few million bucks to get the controls to work.

Yeah, even with old equipment.

And, you know, it's rewiring the whole building.

So basically, it's not just putting a control in, it's, it's rewiring the whole building.

When's the last time you did a facility master plan?

Is there a plan?

A facilities master plan?

No, we haven't done it since we built schools.

So it's probably 25 years.

And this is great.

You know, that's right.

We were just talking about the I do have a copy of the master plan.

It's a 1998 document.

Yeah, especially where your buildings are, you know, it's not new anymore.

And Mr. Moniz has, since he's been on the committee, he's an expert in this field.

So he's asked multiple times to try to get this facilities committee to talk about a master plan as well as a school usage plan, because we sometimes like move somebody in one place and then 2 years later we're moving them to somebody else and we're making, you know, so he's mentioned that multiple times.

So I think working collaboratively with you all that we can— plus you position yourself for grants, MSBA.

I mean, there's a whole lot.

I mean, it's a cost for a district this size.

I mean, so we're doing this with, with Salem, Plymouth, Brockton, uh, Boston— no, not Boston.

Boston is exterior light.

Um, Stoughton, Westford, there's probably a dozen communities that we're working with right now, especially in the chemical space.

I read it in here, but just for the edification of the public watching, yeah, anybody, when you originally came to Fall River, because you were chosen as the vendor for Fall River, correct, as a whole.

So therefore it's not like something they can say, well, we can pick the Colin Company or the Kevin Company instead of Moresco.

You were picked in a— as a competitive process somehow from the city, so therefore you are our person.

We are the tool belt.

You're not mandated to work with us on any project across the board, period, point blank.

We are a tool.

We're an extension of your team.

If and when the city and/or the schools chooses to move forward with a project that has energy savings or water savings, we are an option.

But you could bid things out 149, you could bid them out 30B.

You're— we're your 25A partner.

You know, we're your energy services partner, vendor agnostic.

Technology agnostic.

We're not trying to sell any type of manufacturer.

We are completely agnostic from a financial perspective.

We're literally a solutions partner.

It's, it's odd to say as like a salesperson, right, because I've been on your side of the table as an elected official asking, you know, what, what do you, what are you really selling?

We're literally selling a solution.

We're agnostic.

It could be Mitsubishi, it could be Daikin, it could be like We're showing options and providing value in that.

So we're just— this is just a halfway solution as far as we're not touching boilers, we're not touching any of that stuff.

We're just taking care of a chiller, updating controls, and getting fresh air into that school, which we're getting through the economizers already if they're running.

So yeah, technically, yeah, we're supposed to be getting fresh air to the school no matter what.

That's the law anyway.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, this is not a 100% solution for green because we still have old boilers there.

We still have everything else that needs to be addressed.

Absolutely.

It's a part of that capital planning, sir.

Like, um, when it comes to energy savings, infrastructure improvements for building, water savings, like, we are your partner to go out and identify and flag those opportunities and come back to you with budgeted costs and savings.

Not every measure that we do is going to pay for itself through the savings, not in today's day or age, but we can show you high-level payback.

And that's what we're doing.

We can— over the next consecutive Wednesdays, we're going to walk through a number of the schools that have been prioritized, come refresh some of the numbers that we've pulled together that we could review collectively as a group too, if you want.

That'll probably be about a month and a half out by the time we're ready, but we're literally walking through the buildings 2 consecutive Wednesdays for both the schools as well as the city What's up?

What's up?

Motion's been made and seconded.

Uh, all in favor?

Aye.

None opposed.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're going to revert to 3.02, update on the city purchase of this condo.

See you next Wednesday.

Yeah, great to see you too.

Take care.

All right, take care.

What's going on this— what is it?

You want to talk about the purchase and sales?

What do you want to talk about?

Just an update.

Yeah, just general update, quick update.

I can tell you my quick update is going in there on a weekly basis a couple of days a week, how much work is being done.

There is so much being done.

The rooms really look great.

It's coming together, and the EEC staff is very, very pleased.

And we've had 300 students in there over the summer.

I mean, it's busy.

I can't speak— I can tell you can speak to the work that's going to be done this week, but tomorrow and Wednesday, we've asked a lot of things to get out of the hallways and the rooms to be cleared.

Because Lakeshore has 2 18-wheelers coming Tuesday to be unloaded, and all of the equipment and all of the new equipment to— and furniture and everything else to come in, and curriculum and everything else that Lakeshore is going to deliver Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

So there's going to be a lot of work over there this week.

But yes, why don't you just talk about the work and then let Aldo speak to the purchases and sales and that.

Yeah, so the biggest piece of of the work that happened at Bishop Connelly this summer was the removal of 2 science labs.

The existing science lab— most of the furniture in science labs is fixed to the building, electrical, gas, water, the drainage system.

So all of that had to be removed underneath, capped, sealed, disconnected, Then all of that furniture had to be broken up to take it out of the building.

It's a lot, very large pieces of very heavy pieces of furniture, stone tops.

So it— that work was probably the most intense work that we had for the entire project.

We replaced a couple of floors in the building with materials we had on hand.

And moving forward, we're getting those classrooms ready for Lakeshore to install.

Most of it is cabinetry.

A lot of the furniture came from the schools that they were at.

We were moving 15 classrooms there from the ELC at Stone and individual schools, and with those, some of the the furniture is not coming with us— teacher desks, teacher file cabinets, certain built-ins that we're not removing out of those classrooms that were pre-existing, but into these classrooms, which is why the Lakeshore delivery is coming this week.

So there'll be 15 classrooms added on to the current, which will bring us to a total of 33 classrooms at this particular facility.

One of the questions I just had was what the details of the P&S are, if you can send that to us at some point.

Yeah.

Aldo has it.

I don't, I don't, I don't have it.

That was on the city side.

Do we have it?

Yeah, I don't have— all I have on the, on our side is the fact that on the 31st, the document was sent to Washington, and then from Washington, it goes to— I guess I'm referring to the conditions of the sale.

Like, what is the agreement that the city's made relative to Bishop Con?

Like, we're going to have the property, the city owns it, but if we have the property, I want to know if they're binding us to anything via that, the conditions of the sale.

That's what I'm looking for.

So when they did this P&S, what does it say for the conditions of, uh, what are we going to be held that we have to do with that building?

We have to allow the 3 years of people to live there?

Do we have to allow forever somebody to use the gym?

Whatever, you know, any of those conditions we should know, and hopefully we should have been part of the process to know, well, don't agree to something that we can't commit to.

I know that CYO— I remember the night that we talked about Bishop Connelly with the city councilors, and they, they all wanted the CYO to remain in a remain to have the gym, we would— and we talked about it that night and said that we would not, we would not, you know, have police there if that was, you know, we're, we're not going to pay for those types of things.

We're not going to pay for the janitor to clean up after them.

So that's, if that was in there, you're right on.

But yeah, it's just the condition, so we don't have to go over it here.

Yeah, sure.

There's conditions that they might have set without communicating to us.

Okay, what those conditions are.

Like, for instance, when we first got told that— we were told that the people were going to leave there, the priests, and move out.

Then 3 months later, it was said that no, we got an agreement that they're going to stay for a couple years, just as an example.

So just looking for future— we don't give any contracts on any of the— and the city doesn't either— for fields and usage forever.

We do it by the board.

So a park board does the park board for each year.

They don't do it automatically.

School committee is the board of those.

You don't give permission to use every year.

Sylvia, school has to come before us to use the thing.

We don't give a blanket, you're going to use it forever, to anyone.

And that's my only concern is relative to— I don't remember that.

I remember that Alan Rumsey made mention that he wanted, when we were sitting there, that he was working with a couple of attorneys on the other side about some of that language that, that he had.

And then that was it.

And then it was maybe $50,000 check ready for the assurance.

Maybe we can just reach out, Miss Aldosia.

Maybe you can, you know, just— I'm just curious more than anything.

It's a great project.

I think it's needed.

Uh, but that's why I wanted an update.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's what was said in that meeting that day.

Alan Rumsey was going to look at it one more time, talk to the attorneys on the other side.

