8.8.2022 Fall River School Committee

yesterday

systems

everybody good yep i'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the far of a school committee on august 8th deb please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here mr hara here miss laravey here miss pereira here miss rodriguez mayor coogan here salute to the flag please 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 pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible uh citizens input we have a few um

that were sent in tonight um the first one is melissa machado bay street and fall river deb please read it good afternoon i'd like to request a full investigation on the potential sale of the former atlantis charter building school building to buy and sell to the city in such a short time frame with such an astronomical disparity in price ridiculously profiting from the city is flying red flags for me if the school

department enters into this transaction the city would be held liable for whatever circumstances exist one of the biggest failures we as citizens are making is complaining after the fact or being apathetic people are trusting people in elected positions to be ethical and just in governing transactions like this i was born here and far river can be a great place we need the corruption to end now the

citizens of the city need to know all the details in this matter we don't have money to throw away period i work hard for my money and so do other taxpayers we deserve responsible and ethical spending of our money please look into this matter it screams corruption and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars millions of them thank you melissa machado 1025 bay street for the mess the next next one is nelson vasquez

sunset hill fall river good evening members of the fall river school committee a member of the planning board recently bought a building for around 1.4 million dollars and then a few weeks later turns around and wants to sell the building to the school department for a little over six million first of all that is the very definition of cougarnomics secondly this looks very suspect and i would like to

call on the school committee to launch an investigation into this matter a complete and full independent investigation that i might add as well there should be an investigation into who is pocketing some of this money who would receive the kickbacks you drop the ball once again with your inaction or with your involvement in this i would like to call on paul coogan to resign he promised

last year on a video and said i would do no more i would no more do anything illegal to hurt the city i would walk out the door right now well paulie boy here is another opportunity to do just that and give this city an opportunity to move from you and your incompetent leadership the school department and the city of fall river deserve better than this i do not want to see the school committee and the

school department get defrauded out of millions of dollars the mayor took an oath to uphold the laws and always act in the best interests of the people when you as an elected official violate that sacred oath you show total lack of compassion for the public's trust thank you and please launch an investigation into this nelson vasquez 210 sunset hill far of a mess next up colin dyas bay street fall river

good afternoon members of the fall river school committee i am speaking to you today regarding alleged misconduct regarding the sale of the old atlantis charter school to the floor of the school department i as one city resident do not want to see the school committee and the school department be connected to potentially criminal actions associated with this sale this sale gives me every hint of money laundering

so we have a member of the planning board who is also a donor of the mayor by a building with an individual with ties paul coogan then turn around and attempt to sell that building for three times the price to the school department a week later something does not seem right i am unsure if the school committee has a vote on this sale but i am for certain sure the school department has a role in combating

corruption i am calling for the school committee to take a vote to open an independent investigation into the sale of this school building why hasn't mayor coogan used his authority to act why haven't you mayor coogan opened an independent investigation into the sale of the school i as suspicious as it looks either it is because the mayor once again dropped the ball as an incompetent i know what a shock

or is it something else not only should the school committee investigate this matter of potentially defrauding the city it is too ironic the mayor is not acting on this matter when his donor supporter on the select board who recently was reappointed gets a free pass on this issue the school committee should also combat potential corruption whenever it raise its ugly head and if the school committee refuses to

act we residents of the community will investigate this matter ourselves i have two questions one does the school committee want to be involved in a sale transaction with ties to the mob again i would take this time to call on mayor to resign for his administration being involved in another scandal his failure to act on this issue and for his failure to uphold his oath to the community i'm sorry to

i'm sorry this is all too coincidental it seems all the suspect transactions happen under the current administration

on a follow-up from last month's meeting i understand a school committee member had an issue with the special education subcommittee following up with questions that were not answered to the liking of other school committee members i believe it is important that essential and every school committee member have every question they have answered to the liking and to the best of the administration's

ability to do so we should never rush to judgment on deciding on any matter that's what the constituents of this great city expect deserve from us thank you for your time and please investigate this matter immediately and independently colin dyas 560 ray street former ms next up sheila dyess on 560 ray street flora good afternoon i would like to call for the school committee to launch

an immediate and full investigation into the sale of the old atlantis charter school building to the fall river school department the school committee should make every effort to avoid and to combat corruption whenever it nears itself in the city the deal is suspicious and we need to get to the bottom of this thank you sheila dice 560 ray street thank you um we do have some recognition awards

