8.29.2022 Fall River School Committee Special Meeting

i'd like to call to order the monday august 29th special finance meeting of the fall river school committee uh let's do our salute to the

flag of the united states of america and to the republic which 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 such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by

those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible um deb would you please call the role ms drag here mr bailey here mr harp here ms laravey here ms pereira here mr rodriguez here mayor coogan here citizens input we have three items tonight our last debt to please read them our first is from nelson vasquez sunset hill fall river good evening to the fall river school committee so paulie boy your propaganda

local news reporter said last week that there's nothing wrong with the atlantis charter school proposal even though the week before they reported the bus inc was sold for three times less the price if you have nothing to hide why is this committee going to discuss this proposal in executive session also why did you censor city residents including myself at the last meeting you violated my

civil rights and infringed on my constitutional right to freedom of speech i asked the school committee to vote for one of the other proposals and not the atlantis charter school deal who is going to receive the kickbacks it's bad enough that the planning board individual looking to sell the building has been getting construction contracts as well do you smell a huge violation of the

ethics law here i do nelson vasquez 210 sunset hill far of the mass next up colin dyess ray street fall over good afternoon members of the fall river school committee on today's agenda we see four proposals for space for the school department's pre-k program i as one city resident completely support the pre-k program and i wish to applaud the administration and superintendent for its swift and rapid

development of the program and i am excited to see this come to fruition what i am not in favor of however how we have three proposals for pre-k space and one proposal the same proposal we had issues with at the last meeting is being discussed in executive session that is not transparent government nobody said anything inaccurate at the last meeting the atlantis charter school was sold by ken

molecule to a john ferreira of the planning board now mr ferrer wants to sell this building to the school department for three times the cost just one week after purchasing the building those are all facts indisputable facts no one can dispute them that is downright shady and the school committee has no business supporting shady deals now the mayor went on a tangent after the previous

meeting citizens inputs criticizing city residents for calling for an investigation into this disrespecting the city residents he mentioned recalls i didn't hear any citizen input mention the word recall the only citizen the only city residents i hear mentioning the word recall recently mr mayor are your own supporters i don't think that's very positive them and i think it's inflammatory to the public politics

of our city you should mr mayor condemn their recall regardless i do not believe it is proper for the mayor to disrespect city residents for speaking their opinion at citizens input saying he won't respond to inputs just because they didn't support him politically we all deserve fair and equal by our elected officials i respectfully ask members of the school committee to vote down the atlantis charter school deal

this should be looking looked into as a city we should condemn any and all corruption regardless if it is sponsored by mayor coogan or not thank you very much for your time colin dye is 560 ray street and jeff gadro palmer street fall river good afternoon school committee members i would like to make my comment clear that i would also like to see the school committee deny the atlantis

school deal and support another building for the pre-k slots i fully support the pre-k initiative and give full credit and praise to the superintendent and the administration for getting this project done let's do what's right for a transparent and grateful river let's no longer censor city residents thank you very much thanks deb um first item on the agenda is discussion and vote to approve a

three-year lease or building of a pre-k expansion as presented by ken pacheco superintendent mr mayor if i could um and school committee at this time we'd like to withdraw this proposal any objections hearing none do we have to call the role yeah you should call uh could you please call the role please i need a motion a motion to withdraw motion to withdrawal second i have a motion a second thanks bruce um

mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms larry yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item number two is discussion and vote to approve a one year lease for the property located at 300 northeastern avenue for use of pre-k classrooms plus additional space as presented by ken pacheco chief operating officer any discussion on this lease with san antonio desert mr pachico good evening everyone

we're looking for but we have been looking for space for pre-k for quite some time and during the during the summer the process started with an rfp that process finished just recently on the 17th of august with two items and um which we've just withdrawn on those two in the meantime montessori school had closed and the location for that montessori school is now available we took a look at that walked the building and