Um, and then, uh, the mayor said, is the $50,000 check ready?

We're ready to go.

And that was for the insurance.

So when they come back to us that says they binded the school committee to something, we're going to remember this conversation.

Yeah, that's, that's why I'm having it.

Mr.

Dice.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Chair, yes, you touched upon all the points I was gonna touch upon.

So I like to ask this one member if we can just get a copy of the purchase and sale Um, city administration should, um, send that to— I understand we don't have it now, but I don't have it, but we, we should get a copy of it, um, in our Friday memo to see.

We voted on this, we have a big, um, vested interest, so we can see what the city buy-in is to, um, same, same thing with the priest as well.

So that hopefully that'll come up with the, um, CYO, the situation, if there's any language in there and Last update I have separate from that question is update on the playground that we— everything's up to date, like, like on schedule.

So Henry will— Bishop Conley, that's right.

So it should be— it will be ready for school start.

Yes.

Thank you.

If I could have just done one piece about the— so the residence is a separate utilities.

So We've never paid any— we don't pay any utilities there right now because we're leasing.

However, when, when the ownership happens, at that point the bills for that particular area are not ours.

They were always being paid by the diocese, and whatever that agreement states, that will stay in place.

Did we pay the utilities on the school side under lease?

We don't.

No, it was all included.

And then On the layout of the building, the building layout is much better than our buildings because the gym and the auditorium are able to be isolated from the building.

So we wouldn't have any need for security or anything like that when those buildings are being used.

They can't get from one side to the other.

So the building is laid out better than our buildings.

We would have to follow our contracts.

For unions that says if we own the building and we're going to use it, we have to pay somebody.

Like, we'd have to honor that.

We can't just say, oh, there's an agreement.

We can't, but they don't— they won't have any duties in our buildings.

There is not one room that they use that they don't have to go in and clean up after.

They don't— they don't have to worry about people walking through a building.

There isn't any of our buildings that allow that.

There is a separation.

I agree with you.

I feel the same thing.

You know, we have— if you use the facility, you have to get a 4-hour minimum overtime for a custodian.

That applies to Conway, right?

You know, but that would apply.

It's not a free, uh, thing.

Well, I see what you're saying.

I thought you meant just about CYO.

If, yeah, if someone uses our facilities, I would think that they would have to rent them out.

We follow the same rules.

Uh, the tech department, Mr. Cabral said something, they couldn't get permission they wouldn't give permission to do a box to do the wiring.

Remember that?

Yeah, I remember hearing that, but I don't— if somebody can check on it now that this is signed.

Sure.

If now maybe they'll give us permission, uh, for him to do whatever.

They've been all over that bill.

I— yeah, gosh, they're there every day.

Yes, there was something about one particular box in order to get the fiber across or something over from, um something from Fiverr, they wouldn't give us permission to do.

But now maybe they'll be nice enough to do it.

Any other questions?

Thank you all.

3.03 is updating school traffic pattern study.

So you have 2 documents, one from us and one from Ty and Bond.

And both documents have different parts to them.

So Tyenbond sent this over on Sunday night, last night, and basically gives the observations.

They've been working since we signed the contract with them sometime in May— I'm sorry, late April— and did a lot of the work at the schools, drop-off pick up.

They go into detail in the document, Durfee and, and all of the buildings.

So everything that was on their list, they did.

Now they're going in depth on the schools that they— we had originally agreed to date first, the ones we were having issues with, specifically on the drain, on the Um, we had some stuff at Tansy.

We also had, um, they got highlighted.

Talbot, Laterno, Watson.

Laterno, your sheets right here.

Yeah, Laterno and— no, it's right there.

Oh, I'm sorry.

There we go.

So it's Laterno, Talbot, Watson, uh, Westall, and Green were the action, uh, schools for them to get started with and completely go through.

And then the others would follow as part of that overall contract with time.

But my only concern and why I put this on is because school year is starting.

And if we are going to change patterns and things, the time to do it is now.

So whatever you can do to them to— yeah, they're gonna, you know, make their recommendations.

This doesn't have any other recommendations, but Because they're not at that level yet.

But the sooner they can get them, we need them before we're going to start a pattern and then a month into school say we're going to do it, we're going to change it.

So that was why I wanted to just get a quick update.

And so some of the stuff that they did say was internal, so some of it was, yeah, you know, as we were moving in a school, you know, how we're getting the students out there, where the bus— we're going to be working more with the principals, get the kids in quicker.

We're moving, um, a bus pattern at Wazefanska.

Right.

They'll be going under the underpass, the overpass at the school, and down, and then it will bring all the buses in, and then we'll exit all the buses at the same time, bring them in.

Instead of stopping up at the top.

The only thing I want to say on that is, we have consistently always changed things just willy-nilly, and not necessarily with a company behind us.

So, that's why this was first started because we kept changing.

We would go to the city council and the traffic department and change patterns and half the street and what, and it really wasn't done in a professional way.

So I don't think we should be changing anything unless this company says we should change them.

So like you mentioned, Fonseca, the other one, they're not on their current list.

No, but that's a— that was us, and that, that was us talking to— well, I can't say Ty and Bon, but I did speak to, um, Kenny and I looked at it, and then at traffic I forget her name, but we're starting to talk about it, that when the buses come up, that's, that's because of all that construction that is down in it, down in that area.

When those— when the buses take that, they come in, I don't know how they come, but they take a right.

It's hard for them to take that right and go up at that, that front part.

If they were just to come in off the road and take a left and go down underneath the overpass, we could fit 8 buses down there.

They used to be like that, and then they got rid of doing it.

Because they said, my understanding is that some people just didn't like it.

Yeah, well, we've had requests for how does each school individually, without tying it on, do they have traffic?

And what we got was just nothing.

So, I hear what you're saying, and I'm not trying to say not to do that if it makes sense, the traffic, but we're utilizing this so that we're not going willy-nilly to them.

It sounds like what you said makes sense.

I'm just talking about us with our buses.

It's a safer route.

We can get all the— all tier buses right down underneath there and have them waiting.

Every— there's not a middle school, elementary school that I've ever worked at that the buses— I mean, they don't pull in and just open the doors and jump out.

They line them up, and elementary and middle, and all the teachers come out and the staff, they're all out there, and then all of a sudden it's 7:40, the door opens and all of them come out.

And there's staff out there, there's principal.

The way we're doing it now, when they get on that street, it is— I was there, I went there several times from April.

It's one of the— it's tough.

You can't move.

You're probably from that top end of that hill, you can't take a left.

The buses can't even— the buses could hardly move.

They had a couple— I saw a bus have to do a 3-point turn just to take the turn to get into that, that, I don't know what the side, what's that, that road?

Wall Street.

Wall Street, to go, I mean, it was awful.

And I was in the rain and I was standing out there watching, watching the kids.

So that was one of the buildings I made Penny go down and look.

I said, this can't happen anymore.

This is awful.

I mean, there were parents like they were, I gotta get to work.

But isn't redistricting settling some of these issues?

Do we know if that's going to have an impact?

At Fonseca?

No, of course not.

There's only one bus at Fonseca currently.

So I just think the moral of the story is to our principals and people that work in the school to not allow something that doesn't work to keep going all year so that in April or May, now you're dealing with it.

If it's not working in September and you try— like, we have to put our brains together to figure it out.

We just waited way too long, and then the complaints started coming in.

That's how we ended up getting Ty and Bond to give us— Mr. Davis, thank you.

Um, just, just because, um, I believe this was ordered by the school committee, um, several months ago, I'd just like to request in the Friday memo we get both the contract with Ty and Bond, the, um, purchase orders for, um, when we started the work, just So we can get somewhat of a timeline on what— from the school committee's vote to, um, to today.

And with that, I yield.

Easy enough.

Mr. Miller, anything?

No.

All right, thank you all.

Appreciate the update.

Just want to see what they have to say.

3.05, uh, update on transportation.

Yeah, the resident expert.

So I'll be honest, I'm really into the nitty-gritty of designing the routes.