tonight mr chairman mr aguiar can i just ask if anyone in the school administration can counteract any of those facts were those actual facts that are out there because i think what's happening with this particular situation is they there's been reports of this and that and the other thing and no one on our side is responding to that so is it any factual disputes i'm not looking to do the rfp now but

i've heard now four times and then basically that somebody bought something for 1.4 million and it can potentially sell it for 6.4 is there any factual uh mistrust there so mr i um on friday we opened those uh the bids uh for the purchase of real property and there was only one proposal there i did not have a lot of time on friday was leaving for a trip

was gone all last week so i have not had enough time to look at it of all the information and what was said tonight and um catching up on on news coming back late last night and this morning so i don't have an answer for that i can tell you that again the package was delivered to us and this week you know we will be sitting down um probably six seven of us uh to take a

good look at the whole proposal from front to back um and um you know digging deep into the cost of the building i again i don't believe that when someone buys something um for one price and they sell it for something else that that's illegal you know it's um it's the american way we make a profit on what we sell so whether we buy it or not is our business

so if we feel that the price is absorbing or if we feel that the price doesn't fit what we're looking for those are the decisions that you know that we'll put together and make a decision based on what we've asked for if the if the um rfp was answered in the way we expected it to be answered and if it suits our needs and then again obviously price is part

of that but it's not the only part you know most advantageous advantageous there are plenty of categories that we need to look at before deciding one way or another on the project yeah i don't i'm not looking to look at the rfp you know there's going to be a process and then you're going to bring it forward after review what i i'm concerned about is if there's any um inaccurate statements relative to how

much it went so i think it's incumbent upon you and the superintendent and the administration to when you hear things that if they're not accurate respond to them doesn't that mean you're responding to the rfp and i also would agree with you at some point if somebody makes a profit they make a profit i'm not i'm not part of that process i'll have a vote at some point but if there's

inaccurate statements being made i think it's incumbent upon us to stop stop those before it gets into looking like it's a much bigger thing that's all i'm asking sure so over the next week if you can do that put out a statement whether absolutely those comments are accurate or not and then i'm assuming next month or whenever it's going to come on our agenda so i look forward to it at that time my thing

is we need the pre-k slots and i've said this all along and if that's the best building then i say we need those slots so um i'm assuming that you're going to be on it so thank you absolutely i i do want to make one thing clear though i'm not responding to all inaccuracies that come up with citizens input we allow the public a wide a wide leeway to say whatever they want and i

can assure people that you know we've never we've never responded we don't i don't want to get into that but at the same time you know these people will say things whether it's over a recall or whether it's over corruption that they don't have all the facts on and i'm sure when this plays out everybody on this panel and everybody that's concerned will have the truth in front of them they can make

the decision as such but right now you can't respond to people have public input if uh if this is the best we have then we have we have a long way to go i'm sure as mr pachigo said this will be well vetted and by the time we get to the bottom of it we'll know what's happened and as mr aggie has said we'll make the best move for the city of fall river and that's my

intent for everything we do up here so i say let's get to the agenda and uh do something much more positive uh recognition awards superintendent pond we do have some uh recognition so if we could have everyone up there down i also want to announce uh miss rodricks has joined us now thank you

are we at cause

good evening so tonight we will honor four individuals who have served our district for many years one of those individuals is here to receive her award in person and the others their award will be delivered these individuals have dedicated many many years of service to falvor public schools who are grateful for their service and we want to wish them well as they enjoy their retirement

so emanuel vitello 36 years of service he was a custodian for the facilities and operations department we also thank paula kaler who is here tonight she was an ela teacher at durfee high school 36 years of service

miss kayla would like to take a picture with the committee

oh her dad is here

thank you mrs kayla we also honor william brown who was a music teacher at cuss middle school for 22 years so thank you mr brown and michelle gilmette 20 years of service as a speech language pathologist assistant in the special needs department thank you all for your years of service

so

all right

very nice item number four um subcommittee updates special education alternative education early college subcommittee who's filling us in on that one i can't take it oh i'm sorry oh mr egg yeah thank you just i'm gonna be brief this is uh should have been on the last agenda so we hadn't had it between meetings but in summary i think we addressed all the issues we vetted the process a little greater