decided that that would be a suitable location for us to have our pre-k startup in september if you in your package you have a document a preliminary document with a cost and a signature that they are an approval of us going there and we would just need to do our portion of this which would be contract and incorporate these items into that so the property is ready to go um the city has

done its approvals with the previous tenant and we will do a reinspection as a as a cursory check on what's been done any questions any questions on the northeastern avenue paper miss laravey yes thank you mr mayor just quickly on the safety of the building just to ensure that we're we're focused on that as well i just haven't i didn't really so the building is locked okay it's in in that mode from

uh its previous tenant and um as as i said we toured the building we have a location in the back that we will set up a small little play area uh we'll take care of securing that that area um at our expense um but i think this um this does exactly what we want it to do it's going to give us a hold over spot so that we can take care of our immediate needs and then

later on in the in the agenda we have some other plans for long-term solutions okay thank you are you anything further mr aguirre just uh the 12 months it's one year so that's from september 1 to september 1. yes so if we needed it in the summer next year that's still an option yes and you would mention the cost of the um securing the playground but is there any

other costs when we look at it as far as what we're responsible for to get that up to cold or whatever's going to be done just furniture so we'll bring in some furniture um that we were planning on bringing somewhere so we have furniture and if there's anything else in the building small items we can take care of that great has there been a motion already emotional proof second second any further discussion

deb please call the role yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes yes we are going to stay in order so we can do this a little bit right now i know it's something that we're going to talk about later too discussion item 3.3 is a long-term pre-k option to be located at 1207 globe street it's the old stone school for modular classrooms and options to

include lease or purchase as presented by ken pacheco

this is just a discussion i've enclosed a couple of a couple of um documents one is a rough or a rough order of magnitude on pricing for a eight unit rental this would have been something we could probably do in 10 to 12 weeks but it isn't designed for pre-k so this was just to give us an idea as to what it would look like on the inside um and

if you go over to the drawing there are eight classrooms of which six of them we would use um as a pre-k classrooms um separated by the restrooms and then the last two technically the first two where people would enter um one would be nurses area and then um whether we do otp speech in that general area so typically we would set up trailers in this configuration and three setups as you see here

connected in a u-shape would be what we're looking for as a long-term solution which will give us 18 classrooms or 15 classrooms and some open space for indoor recess things like that large areas at this age level they're eating in the classroom so we wouldn't need a cafeteria area but there may be some other rooms that we may need for other ancillary services so this is just a guide

again this is not a quote but just to give us a dollar amount and if if the committee wanted to wanted us to move in this direction for a long-term plan i would say the sooner the better um if we want to um think about that uh in the in the near future we can start developing that process with an rfp for material and also inspectional services in the city side in order to facilitate the proper

committing and notices to neighborhood and and such for a construction project that would probably um take place within a year uh to 14 months any discussion on it's just a proposal and you would come back to us with much firmer absolutely money size all the requirements necessary to have a successful pre-k program there absolutely okay and and this is just to kick it around right now anybody miss

laravey well should we uh maybe vote and let him to move on to go get an rfp or if that's the will of the committee the item says discussion yes and that's what i'm concerned about too let's do a discussion anything further mr aggio yeah just uh i think this is part of a long-term plan but what i'm looking for is much greater information to the committee relative to the long-term plan for pre-k and you

know i've been an advocate pre-k for a long time but at the same time we have to balance that with the needs of the entire district so what i would be looking for would be something that's comprehensive looking at have we looked at every building in the city which i know we've done a lot of this but coming up with a package for the committee to review that says here's everything we looked at here's what the

data indicates here's how many the numbers are where they're located and i've always been saying that keeping things the same is not always going to be the best thing here so i'm looking for something bold i'm looking for something to come from the superintendent and her leadership team that's going to say we're going to do things a little different than we normally did whether it be another k-8