The rollover for the school department happened on Friday, but I have looked and put together— I believe you got it on Friday— my projected routes.

I am happy to say that I had— I just say something first.

So the point of this is obviously there was a big to-do about the 17 million.

Correct.

The subcommittee and the full committee took your opinion, Mr. Pacheco's opinion, at the budget time we had one of these meetings.

And you indicated you can't get any savings, you can't hear as much, like you've done as much as you can.

Mr. Pacheco said the same.

Superintendent at the time, which was Mr. Raposo, said the same.

Everybody here said the same.

So $17 million was sort of the number.

So this isn't meant for a try to figure out, are you at $17 million?

We are all at $17 million.

What we just— the city kept saying that they're getting all this information.

We don't know what they got and what they didn't get, but they just cut the budget by $600,000 because for whatever reason.

So this was on this agenda basically to confirm we're still at $17 million.

We're going to see what happens in September, and obviously we're going to cut where we can and consolidate where we can.

And it's a— it's going to take some time that we're not looking— I'm not trying to say— I think we're going to be at $17 million, but I want to verify as we go that we're going to be at $17 million, not necessarily because the mayor said we're going to cut it to $16.5, we're going to cut it to $16.5.

Correct.

If you can, great.

I just don't think you can cut that much.

So this, what you gave us was fine.

This is wish list hypotheticals, the whole bit.

Yeah, great.

This will— we'll deal with it.

But for the purpose of this was I wanted to make sure we all clarify that we're checking it.

We're going to meet on a regular basis.

We're going to keep on asking how many routes, what's this, which we always do.

Absolutely.

How many times can you tier?

If you could tier 8 times, then you save a little bit of money.

If you can't So I think we've done as a subcommittee and as a full committee the best we can, holding you all accountable to say, is this the best price we can get?

So my only other question on that was the contracts are up.

Where are we at with it?

Is this going into year 4 or 5?

Like, are we— when are we going to bid these things again?

So this is year 2 for our bus stop buses, our McKinney And then it's year four, four of five for the special ed, which is the one trembling and wailing.

Right.

So next year, they got one more year.

Yes.

So but they are not this year because coming year is their fourth year.

Yes.

So we still got a whole another year before we can do a major change.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Thank you.

Requesting a question request in the Friday memo.

I'd like to see all emails, um, information that was provided from this school department to the city CFO and the mayor so we're, um, we understand where the city got their information from and suggestions that they can cut transportation.

I, I think the CFO— I don't understand what information.

So any information that was provided from us to— no, It's a question I'm asking.

Any information, whatever, has been provided from us to the CFO?

I'm just— I was at the committee to see.

I guess the answer to that is if there's nothing, he's looking for an email that says there was nothing.

Okay, you know what I'm saying?

Like, if there was no emails that went back and forth between— Miss Opke at public meetings says she looked, she reviewed this, she reviewed that, like as if she had information.

Yeah, the thing she said, oh, I got— I saw 5 buses were cut at For various— like, where did she get that from?

That's what we're trying to figure out.

It's not an accusatory question, it's a question of whatever the, um— but I'm saying I'm giving them the out that if there was none, a simple response saying there was no email communication, at least we get that, and then we know that there was none.

Not even just emails, whatever the city received for them to come up with their numbers, the school committee should receive.

I think that's— I agree.

I doubt that there's much there, but Yeah, no, I know.

That's, that's the point.

I think I just want to see how the administration on the city side came up with— Emily had mentioned to me that she went in and looked at our actual expenditures for the school and felt that since we're not— since we're no longer going to be busing to that school, she determined what the savings would be.

I believe the CFO mentioned Yeah, that was her feelings though.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Um, I, I think the CFO mentioned something about, um, what was it, Boston being cut at Viveris.

I thought I heard that's what he's talking about.

Yeah.

So after the fact, yeah, it's after information she received, like the redistricting meetings we had, we had mentioned that Viveris was now going to be a walking district school.

So, and we want to cut— like, not cut, but I, I think there's other issues with transportation.

I personally don't like the CERDA for our middle and senior high school.

I do not like CERDA.

I think there's inequities around, around the state, well, relative to how certain schools get a yellow bus and certain schools don't, how the state funds things.

It's just inequities that are existing.

I rode the bus with Chanel and Mr. Pacheco.

I wouldn't want to go on that bus to school.

We have situations where one, if you go to the Diamond School, you get a bus on the corner, you have an assigned seat or a valid seat.

We get in and you jump on a bus, there's 27 seats and 37 people, so you're holding on and this to that.

Like, it's a totally different dynamic for us.

So even with the savings, uh, with the $17 million, I think we should spend more money on transportation if we were doing it the right way, because some kids just don't want to Take it.

Then I look at here, we, we pay to buy buses.

Like, our high school kids have to go on SERTA.

Where does the Augustus High School kids have to go?

They get busing.

They get a yellow bus.

They don't go with SERTA.

So we have a policy that says Midlands and high school takes a SERTA bus, but Augustus gets a yellow bus.

I think the policy, that's just the what the, the administration adopted.

I wouldn't even— that's not even the formal policy of school committee.

So I don't think we should be blaming ourselves for that.

But the point is, if we're saying whether it's through a vote or just through inherently the way it is, our middle and high schools take the certain bus.

That's what we inherently do.

The high school.

The high school.

So at that point, the high school that is a charter high school gets a yellow bus, and that same school doesn't have to work with us on this time of day to tier the buses.

So we're paying a one Is it a one-shot?

So we tier all of our people.

So we're falling all over ourselves to tier to save some money, but when it comes to the charter school— I've attempted to get them to change their time.

They're getting a full— so, but the point I'm making is just that that needs to be risen to the level.

So everyone wants to complain, the city hall, the mayor, everybody wants to say, oh, why can't we save any money?

Here's an example of each bus is what, $100 grand?

So there's $100,000 that we're not tiering anything.

We're paying $100,000 for one bus.

At a school and they don't even want to talk about it.

So I'm just throwing it out there because I, I like the charter school, I like all the charter schools, but what's fair is fair.

Go ahead.

I know you're going to say the charter school doesn't dictate— yeah, they don't dictate the bus time, we do.

They have to follow, they have to comply to us from whatever.

I wonder, and who made the decision about high school here?

We've always just utilized, uh, sort of like the, um— but I'm saying a decision must have been made.

Not us.

Not us.

You know, it is the administration level.

I'm not saying this administration, but it's just because it's the wording.

So I graduated from Durfee in '96 and it was— it's past practice.

I would say the case, it's just past practice that at the high school level, and a lot of times when we had very little money, I remember us having to say we're going to give $400,000 in bus passes, you know, to the certain students.

And so it has always been the high school When we had this debate, you know, a year ago about transportation and whether the 2 miles exists for high school.

So like they can jump on anywhere, but when it's 2 miles— so if you live 2 miles away from Deerfield, you're entitled to transportation.

That said, transportation is the city bus, where I would make the argument that no, quite honestly, if that's the case, they should get a yellow bus to that house and location.

Of course, there's 100,000, but so if you wanted to say you're within the 2 miles, you got to jump on a Certa bus.

But if you're more than 2 miles, we still don't give those folks and children and families a yellow bus.

And technically the law says you're supposed to give them like specific, um, so I— it just needs to be looked at.

So the good part of the 17 was that that's what we needed.

Now we can throw all this stuff on the table for the counselors They have a thing on their agenda to create this subcommittee thing and all that other— I'm all for it, let's talk about it.

But at the end of the day, they're not going to like to hear some of the things that we have to say, like we just said today.

And, uh, it is what it is.

I was saying charter schools, they have to follow our rules.

Yeah, they can't dictate the times that we transport.

High school.

Yes, but we can say our bus will be there at 7 AM.

So how much savings would it be if you had— were able to tier a bus with RBC?

And what would need to happen for that?

So a single route is $111,000.

So I have 6 of those, 3 middle school and 3 high school for RBC.

So $666,000.

If it were— if I could tier the middle and the high school together.

If they started at the same time, you theoretically could save one, like the $111,000.

If I could get the middle school to start, say, 7:00, you're talking August 20th, you're talking August, correct?