and we actually found out after the fact that we could wait to do the curriculum purchase and it would have been here on time so all's well it ends well but i do want to thank my members of the committee who ask tough questions ask good questions and we got a better result in the end than when we started so uh with that thank you thank you mr aguiar facilities and operations subcommittee mr hart uh thank

you mr mayor on tuesday july 26th we had a meeting at the fonseca elementary school in the community room the four items that were up for discussion the first one was for update and discussion on the traffic concerns at the laterno elementary school we had the principal sergeant galvao in attendance the principal to inform us that they've informed the neighbors in and around the eternal

school they've scheduled a meeting this wednesday at 6 pm to discuss with the neighbors in the maplewood neighborhood association our second item uh that we had up for uh referral and approval to the full body was the uh new sro memorandum it's modeled after desc template and it was approved for full body approval the third was the refer to the camera installation it was approved to the full body the new

cameras will be upgraded at morton state-of-the-art cloud-based uh camera system and it would be a significant improvement scott cabral gave a good intro proposal for that and the fourth item was a this matter was tabled it was the regard organization of the facilities and operations department mr pacheco and his team were going to develop job descriptions for all positions and he'll get back to us at a later date

thank you mr hart next mr aggio just on the uh the traffic one uh related to the school year starting in the meetings now i recall watching a meeting several months ago where it was changing the pattern one way or the other are we looking to implement something um you know in two weeks yes and and what happens if the neighbors think it's not feasible what are the options well so there are a few different options

that they have on that we'll be proposing um currently anthony street's a two-way street we'll be proposing a one-way up to a certain point in that street we'll also be proposing a full one-way street heading east to west and those are the proposals that are on the table the congestion at on anthony street is that traffic is coming obviously from williams county boulevard all the way up and

trying to get on stafford road which is already congested due to people trying to get into the progress street entrance of letourneau so the way to clear that up is is to prevent that traffic from coming up to stafford road and allowing parents to come down stafford road to anthony street heading west drop their students off even if they go into the building it'll still be a smooth traffic

pattern and allow them to go back down the street there are plenty of outlets on that street so that you don't have to go all the way down to williams county boulevard to get back to stafford road if you wanted to but it would force you to go further north and away from the laterno area to get back onto stafford road where the traffic will be clearer this has all been discussed with pd

and at that meeting our sro sergeant and maybe an sro officer that represents that area would be there along with laura ferreira from traffic and school department personnel will also be at that point what did the traffic study the traffic study for the original school recommended no action whatsoever so i'm implying i guess from that answer that you're telling me that we didn't do a

traffic study we didn't do a traffic study on this piece the two-way the two-way street with parking on both sides does not allow for that pattern to change without making it a one-way that was the original recommendations back when we built school in 2008 there's also a path city-owned property that runs from the laterno street parking lot all the way down to first ford or floor of a ford whichever the name is right

now that property's never been developed the city has never had any interest in making that a full street an access um that would be able to spill traffic away from the school a little further down on the road that's the only option that they have there for traffic patterns no matter what we do yeah i mean two things one is as far as me if we've been talking about this for three four

months at several subcommittee meetings and the city is looking to do that they should have done a traffic study whether it's a basic one or not there should be a traffic study just like anybody else in the community would do the other street that you're talking about my memory if it's accurate was two principles ago requested that exact thing to have an exit out the back of the thing towards the uh to the other

one so i think we i don't know what what the answer is going to be but we've been hearing about it and never really come to the full community that's why i'm asking the question now so the hope is is that we leave that meeting with some sort of consensus um we will schedule to be on the uh august 17th meeting of the traffic board to have that implemented yeah i just

i i said what i said the uh the other question i had was on the riog that's tabled so what when we would when would we be looking at actually voting on that because i'm assuming that because it's in the subcommittee has to come to the full committee at some point so the hope is is that we have the hope is that we have another meeting between now and the september meeting

and if we can put everything together in time then we will have it for your september meeting right okay so there's things that i think need to happen and i'm in support of a lot of them one just to weigh in because it's a public meeting and that's what we do here is in my view we shouldn't add administration we have enough administrators and we should if we're going to do a re-org i don't