school a k-2 school an early childhood center specifically all of those options i think should be on the table so when we vote i'm only going to vote on something that's comprehensive and long-term as a project that's me personally speaking for myself the other thing that i think we all need to get real about is the funding where the funding comes from how the funding is going to come i've been

saying for months we need to negotiate with the city to figure out a way to that we can have some bondability so we can actually we can put we can say we're going to purchase anything we want and you know what if we don't have any different regulations we're purchasing nothing because we don't have that mechanism in place so i really think that that needs to be part of this discussion uh so i'm

not opposed to any of what you have here mr pachico we have a lot of things going on we also have the wiley school where we had um whatever that process is to to do a feasibility and all that stuff that's a small little place and one of the meetings i can't remember over a year ago i was flabbergasted when that was gonna cost us six million dollars or

total to get that up to stuff for a small amount of classes so in the back of my head is always that number of six million for that little place without it's it's all the way in the north end so speaking for me i'm always looking at it to say six million for that or what are we going to do for this but right now we can't buy anything until we get the

other pieces done so i do support it and when i said discussion only i don't think i personally don't think you're ready for uh you know so i wasn't trying to you know uh tell committee women laravey you know terminology here the bottom line is i just don't think you're ready but i'm looking for comprehension of comprehensive process of this entire thing working with the city to come up with some funding

and the other piece that i think is a big one is can we use essa funds for some things and not when you tell us that we can spend something on esser versus something else now we we're in a totally different ball game so i think you understand those we've tried we've had conversations so i don't want to belabor the point but please come back with something real comprehensive

and i'd be happy to look at it and support it thank you i yield uh mr hart just real quick uh kenny when do you anticipate coming back to us for the uh modules at on globe street um so obviously everything that i give you is going to strictly be opinion when it comes to pricing because i can't ask companies this this here is strictly an opinion no hard numbers and any any further requests

that i make through companies are going to be that because they're going to end up bidding on this project in a competitive sense purchasing purchasing trailers is not like purchasing buildings so it is an easter eligible piece it's mobile but it is more equipment than it is a building so that there are some differences and also a building like like this here and on that piece of property that we already

own we've eliminated one big chunk of that and that's the purchase of a property because we own the property at globe street so i i fully agree with um minimum agia that we do have to be bold and we do have to color outside the lines here and and hopefully we'll come up with a plan i'm going to tell you it won't be in september um if that meeting is around the corner but

the caution that i put in and what i'm saying now is that supply line getting material all of those things are going to come in i may we may set up to to buy these trailers and these trailers are 10 20 50 weeks out 60 weeks out we would be looking at something you know in 24 so i don't i don't know that okay and until we ask some more questions i can

get that information that's fine so those are the kind of things that i can bring back along with the other plans of whether it's a k-8 um another elementary school you know things like that we can we can incorporate all of that all right that will be a comprehensive plan thank you anything further thank you mr chico um item five is a request for executive session uh attorney assad do we have a reason to go

into executive session yes we do you want to read that short reason please sure national laws chapter 38 section 2186 to consider the purchase exchange lease or value of real property located at 2501 south main street faller of massachusetts as the chair has declared that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the school committee we would reconvene there may or may not be

statements at that time i'm looking for a motion a second motion second i have a motion a second that please call the role to go into executive session mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss larabee yes miss pereira yes mr rodricks yes mayor coogan yes exactly back from executive session uh deb would you please call the role mr again here mr bailey here mr hart here miss laravey here ms pereira here

ms rodriguez here mayor coogan here new business anything to come before the committee mr aguiar yes uh just based on the emergence at the nature sometimes of an emergency lease and needs to come up with the children that we might need to leave space i'd like to make a motion that we authorize the superintendent to spend up to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for any additional emergency leases that

are needed throughout the school year second i have a motion a second any discussion on mr agnes uh motion dead please call the ball miss drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second second everybody wants to stay i do i got a motion a second tim yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss larabee

yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes maricoga yes adjourned