Right.

So if they have their times don't line up whatsoever with And honestly, I think our school's pretty, pretty well tiered.

So I would make a recommendation that somebody in this administration emails the mayor and lets him know that if we wanted to save some money, and the city council, this is one way.

And we've tried, as you said, and they have refused.

Let the mayor and the city council know that tomorrow morning.

Anything else on transportation?

2 items I want to bring up.

So, um, recently saw her in the, um, the warrants.

Just, I just had a little— just, I guess I was a little bit confused on how this came about.

So, um, I saw her for a June bill.

Um, I guess my question would be, are we all caught up to date on like all our bills with our transportation companies?

Yes.

So that invoice that you saw for a little bit over $2,000 was a credit that they gave.

They applied twice.

They applied to the the May invoice for out-of-district, and then again on the June invoice, right?

The June invoice, it was, um, a balance of $245,000.

No, no, that was the bill that we paid in June.

The balance is $2,610.

I believe that was what was on the warrant.

So that's paid.

That— so that $245,000, that's a, that's a receipt.

That's not even a bill, correct?

That was already paid.

Okay.

And, um, last question is, um, Not sure if it's policy by policy per school.

Um, is it like— obviously each school has different start and end times.

So for example, for the end times, is there like a specific policy where the, um, the buses arrive maybe like 5-10 minutes before the bell, or how's that work?

Is it per school usually?

So in the morning, we do our best to have the buses arrive 10 minutes before the start school.

At the end of the day, first-tier schools, the buses are required to be there 10 minutes before.

Second-tier schools, honestly, it's as soon as they can get there, because they're coming from another school.

And I've been on time most of the time.

On the administration level, has there been any complaints about students getting let out, let out early on the buses?

I haven't had any transportation.

Right now we have a few that want to ride that are not going to the— thank you.

So Morton Middle School, they're not letting the kids out early on the bus before the end of the school day?

I'm sorry, Colin, at the beginning or end of the school day?

What he's referring to is school day ends at 2:15 at any given school.

Usually in the school, the bell will ring at 2:15, and at that point is when everyone gets released from their education to go out to the bus.

We have gotten reports throughout the year that they're letting certain populations, other kids, go out at 2:05 or get you out earlier.

So maybe it's just a clarification to the principal to say that the school is— students are coming out to the bus by 2:15.

2:15, 2:20.

I don't know what's going on inside the building, right?

I also need to say that it is a first-tier school, so those buses do need to load and go so they can drop off their students in order to make it to Spencerport.

I guess the one issue with that, if that, that's the case, it's a hypothetical, that's the case, they're letting the students out 5, 10, 15 minutes early, at least on the reports I'm hearing.

Are they— it doesn't affect Like, that's the requirements around time, around learning.

It would.

I will say this, and I was a principal who had a lot of buses.

I did that.

I don't know if you ever did it as a principal.

I mean, they— buses have to— the buses are pulling up at 2:10, we release at 2:15, they want those kids right on the bus as quickly as possible.

So if— and there is time in the day that is built in that you're not I mean, you know, we— yes, do we want 900 minutes or 960 minutes a year?

Yeah, of course we do.

But the amount of time that's passing— that's why they don't do passing times anymore.

So Mr. Diaz's point is well taken.

I think— I hope you just take it as such.

Yeah, the issue with the 900 or 990 hours in the past, the committee has asked the prior superintendent for copies of the 990 report or 900 report for each school.

They did not have them.

Okay.

So then it was like, well, we didn't know.

A few that we did see actually are over.

So if you took, let's say, 5 minutes, if you added up the time and then it's 5 minutes per day times 180 days, gives you a certain buffer, right?

So if you were at a school where you just barely at the 900, it would be a problem to let the kids leave 1 minute early because you're not meeting it.

It.

But if you're at a school where you are— have a 47 hours in our actual teacher contracts, have a pretty good, uh, rate for how many hours they actually have to teach.

Some schools are like, you can only teach 6.5 hours maximum of instruction time, then you take in everything else.

So they're like, like this.

My experience here in Fall River is that we're not at 901 or 991.

The high school, for instance, was one we questioned, and they used to have a, what's called a free period, and I thought they would get rid of those.

But so ultimately they were over by, I think, 60 hours when all said and done.

So a minute to that school doesn't matter as much, but I think your point is to just check on it.

Everybody wants to be in school.

It could impact transportation though, so you check on it, right, where then we would have— that's what— and that's one of the reasons that could be a cost.

And I will say this, you You know, in all transparency, I'm sure that principals in the room— we got rid of passing time.

We didn't build that into the schedules.

There was a time where schedules started to say 8:00 to 8:50, 8:50 to, you know, 9:37, 9:37 to, you know, if you're a high school principal, you know, that's where you start.

I'm just saying, I'll speak for myself in that I was a stickle for everything.

I know, yeah, and it got me in a little trouble with some people because I was holding them accountable to that minute.

I get it.

Well, realistically, you have to give 2 minutes of transition.

You can't just get rid of them all.

We also have lunch.

When you have lunch and you say, well, let's— everybody should have a half an hour of lunch, well, that doesn't count towards these minutes.

18 minutes, you know.

So like, you have to— the job of an administrator is very difficult sometimes to meet all those, uh, standards.

To get back to transportation, people have no idea that when you're multi-tiering, things happen and you're going to show up late.

And then to the superintendent's question, there was in the past times where a bus was late all the time because they just can't get there and they're trying their best.

And it— but we have to be honest with it, the fact that that does happen.

So if we said instructionally, oh, this doesn't work, and if money was not an issue and we weren't trying to save the city money on transportation You know what we would say?

Just 2-tier the bus because we can't get the children there quick enough.

We don't do that, so you all are like busting your, you know, you know what's to try to get it so that you're here, you're here, you got 3 tiers.

Like, how many tiers do we have?

And they look at it like as if we are just sitting here saying let's spend $17 million willy-nilly, which isn't— I know it's not the case, uh, but I would say we should have a meeting probably in October after the— about transportation, where we now— you have a month of time to figure it out, and we'll see.

And I for one don't think we're going to have the savings, and I for one think we might be a little more than 17, but I could be corrected.

Yes, um, I guess one question is about this transportation committee that they formed.

And again, I think, um, I made my comments clear to the city council, but I think— I guess my question would be, what is the administration's plan to appoint members that are on the backup there.

They want 2 members of the school committee.

So, um, you interested serving on a city committee about transportation?

You don't have to, I'm just asking if you have a lot of time.

All right, so do you want to be on?

Sure.

I make a motion that we appoint, uh, Mr. Diaz to the city council, uh, advisory committee.

Yeah, I haven't gotten the information.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So ordered.

Who seconded?

Mr. Morris.

Let's move on a little bit to the 306, the renewal of the lease, Sagamore.

Thank you very much.

So I've done a little research on that lease.

Because I wasn't familiar with it before.

The fact that it has completely run out, there's no extensions on it, means that really, even though we've got materials in the warehouse, the Inspector General's Office expects us to rebid that, and even put in the bid a line for cost of relocating all of our assets that are in there to a new warehouse.

And, even in looking at their past history on those types of bids, it's pretty evident that the current bidder is going to win, because they have no cost to relocate.

They still want to put you through the motions of putting it out for the public, for that building.

So, my recommendation is that we, you know, this week put it back out to bid.

Put out specifications of what we have.

What is it, 28,000 square feet?

28,000.

And then, you know, bid it by the cost of the square foot.

Whether or not there's electricity and other items that are included in the bid that we would have to pay for.

How long would the cost of relocating all of our items— the actual example I saw, they had the current bidder had zero and the new bidder had $180,000 for bidding.

So, it's just— I feel it's a waste of time, but this is what the state requires us to do.

Because maybe somebody's going to give us the space for $2 a square foot.

You know, we're paying $5 right now, I think, which is much cheaper than any other rent I could find out there.

I found it.

My only question on it is, yeah, I think this was out to bid when we first did it.

Yes.

How long ago was that?

Do you remember?

3 years.

It was 3 years.