think it should involve additional administration with that i yield thank you

yeah oh i'm sorry yeah superintendent's report okay thank you so for uh tonight's superintendent's report since this is the last meeting before we actually come back already in mid august and getting ready getting busy so i wanted to give a little bit of information back to school wednesday august 30th all students in pre-k and grades 1 through 12 will return to school and then kindergarten students will

begin on september 9th parents should be on the lookout from schools with specific information from their child's school in particular middle school and high school regarding orientation dates etc i know at the elementary schools they do meet and greet popsicle social all of that good stuff so parents should be on lookout for that information from their principals as mr pacheco just said there's also some

information that will be shared letourneau morton lotorno and durfee are both we're going to be looking at traffic and making some adjustments the laterno has to go before a meeting that is set for wednesday there's a public meeting august 10th at six o'clock in the latono community room that's to hear from the neighbors etc so as they come up with some solutions to alleviate the traffic and the congestion

there and then durfee we actually are also the police department um traffic department uh mr damaris and central administration we're all working together to through logistics to improve traffic patterns over at durfee as you know last year there was only one entrance and one exit which created a very congested area this year when we start there will be another means of entrance and egress

we'll bring that information we are finalizing that plan and we'll be bringing it to to folks but we will communicate that to families because that will be through the back the access road in the back of durfee also important to note is that laterno and morton we no longer will have elt so their start and end times will be adjusted beginning this year so later no starting in time is 8 20 to 2 52. we just

adjusted the end time by one hour and morton's start and end time at 7 20 to 2 20. again we adjusted the end time and kept the start time the same so that is being communicated out to families also in regards to our admin and teacher institute today we kicked off our admin institute all administrators were took part in professional development our guidance counselors and school adjustment counselors were doing

building-based work our other administrators were here at durfee we're doing some curriculum uh professional development tomorrow the whole team comes together um we have been focused on setting our instruction instructional uh priority and we will be working through our social emotional priority tomorrow as a team our teacher institute will occur next week at cuss and some in various

locations depending on the type of pd that is happening that will happen the week of august 15th through the 19th and we have hiring our hr departments principals administrators have been very very busy trying to staff buildings as we prepare to open to date we have hired 173 folks 88 teachers 43 paris 12 administrators 23 other support staff and operational support staff seven and we also have had 82 resignations

throughout the summer as we know this is a very difficult hiring season because the pool is very shallow and we are continuing our search and continue to seek out the best people to stuff our buildings as we prepare for our opening and with that i yield mr aguiar yes just updating the opening of schools like the maintenance and cleaning uh are you scheduled to be on track everything's going smooth or are we

behind on anything i i mean i i wouldn't say we're behind our custodial staff is working uh they work uh working hard i mean today even at durfee we're walking the hallways they some areas are complete already i mean they will be working non-stop until uh we're ready to open we will be ready to open all schools certainly it's a challenge because we had summer school in all schools so they

are have been very very patient and actually have worked with building administration and you know move people along around so that they could prepare those areas but i would say we will be on target and ready to open all schools just a question related to i think we have a system like a central supply house whatever so if i'm working in a school and i need equipment that we have in another place cleaning supplies

whatever do i just have the ability as a school to just go get that like i needed i get it is there an administrative function that needs to a career to get or do we just like you know you need it it's on the shelf and you have them do it so we're talking about cleaning supplies we're talking about cleaning equipment either one like something that if i'm working in a school and i need i'm doing

a project i need extra wax i need this i need that whatever and it's we have it in storage let's say what is the process to just get that on to request it and it would come out of storage so one of the guys from there just delivers it away we'll deliver it yes we'll go pick it up there's not an administration they also they also know what was delivered last year so

we have a count on how many gallons of wax is used to clean the door in and all of the other items yearly russ lewis keeps track of every single thing that comes out of the warehouse so he knows exactly what to deliver so at the beginning of the cleaning season that stuff would go there if there's more used then that would be an anomaly and he would write it down and he would

deliver it but he would you know want to know why they needed five extra gallons or seven extra gallons of this and three gallons of that and how many boxes so all of that stuff is is uh well tracked but there's not a lot of red tape administrator nobody absolutely not and my only other question was and i've brought this up last month we've voted on this in april or may of the labor is

positioned in the maintenance department yes with all the projects going on now i asked a month ago i sent an email last week related to the same thing what is going on with this position and if we if we're not gonna hire it then we should hire somebody like we should hire the position that you asked us for last year which was helpers or something like august and july is the time to get a lot

of these projects well the labor is not going to change august and july the labor is a 12-month position and it's going to be used just as much during the year as it is to be used during the summer the laborers position is to help maintenance and maintenance only it's not to be farmed out to the other groups so that position is strictly for the maintenance department and currently the

maintenance department is doing projects more than they're doing other you know odds and end stuff and they're surviving just fine we are we in we're in need of that position for 12 months a year not just the summer at the negotiating table without saying i i think we're ready to roll on this um and move on but it is a new position i hear what you're saying but so we couldn't have used an extra pair

of we could always use an extra hand so why wouldn't we do that because we weren't ready to do it at the time it needed to be a negotiated position it's just a new position added on there's no other position like it in the district it was a brand new position it may have been listed in a title or in a chart that's 30 years old as a position an ask

me position but we haven't had one anybody in that position for that i know not as long as the six years i've been here and i haven't heard of anybody else telling me you had a labor's position available right but we requested it in march or april here we requested it during budget season yeah yes and it's august 8th and we still don't have a body in there because we didn't start negotiating in march

i just don't i just don't see the need i think when we haven't when we have a need we've got to get it and if not and we need to have extra people whatever we approved last month even while this was so-called negotiation we actually approved a position that said if we needed extra help that we could do it at the rates and we talked about it we still haven't

done that i don't believe for that like i think we need to put all the resources we can in the summer projects to support our custodians maintenance and the like with that idea i really think we needed to do it the only thing i can say to that is there isn't a phone call that i received from any senior custodian junior custodian maintenance person that's telling me they don't have enough bodies to work this summer

if they've mentioned that to anyone else they haven't mentioned it to me and i would hope that they would know that they can come to me and say i need extra help today i need extra help for the summer and they haven't i'm trying to help them i'm trying to get these positions approved i'm trying to get these positions in place but i also know as everyone else knows here

that it is very difficult to hire people lately so as soon as that position is available which i think it's going to be soon within the next week or so we will put that labor on and that labor will work 12 months a year and be busy all the time whoever he or she may be but if they're if those if my maintenance people my custodians nutrition if any of the departments that

i ever see feel that they need help and they can't do their job then they're should be talking to me but what would all the respondents would all do respect you you came before us yes at the budget time and said we need this position because you said the maintenance department for instance has a bunch of projects going on yes you said to this committee that when we have projects going on

instead of taking people off it's nice to have an extra pair of hands to be able to do jackhammering and this and that and go deliver and all that stuff so that we can get the projects going and moving and moving and moving you said that to this committee yes i did so that's what i'm saying but that work got done this summer right without this person without this person in place that

that work got done i'm not i'm not would it have been better it would be better if i had 10 more 15 more right and the point is that i'm what i'm trying to say is that it wasn't a 9-1-1 it was i'm going to get that position i'm going to fill that position and i'm going to be able to move forward so in future work that labor will be very important and i think you'll you

can understand my frustration and then months that go on and we get so we need a person and then we don't have it it's like what now is going on here sure so that's my only frustration it has nothing not to worry about you or anything but no end we get these positions we say we're going to take action and then months go by and we don't get any action and then

i should just sit here every month and say i'll let it be so with that i yield anything further item six is student comment obviously we have none tonight item seven i'm asking if we can approve the regular school committee minutes i'm sorry my mistake uh nine we have one travel request looking for a motion motion approved second i have a motion second any discussion on the trip hearing none deb please call the room

yes mr bailey yes mr yes miss laravey yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor cooper yes item nine acceptance of donations motion to approve second i have a motion in a second deb call the role question uh can we call the role and you can have the question or is it gonna affect the call the world deb and give mr aguirre's question mr again yes mr bailey yes mr yes miss laravey yes miss pereira yes

miss rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes mr aguiar i just mentioned to the superintendent prior to uh the meeting if we could just get an answer on the fifty thousand dollars from the mountain foundation it looks like it's going to a a non-profit of some type and then but it's listed as to the school department and then i don't recall ever getting the full like what is this uh learn to swim program and who's