And it was similar to the $140,000?

Is that— is this caught by $10,000 a year?

Is that— it's about that.

I think it was $120,000, $130,000, $140,000, you know, so Personally, when we go out to bid, um, I feel like we should do something different.

Like, we should have our own building for the money that we're spending.

We're spending whatever, you know.

I think right now we're at, you know— so what I would recommend we do is we do a 1-year bid and put the pressure on ourselves to say within 1 year we're going to figure out under our master plan or some other way, whether it's Connelly Properties, Globe, whatever it is, that it's going to put the pressure on everybody to say, we're only on the 1-year lease with this, and then that'll allow us to say, okay, for $150,000, which would be the next year's lease, if we can put up a building somewhere to do it at another place, if we bind ourselves to $140,000, $150,000, $160,000.

I think it said in here we could get out at any time, or something along those lines, but— Do you want to do a 1-year with 2 1-year renewals, since we're probably going to end up in the same spot?

So at least my personal opinion would be just as much flexibility as you would do like in your own house.

You would want to be having flexibility, but I think the goal of, at least from what I can understand, would be to have our own place.

When we're spending this kind of money, we should have our own.

Um, I would love to see you put up a steel building with an overhead door that allows you to bring in a large truck and you could have One floor, you could have a forklift, you could have shelving that goes up 16 feet inside, you could have a cage for materials in there, you know, plumbing materials, electrical materials.

You could have a heated office space within if you got the— if you got the square footage somewhere, like you said.

But I don't think we're— it's not like we— when it's talking $150 grand per year, I don't think we're talking about a financial Like what you're talking about, and I'm not in the business, but I don't think that it's going to cost a lot more than one of these years of a lease in order to do the building that you talked about.

When it's like we're going to spend $150,000 but the lease is $8,000 a year, you say, hey, I'd rather just spend the $8,000 a year than put the $150,000 in.

This is real money that we've been spending for 3 years now, for 3 more.

It comes down to the land.

If you've got the land for free, if you— if I haven't met a Bishop Connolly yet, but if you've got the land there to put down a 25,000-square-foot building.

We'll get a price on a steel frame building, which if I recall is probably about $100,000 for that.

The slab, maybe our guys can do the work to bring the utilities in.

I'm not sure again whether the city would do the plumbing for the sewer and the water.

But it's feasible.

It's not a crazy thing.

I would say we should do whatever you think.

You know, they get referred to the full committee.

I will do a 3-year, but with 1 year, 1 year with a 1-year option, with a 1-year option.

So you can get out?

Yes, at the end of 1 year you can decide we're not renewing.

Correct.

That's— I would agree with that.

Mr.

Dice?

Thank you.

I agree with, um, the CFO, um, whatever they said except for the, um, 1-year, 1-year releases.

I think this is something that we should move on relatively soon.

I think Bishop Connelly, we have the land.

My one question that I'm asking this, this Bishop Connelly question for, because of this, do we, because there's a lot of woodlands obviously, do we do a wetland study yet?

We have a wetland study.

24 acres of the land is wetlands.

24 of the 55 acres are wetlands.

So can we, I mean, I don't know how big that would be.

Is this something that looks feasible putting a This property, yeah, the property has— there's plenty of Highland buildable lots on that property.

So we could put a warehouse.

We could put a warehouse, but the problem is we have to own it, and you can't put something on something that you don't technically own yet.

So that's why the timing is making sense, where what Mr. Petronio was saying is he gets it, and you can see that he understands what he's doing.

So when working with everybody, when he figures out we're going to actually own the property on such and such a day, then he can plan.

It might be 1 year, it might be in the middle of the second year, it might be the second year, but at least if the plan is there, now he knows we're not going to be bound to that 3rd year.

So you're going to have an out.

So whatever bid you have.

So my own question is, this amendment that we have before us, does that do what you just said about having 1-year renewals?

No, this is— this shows for— this is a 3-year.

Amendment.

So what I think we should do is— and you don't need the school committee's permission to go out to bid, correct?

Okay, so we have to do— because the way— maybe I'm wrong, but this was given thinking that we could just do it.

It's Petronio saying upon further review, we can't just do it.

So this is null and void.

So right now, so we should take— so right now it's sort of going to be an at-will tenant for a period of time and probably owe Like a couple of months, you know, 1/12 of the thing.

But what he just explained to us was upon his coming on reviewing this, we have to go out to bid even if it doesn't make sense, right?

So we have to just let them do it.

The question is going to be in the bid, do you want it to be 1 year or like the 3-year as he's suggesting?

And my feeling is to go with what he's suggesting because he knows what we want to do and get out if we can.

So I'll make a motion to table this.

I don't know that we need to do anything, to be honest, because what's going to happen is he's going to go out to bid.

Once he goes out to bid, now that process takes us to a new thing to us, which is a review of the bids.

Superintendent has to say, here's the bids, here's the winning bid, and then it would come to us more as a contract, like, uh, on this, on the agenda, or our new, better, new amendment.

Okay.

Makes sense?

Makes sense.

Okay, so that one's done.

Um, last 2 we have a discussion about to refer 2 job descriptions, and Superintendent or designee to talk about.

The first is the supervisor in the Fall River Public Schools nutrition.

So we heard, you know, I think at my first meeting, Kathy and I, the superintendents, in my first meeting, um, that position for nutrition had gone, and then we really didn't have— and we do not have a liaison between the school department, our— the school department and Whitson's, or Whitson's and the school department.

So looking for a supervisor managerial position to work from the school side, to work in that, I guess, the second assistant position to Bob Cutting to be— work with our employees, to oversee the employees, to work with Mr. Pacheco and myself and the CFO and that side of the— not so much on the academic side, more on the financial, on the day-to-day.

School committee, school department supervisor.

Supervisor.

I think it makes a lot of sense personally.

Any questions?

Um, Mr.

Dice, thank you.

So this position we've created, this will be a union position?

No, no, management.

That's not it.

Okay.

And, um, are we going to, um, I know it says salary range TBD.

That was right.

I know, I know we probably spoke about that, but is that something we can, um— I sent you that they have a person in position, or like, like position, is at $77,000.

So, so I was— yeah, so I was giving you— that's what they're paying now.

So you could give me a range so that we can— we have a motion.

Make a motion to approve $70,000 to $80,000 as the range and the job description as listed.

Second.

Second.

Mr.

Dice, more questions?

Thank you.

So, um, Do we have other supervisor positions in nutrition currently?

I believe we do.

Supervisor positions?

We have 2.

They're called field supervisors, but it's not the same level of supervisor anywhere near.

It's a much lower level.

So nothing in here is conflicting?

We're not conflicting any responsibilities or anything?

No, no.

I just think it's a good thing that we discussed it.

The administration heard what we said and is bringing us back something that we felt needed to be done.

So that's why I made the motion.

I think it's important to do.

So all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Nobody.

Thank you so much.

Last item, executive confidential assistant to the deputy and chief financial officer.

Yeah, we, we pretty much drained out Paula Soares, the superintendent and I.

It's very difficult to keep up with both of us.

Deb Cabral works on the school committee and the superintendent, and so she takes direction from the superintendent and the school committee.

So she's working on getting information.

Aldo and I are new.

We're sort of up there by ourselves.

And we need support in that office, someone that is confidential and understands really what my job is on operations and classified and confidential information, whether it's personnel, whether it's operations, whether it's working with Aldo on salaries or working with the superintendent on negotiating a contract.

And with Aldo, the 3 of us, this position is very much like a Paul LaSore's position in a confidential way.

It's an executive high-level position.

It's somebody that should have financial analytical skills, someone that understands negotiations, weekly payrolls, everything that we do.

Everything that we do.

Being able to do analysis, being able to pull reports from Munis, you know, that has some technical backgrounds as far as computers goes so they can extract data from Munis to help us.

Complete what we're working on.

So it's exactly the volume of work that's been going on.

I mean, we cannot keep up with the volume of work, whether it's requests for FOIAs.

It's overload right now.

So in order for people to be able to come in and do the work that they're doing, you know, as you said, it's not unusual for top-level administrators especially to have a confidential.