whatever so if anybody has any background on it i think it's important mr bustin

good evening everyone um we received any i received an email on wednesday april 13th of 2022 um actually it was directed to mr palacino who was the swim coach and he's been the director of the learn to swim program um i hope all as well by way of introduction my name is carolyn winter and i am a program officer on the private foundation services team at jp morgan our team helps philanthropists execute

on their grant making one of our clients saw the article in the herald news about your swim lessons program and found it very compelling they have been so interested in finding ways to support swim lessons in the south coast community to prevent drownings which unfortunately are news stories each summer we would be very interested in learning more about your program and what resources you would need to bring the

program to scale and meet the demand in the community so chris palacino and myself he he put together a whole packet which i think i sent to everyone about what the learn to swim program is all about she brought it to her client and then we got an email a couple weeks ago saying that they loved it and that they wanted to donate fifty thousand dollars it's a it's called the man foundation

i had to do i asked her to send um the formal letter from the man foundation which they did and i think i put that in the packet and it's um i i had to do some research on the mountain foundation i didn't know much about them so that's when i um i printed out everything that i could find about the man foundation but my question is so the learn to swim program

is that a program run by you it's not run by me it's the money goes into the uh durfee um athletic found athletic revolving account and um we the the people pay to to go to it they pay uh i forget what it is i think it might be 85 a session and if you have a sibling go it's it's it's a little bit cheaper and we have student life guards working it

um and i think they've already done two sessions when each each session has been filled with people um so we're looking to expand that mr polissino wants to just um keep keep it uh growing yep so is it a four of a school department functions yes so that's where my question is more along the lines of whether if we go backwards here not trying to say i'm opposed to this but if we have a program

we're going to teach kids how to swim we're going to have lifeguards we're going to have liability we're going to have the like there's a there's got to be a process of how that gets to fruition not just mr paulisino wants to charge some people then teach him and i i've heard it's been great i've heard but there's got to be a process a system in place for how do we get such a program

so are we liable something happens is it mr palacino is it this yeah i mean everybody they're all certified lifeguards um chris palacino's chris palacino has a a bunch of different certifications plus he's a certified lifeguard so yeah i just i'm just looking for some backup i think obviously we don't want to not accept a donation but it just begs a few questions i think that we should get

from the superintendent one of which was the fifty thousand dollars says there's been no change in by endorsing this check and signing it or depositing it you warrant that there have been no change in your organization's 501 c3 status or classification as a public charity and not a private foundation i don't know if that if the school department fits into one of those pieces but this is in the letter that

come in here so i don't know that i don't think we have a 501c3 status as a district i don't think we're a public charity i guess we're not a private foundation you know but do we fit under what they want before they give us the money we deposit it so this letter came in august 4th mr almeida we're going to deposit the check do we fit into the categories of which one

they went through it i mean they i'm not looking for i don't miss the bus and i don't think the other person that i would ask like superintendent is aware i think of your question so that's all i want so let's approve it let's just make sure we dot our eyes cross our tees and make sure we're on the same page absolutely thank you very much sir okay we've had our vote on this part

okay so from the mantin foundation to follow public schools um on behalf of uh brad bustin fifty thousand dollars um two fellow public schools uh from bristol county savings um charitable foundation uh six thousand dollars from uh katie frank to fonseca elementary school on behalf of principal lisey school supplies pencils crayons markers clips paper scissors colored pencils erases and glue that was

a fundraiser or that they did and then they chose fonseca to donate that too thank you thank you we have a number of contracts tonight we'll take them as a group unless anybody has any specific ones they'd like to talk about all right i'm looking for a motion motion to approve second i have a motion second any discussion deb please call the role ms yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes ms pereira

yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item 11 is approval of grants we have two tonight any discussion on the grants hearing none i'm going to found a motion a second comment oh i'm sorry mr again i i did uh look through it and i want to congratulate mrs sylvia mr damaris superintendent on the mass capital skills capital grant it looked like it's a very valuable thing for our kids and

other members of the community so kudos to you uh anyone that was involved in it with that thank you uh did i get a motion in a second motion to approve second and uh deb who's called who's drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mary cogan yes item 12.1 is a vote to approve the school committee delegate for november's masc mass joint conference as

presented by maria ponce so this is the mass association of school committees the annual conference is to be held november 2nd to november 5th and we are looking for school committee representation if someone would like to volunteer somebody wants to attend and represent fall river can i just ask where it is it's on the cape i don't have it in front it's on the cape okay it's in