It looks like this is You're going to require some skills.

It's not just a genetic— it's not just a secretary.

No, not, you know, minimizing secretary, but this has skills that are specific to the duties that you both have.

But as I read through it, it really started making me think that this is going to be able to assist some HR functions as well, because like when there's some things in here, you got to find this, you got to do that, like it's not going to be for HR, but like the liaison I know there's just so much going on.

So I'm in favor of it, just that we have to look at what do we have for all the executive secretaries.

So I think maybe let you guys come back to us before it— but on the 19th with a plan for what are we doing with the people we currently have.

I mean, you have to say you're talking about senior level staff, senior level secretaries.

So who is the secretarial to those folks?

Because like in the 19th, let's say some of the— like I would, you know, ask the questions, well, we have a person already that's half CFO, half COO.

What do we do with that person?

And I don't want to— I don't want to go over that here, but that is a question that's on anybody's mind.

Like we just can't keep adding, you know, like another position without— what are we going to do with that position?

What is that sort of fallout of individual executive secretaries?

We got to try to We need another space building for everybody.

Well, I— or at least we can divide it up.

You got a lot of— you got some empty spaces here.

But I would like to say this to that, just that the inquiry alone, to be able to output the information, whether it's to the district, to the principals, to the staffing, to the parents, to the school committee, and to keep up with what we need to do at this level.

And I'm not talking about the school committee, I'm talking about the organization itself.

Um, I have heard, you know, we need this on time, or we need this, or we need something else.

Or I think that's— I mean, on the COO side, I know that there was a shared, um, and, and we're not going to get into that, but I think there's a lot to do on that side.

I think that he and I, um, we've been here in these types of positions for a long time.

We can do a lot.

It's just keeping us moving forward.

And I don't want somebody that is— that doesn't have the skill set, nor is it confidential.

Because especially negotiations, when you're talking about money, especially being behind an executive session, I don't like to talk about any of that.

Or names or files or anything when it comes to being executive and becoming confidential.

That's really— I mentioned the Freedom of Information.

The superintendent might have mentioned that we have, like, I think in the draft of this, uh, deputy's job description was to try to move the FOIA requests over to you, which, take it from Deb's, uh, job description bring it over to you.

I think that has to be understood here as well, that this person could, under your direction, do some of that.

Like, because we've been talking about it for a long time to say we need to hire somebody to do that, whether it was an HR person or whoever.

But between now and the 19th, it might be it.

Just— I'm just throwing out suggestions for the full committee that we talk about some of that piece so that if we did acknowledge that now, we're not going to come back a month later and say, oh, and now we need a person to do the FOIA request.

So I think it's a good selling point to say we need another person so we can breathe and do what we need to do, but I'm not coming back to you next month.

As long as there's no clarification on what everybody else is doing, because we're moving everybody around, everybody's getting some lighter weight now.

Well, we should be nice from what I'm hearing, because everybody sounds like the overbooked.

So now we're taking some stuff off and now we're adding— I think by the 19th.

So like, if we forwarded this to the full committee, we're just basically allowing them to come back in 2 weeks or, you know, 10 days, whatever the dates are, where they can have a one-pager that articulates how they're going to see the— all of these different pieces.

So we're not going to get through the answer right now in this public meeting.

But between now and then, they can take our suggestions and come back with a further explanation to make sure everybody's doing what they need to do.

Mr.

Dice, thank you.

So, um, I have a few.

I'm not, as I said, um, my request for information on Friday, I'm not opposed to the position itself.

It's clearly needed.

My position, my question is first, where is this?

This is going to be a new position.

Yeah, so it's not a transfer of another department.

This is a brand new position.

Well, it'd have to be because you don't have a, a deputy, nor do you have a— you do not in the district have a second confidential executive secretary.

She's not— her job spec on Deb Cabral— not saying she, I'm sorry, this is Cabral— it's not— it doesn't say executive confidential secretary.

I think we need to look at, you know, an organizational change.

I don't want to get in the way of this job, but my point is we need to take a look at— and I don't have a problem looking also at senior staff.

What are their administrative assistants doing?

How are we clarifying that or categorizing that?

At the same time, I couldn't agree more.

Like, this secretary here for the School Committee for Superintendent is highly confidential.

As is Paula Soares in my office, as is somebody that, you know, that you're willing to actually split.

You're not— Miss Cabral's not confidential?

Well, her title, like, as I said, I think it's all wording.

So just from your perspective on what the school committee sees, so, okay, we look at it like as if we have 5 confidential executive secretaries because we include Your personal, you know, Paul, Deb, the 2 other ladies that work upstairs for Mr. Raposo.

We, we're including them all in confidential executive secretaries.

What they're talking about is an additional, like a confidential, like a super confidential to the superintendent, deputy superintendent level, almost like there'll be a hierarchy.

If I'm— that's exactly how that is.

But the issue we have, but we've been include them all equal, I think, is what I— Correct.

No, am I wrong?

No, Mr. Aguiar is exactly right.

Correct.

Right.

But we— but the superintendent and I, we do not look at it like that.

No, I know.

I'm just telling you the perspective from our— like, correct, when you presented on the 19th.

Yes, this is something— but I hear, you know, it's something I've looked at since I have gotten here.

So I think it's worth it to take a look at senior staff and what their administrative assistant whatever you're calling them.

But the issue is, and this is— I'm reclaiming my time— is we, all 3 assistant superintendents have a secretary, um, facilities have a secretary.

We have many different positions here, and all those 3 assistant superintendents have one secretary, but the, um, CFO and the deputy would share one?

That doesn't make any sense.

And if I could just get just a little bit of clarity on that Just because— so at one point, facilities had its own clerk, right?

Yeah, who did a lot more than just clerk work, but they had their own clerk.

They didn't share it with any other department, only did facilities and operations.

That position, that person retired, and at that time Kevin and I decided that the clerical help in 290 Rock would be mutually sharing all the work for the district.

And I said, but the problem with that is I have more requests, more requisitions than any other department.

And it's every— no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just trying— so the history why we're sharing that person is because I lost that person That person now is doing other work.

The person that Kevin did send a lot of work down there now had equal share of work.

So he didn't have anyone doing— and mind you, Kevin's use of the administrative assistant that we share was 1/3, and I had 2/3 of it because everything that comes through my office goes through that person, which is just about every single requisition that's not handled by an individual on the other side.

So that's, that's how that— why we shared was because there was another position given to the— that side of the house, the finance side of the house, that used to belong to facilities, right?

So, um, So, 2 points to that.

I guess first would be, if this is referred and approved today, you would be getting a full-time— the move would be to give you the full-time secretary position.

I'm more in favor of that.

I have more of an issue with— we have 3 assistant superintendents who both each individually have a secretary, but our CFO and our deputy superintendent are going to share one.

But I think the issue that I— I concur with what you're saying.

I concur with what Mr. Pacheco said.

There used to be a specific clerical position.

The problem that we have here is that the clerical positions were all in the union, clerical, and they were relatively low pay.

And in order to get somebody, you know, compensated in order to recruit somebody to maybe a higher skilled position or the like, You needed to make it an S-9 position, a non-union position, calling it executive confidential clerk, whatever those words are, was how it got created so that we could— these people would pay.

To Mr. Diaz's point, and the superintendent just acknowledged it, that we have to look at all of the things.

So along with this isn't to say this is how it's going to be forever.

It might come back that they, after looking at this for a few months, come back and say, you know what, we need 2 more clerical people and not 2 non-union people.

We have sort of been sold on the fact that the executive secretary confidential, whatever that, as Deb concurred, is in all these different places are all equal.

And they're not.

There's one for special ed.

Special ed is its own animal, you know, whatever.

So, that position might, probably shouldn't be called, when you call something the same thing, but they're doing vastly different things, that's where the problem comes in.

We call them all executive assistants.

So we're naturally thinking there's 7 executive assistants all equal, where it should be like one should be called special education specialist, something like that, which identifies that role.

Somebody else might be in Mr. Pacheco's, he might have a need for 2 basic clerks to do his paperwork rather than one different— all different types of But we've identified them all equal, so they're vanilla as far as what we think.

You all are coming in thinking, no, they're not all equal, because that's true.

But I'm just telling you the perspective of, uh, the committee, right?

Different skill sets.

And also, we've got to look at the org chart.

I mean, over the next few months, it might change with, with who reports to whom and whether it's, you know, built to fulfill our needs.

I might say 2 points to that.

I think, um, what we just all explained of doing that work, looking at the org charts, uh, seeing who reports to who and renaming titles, that's something that should be done before this comes before us.

My, my, just my opinion.

They don't have to answer this one.

I can answer this one for them.

Right now we have a situation that time is of the essence because of the trying to drink water through a, you know, a fire hose.

And everyone's experiencing it.

So naturally, if it was— if we didn't have a time crunch, I would say sure.

These folks need a person.

We need somebody to handle the FOIA requests.

We need to— so I'm in favor of it for this particular reason, with the acknowledgment of the administration that they're going to look at it in the next year and come back to us with what works and what doesn't.

I bet you it might not look exactly like it does now for those folks, but we also are in August We've given individual contracts to folks that they know they have.

So they have to look at human resource-wise, how long do we have these people for under contract?

How do we change it?

Like, it's not— they just can't do what we would want.

Okay, cut that one, cut this one.

But my concern is I don't think the administration is going to come back and say, here's how we can streamline.

I'm worried the administration is going to come back and say, we're going to need all these more different positions, clerical, executive assistant, And so I think at that point, that's when you take up the problem.

The most immediate need is to get this done quick, stop, find the right person so that we can move on.

Like, 6 months from now and they come back and say, well, we want— like I just said it, we don't— like, next month don't come back and, and ask for a FOIA person, like, from HR, you know?

Like, I can acknowledge that they're not going to do that.

If they come back to us, I'm not voting for it.

So is that assistant to the school committee position?

Is that going to That's gone now.

Go.

That's going to go away.

We're going to pull that off.

Oh, I'm sorry, you're talking.

We're going to pull that off and clean everything up.

All right, give us a call.

That's already off the website.

That's already taken down.

I took it down on Friday.

So I think given that we also have an issue, like Mr. Petronio is just coming in and we have budgets that we didn't approve exactly all the lines like we typically would.

I mean, the RPA thing had $3 million for 25 kids and now it's like So there's things going on all over the place.

We have to— like, normally I would ask, where are you going to get the money from very specifically?

I'm not doing that in this case because you're still digesting what's happening.

We do have, I think, some places that we could use that unfilled positions or whatever to, to balance it.

And then you would come back to us with a transfer into your department, uh, line.

But I think we— and as we fill positions, you can fill anywhere from $65,000 to $95,000.

So you've got, what, 100 open positions out there?

So it's a lot of money that's still there, you know.

And you make a good point, we're assessing things every day and we're working as hard as we can, as quick as we can, to put things in place, to report to everybody what we're seeing.

And we're obviously, if we're coming forward, we're seeing a need.

So, you know, I, I think there's got to be a level of let's, as you said, get some things in place.

We're happy to review and to take a look and talk to senior staff and have everybody review exactly— I know what's happening in my office, what the requirements are.

We work very closely with, again, your executive assistant, even titles.

I think your title, Deb, is what, administrative assistant?

Correct.

That's where all the other ones are as well.

The only one that's an executive is yours.

That needs to be looked at.

And with it, you know, you and I have to acknowledge one of the first things we did in Brockton with very little money was take a look at what the expectations were for our— not only our senior staff, but also our executive assistants or our confidentials, and making sure it makes sense what somebody is called and what their expectations are for work.

And I am expecting that's happening.

When you said you're evaluating every day, Mr. Petronio is not even here full-time yet.

I personally expect that over the next 6 months, 8 months, you're going to be evaluating a lot of things and coming back with, this doesn't make sense, that's how we should do it better.

Just like the building, you know, we had this discussion today.

I think we're better off leaving this meeting than we were before.

But I think we have to give them the opportunity to, to do it.

But at the same time, time is of the essence.

So I think we should make a motion to move this forward along with the immediate allowing of posting the position so that they can try to get these people going subject to the school committee vote on the 19th.

Can I make a statement?

Deb is sitting here.

You know, there isn't a Friday we're leaving at 6:00, 6:30, you know, you've kind of had a long week, and she's still here.

I mean, there are people that don't necessarily follow like an 8-to-4 schedule.

This— and it does give us a chance to take a look at that.

I just want to acknowledge that.

I appreciate that.

I want to thank them for the hard work and the time, you know, early in the morning we're coming in doing things.

So, you know, I want to make a motion that we approve the position as listed with the permission to post subject to an 8/19 formal vote by the full committee.

Mr.

Moments, do you have a comment or would you like to second?

Oh, Mr. Diaz, I have one last question.

Thank you.

You second everyone?

I'll second, but I'm not sold on voting.

Um, so I— my— the— that part-time administrative position to the school committee was, um, it was a part-time position.

How many hours at $40 an hour?

At $20.

And, um, we pulled it.

I just— no, I understand that, but this position, there's no salary range in here.

What be the— because I— because my understanding is we come with a job description, we have a conversation.

I brought it to the superintendent, the attorney, and Mr. Aguiar the other day.

I said that I was going to bring it forward to this meeting, and then the salary range is determined by the school committee.

I think to Mr.

Dice's point, I think we— I might have overlooked that because what If we're going to give you the permission to post, we have to allow you to post a position, so I'd like to amend the motion to have a salary from $60,000 to $73,500.

That number fits, aligns with the current person, so whenever they, if they get a person at the top, they can go from $60,000 to $73,500.

I think that's fair, and I think that's something that we should do and expect things are going to go smooth.

So going forward, let me get some clarification because I would have had— I would have gone to Aldo and we have talked about this, you know, do you do a 60 to 80 range, you do a 55 to 75 range, Aldo, where can we go?

I don't do anything without going to the CFO.

So if I'm— if we have a new position, I go to the superintendent, yes, let's look at it, where is this range?

We look at other districts, we come back, and then we say where can we go in this district?

Do we have the financial— do we, do we have the support to go forward with a $70,000 position for the next 5 years, 3 years, 2 years?

What are we looking at?

I'm going to assume, Deputy, you want to bring in someone experienced.

I want to bring somebody, yeah, and specialized in certain areas.

If Miss Stowers makes, I believe— and I'm not trying to put her salary out there, but just for comparison here, I believe she makes 6 figures.

No, no, absolutely not.

The reason why I made the motion— the reason why I made the motion, Mr. Diaz, is because the salary is currently $72,500, if I recall, on the, on the org chart.

So my intention of the $73,500 was to make sure that it was the high end of where the source is currently.

I don't anticipate that anyone would come in and put a person in above that.

So my rationale for where I came up with those numbers was that her salary is in that range, $73,500, $74,000, something along those lines.

The other folks who are also called administrative assistants at the lower range, $55,000, $59,000, thereabouts.

So why— where I came up with $60,000 to $73,000 wasn't just out of the air.

It was because that's the range of people that are currently in that similar type of role.

And we looked at the head— I mean, but going forward, I mean, we're working on a reorg chart right now, working on an organizational chart.

Done— I mean, in the past, you— I don't think they're doing it anymore.

You could look at like the Collins Center, uh, at UMass Boston.

We did this in Boston.

Yes.

And what you do is you take a look because you want to be competitive.

You want to look at the New Bedford, the, you know, towns around you to see what they're paying for kind of a taunt in the like positions.

I don't know if you've done that.

I'm just— I mean, also the skill set, you know.

Like, for example, if you want someone with payroll experience, you're going to pay extra because Payroll is a 2, 3, 4-year learning curve, as opposed to someone who's got accounts payable.

Accounts payable is a 6-month learning curve.

So depending on what they're going to be doing, you want to look at that skill set.

We've done it really informally when we get to negotiations, and whether it's the union folks or non-union folks, the CFO would come with us some rationales for what it is.

It does need to be looked at overall, in my opinion, but that doesn't veer me away from the fact that I think this is important for us to move this forward with this recommendation to try to get somebody.

And at that point, we're going to be all over you to make sure you are doing what you said you were going to do and reviewing it.

And we expect to have some answers when, you know, 6 months from now, let's say.

Yeah.

And to your credit, you looked at the past couple of years, your salary, you were in negotiations, and it makes a difference for us in hiring principals, in hiring, you know, leadership, looking at, you know, what you're paying also for our teachers.

We have this conversation posting for, I believe, the middle school principal that's open.

This is— I think this is— that's a separate issue from this specific one.

Again, I, I have concerns as one member, the direction we're going with adding more administrative position.

I think in some cases they're much needed.

I think here we should have went to the drawing board and looked across the district to see where we can pull positions to pull money from.

So, Mr.

Dice, with all due respect, I gotta be— I gotta push back on you because it doesn't work that way in reality, because we're already into a school year.

People have contracts that we already signed.

So if this was at the budget, like in March, where we were going to determine what is going to happen, then that was the time to do some kind of, uh, we're gonna eliminate a position, we're going to reduce a position, we're going to— now we're in August.

So those folks, put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has a contract from July 1st to June 30th next year.

We can't— they can't just say your contract's null and void.

You know, it doesn't work like that.

But they can move a position.

But move them to where?

There's no more important person, place right now to do that, and they're all doing their things.

So if they had a perfect person that they wanted that fit this criteria that worked over here, over there, they would say, okay, we're going to poach that person and maybe we don't fill that position.

This person doesn't exist under the current thing, so this is a new outside person that they have to recruit to come in to, to work under these conditions.

So it's not as simple as just shift some people around and cut it.

I would be the first one to tell you I think we should eliminate some, we should do some some things.

It's too late to do that now.

Next year is the time.

Just to be clear, I just wasn't necessarily supporting this cutting position, more shifting around.

Just want— if anyone was watching at home, I wasn't.

I think we need a range more of $60,000 to $80,000 because of the specialized, especially the financial work that we're going to want this person to do.

I think it'll allow us to— the problem is we have a person who's currently doing executive confidential work that only gets paid $70,000 $83,000, and she's worked here for 20 years.

That's the reason why I feel we should cap it at that, because we can't put somebody into the highest level person that we currently have and pay them $6,000 more than somebody who's been here for 20 years.

That's— there was a reason why, uh, and that's why I spoke up about the good work you did in looking at recruiting and hiring.

And it's the same thing, eventually that would be a good move to just take look to make sure you're competitive in getting the people that you want here to be committed here.

No, if we're not getting anybody that applies at that moment, then they can bring it up again.

Well, at that point they would have to come back to us with it, as well as the superintendent can come to us and say, I have an executive secretary right now who's underpaid, that, that position could, you know.

So like, I think it's— I just don't want to jump the gun and do it because it's a disrespect to the people who have been here.

So if in time it comes back and you say you can't find somebody under that skill set, we need that position to be 80, that's fine.

Then the other person should get 80, you know, if they're on the— if they're the 2 equals of executive confidentials.

That's so— that's why I'm comfortable with that lower number for now.

You can advertise it, and even between now and the 19th, come back to us with an update just on a Friday memo or just But, I think we need to do it and try to get somebody sooner than later.

Because, now, don't forget, whoever does apply is working somewhere.

Now, you get that, now they have to give their notice, so then, it just, when you're trying to hire somebody, it takes a long time to— Right.

And then, they might have in their contract they've got to stay for 60 days to wherever they were.

So, now, that's why I want to try to get this ball rolling sooner than later.

Okay.

So, I made the motion on the amendment Uh, Mr. Morris seconded.

Roll call.

And can we get a roll call, please?

Mr. Agnew?

Yes.

Mr. Diaz?

No.

Mr. Morris?

Yes.

That was on the salary and the original motion.

Yeah.

Roll call.

Mr. Agnew?

Yes.

Mr. Diaz?

No.

Mr. Morris?

Yes.

Do we have any new business?

I think we have new information.

I just have some information that I put in your packet.

Just so that you have it.

Yeah, I think we'll just accept that as information.

Yeah, the parking.

Yep, let's accept that as information.

The only thing I am looking for is, um, we talked about an organizational chart, but we also talked about facilities plan.

And I spoke to you the other day, and I did get, um, I had Ken look into this, get me the capital plan.

Um, but we don't really have a facilities plan, uh, like an up-to-date facilities plan.

I think that's something, you know, whether we go out to a company to do it or we do it ourselves, or we have— or we work on this committee to do it, to see like, you know, what work do we need to do in this building, what work do we need to do in that building, do we need a new driveway, do we need a new entranceway, do we need a new— a master plan, facilities master plan.

You know, I just was looking— we were talking about capital improvement plan tonight, and I was like, is this the facilities plan, and how do we do this, and do we have a team that works together on both sides?

And, you know, there's HVAC units in there.

I would make a recommendation that we bring that to the September facilities meeting.

So around 30 days from now, like once the school year starts and we can read a little bit, we can digest that.

Yeah, we'll put it on the agenda.

Mr. Diaz, thank you.

Just quickly on the parking lot, because I know there's just information discussion.

So this is just looking at this quickly.

This is something we're looking to implement mid-year.

Yeah.

Yes.

Oh, I don't know.

I just brought it up to say that we don't have parking in a lot of the buildings and a lot of the schools.

And if somebody had parking spaces at their house— I was down at Green School, there was a park person across the street who had some area and had like an RV and a couple of cars, probably could park 6 or 7 cars there.

You know, maybe it's something we look at.

I know the other city schools do this.

I know that other around school, around buildings.

So it's something that's done throughout the Commonwealth.

Yeah, and we've had— we've got teachers in the district now who are paying, and they'll pay parking in people's yards.

So it's happening already.

I'm just looking at it to get people's cars off.

I would say thank you for the information, and across the whole school system that should be happening.

So if I'm a principal of a school and I have a problem with parking and I see a vacant lot next door, it's incumbent upon me to go to the superintendent and say, hey, Can we talk to them?

Let's try to work out something to park.

So I think we need to let people know, think outside the box, do what you got to do.

And, you know, um, well, we have visits coming up with our principals, with our whole team.

Yeah.

And I think the tying bond is going to tell us that we have some issues with that stuff too.

So now you get any given school and you figure out what happens.

So that's what I was just saying about informational.

I think it's a good thing to think outside the box a little bit.

Are they, um, because I know that this is an issue I see all the time at Derpy throughout the year, overnight.

Um, are cars allowed to park there?

Do we have a policy in place where if you're overnight parking, you're getting your car towed?

Or— no, there's no policy that would say that.

We give permission to the city for snow situations quite a bit, right, to use as an a lot to get cars off the road, but there's no— I don't think we have any policy on what we do with cars.

I guess if there's an abandoned car that's not moving, but it doesn't happen in many lots at all.

The only place that we have some issue is maybe at the Morton School on the Hood Street lot.

I see it all the time at Derby just from passing, whatever time it is on Ellsbury.

I see cars, and I brought— I may have brought up to the prior administration, but I see cars there all the time and I, and I keep memory.

I'm like, I see the same car there day after day after day.

So I don't know, teacher correcting papers?

No, even not like recently.

You, you are right, there is cars that do park there night, day.

So eventually they move along.

No, that wasn't the thing.

I don't— where do you think they are?

Like just neighbors?

Like if I can't find parking in my house, I can park over there?

Do we sticker the cars at Durfee?

Just just using parking lots.

Some people— we used to have staff in the ground, separate stickers.

I don't want that car to get damaged and they, they blame us.

We don't have signage.

I just think something we should just look at.

We do have cameras though, but you could put signage up.

We could put signage up if you— if the facility's committing overnight parking.

Yeah, and a liability risk.

We don't take responsibility for any damage.

Something simple as that.

I think that'll be— I think administratively you guys can figure that out.

Anything else?

Motion to adjourn by Mr. Dyer, seconded by Mr. Moniz.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

The vote is— thank you so much.