hyannis resort and conference center in hyannis okay if no one else wants to go i'm happy to go so we have ms rodriguez volunteering um we don't have to take a vote on that do we yes yep we do okay i have a um do i have a motion motion second miss rodrick's to go to the conference uh mr aguiar just a comment of sometimes it's very difficult to get out of

responsibilities in the job and i think what's happened in the past was it cost money for us to send someone so the only thing i would say personally would be thank you to mrs rogers for acknowledging it but truly if you can't make it if no one can make it i don't think it's a reflection on us per se but why waste 500 whatever the cost is so i don't want to have people feel pressure

like oh i'm going to agree to it and then i have my professional responsibilities and i can't get out for those two days so mr rogers shouldn't feel any pressure and neither should anybody else we don't want to just waste the money of course i agree so we have a we have a vote miss drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr house yes ms larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodrick am i voting yes

yes thank you miss rodricks can i just make a comment about that about what mr aguirre has said 12-2 this uh mr rogers wants to make it i think she was talking about we can't see your face that's the problem so it's hard to hear i'll i'll yell when i hear oh yeah sorry my camera is not working for some odd reason um i the only reason that i can volunteer to do

that is because my work schedule allows me to do that and i completely understand that other folks don't have that same flexibility so if there's things like that that come up i don't mind doing it because i know that i can plan that far in advance and i have the flexibility so believe me it's not a reflection of anybody else and i want folks to hear that that it's not a reflection on anybody else

because they can't you know make arrangements for that i understand that work schedules get in the way but i fortunately have that flexibility yeah okay thank you item 12-2 is a vote to approve the selection and appointments of shaunie reed and holly clayman nurses in the form of public schools second motion and second any discussion deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms laravey yes

ms pereira yes miss roderick yes yes 12 3 is a first reading of the security resource offices or sro's memorandum of understanding as as referred by the facilities and operations subcommittee and presented to presented by ken pacheco chief operating officer motion approved first reading second i have a motion and second on the first read any discussion mr aguiar i just had uh not a question for mr pacheco but i

think in it it talked about how many sros we pay for as part of an agreement so it's kind of dovetails with the end of the um indirect cost agreement i don't know where this i wouldn't get any updates on that negotiation with the city but one of the items that to me makes no sense is that we used to have the city pay for the sergeant i believe or lieutenant whoever was the boss of

that and they would pay it on their side and then we would pay for the others i personally think that it's a reasonable expense for us to take on the entire salary for that person but timing wise i don't know how that works but i did read in it it said something about eight i think i think we should pay for the lieutenant sergeant or whoever's in charge of that so that the city folks can

spend that money on putting people on the street so however that gets thank you mr again i don't know when that maybe we gotta get an update at some point okay thank you dad please call the roll mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms yes ms pereira yes mr roderick yes yes 12.4 is a discussion and vote to approve early college job descriptions as presented by tom coogan human resource

director and andrew woodward the director of guidance

good evening i'd like to let andrew speak to this position uh as as the committee may be aware the early college program um drew some uh very favorable police publicity last year it seems to be a great success um this would be a position that would support those students as they adapt and change from being high school students to doing the work required to be in college and really under the high school's

leadership this program has really taken taken off and uh i'd like to let andrew advocate on behalf of the position thank you and good evening everyone thank you for having me here and thank you for your support of the early college program and this position is the newly as a new position that was approved in the recent budget the recent budget season we see it as a key enhancement to our

early college program it's a teaching slash direct service role where we're adding some academic support prior to students enrolling in early college or dual enrollment classes so the majority of the role of this person as you can see from the job description is to teach a class for grade 10 students we're calling it an early college seminar but it's going to have literacy skills built in reading and writing it's

also going to have 21st century and college success skills such as note taking how to read a syllabus and also some college and career planning built into the class the other kind of features of this job is this person would be doing some small group tutoring to our 11th and 12th grade students in the early college program who are having some academic challenges to support their success in the early

college program and finally this person would also support the coordination of the early college program any questions mr woodward mr again when it says appropriate massachusetts licensure what does that mean that would be teacher's license for uh grades nine through 12.

anything uh no specific content at this point i would think uh strong literacy skills um would be a benefit to this person yeah my only i think that we talked about this at prior meetings is because the other teachers were getting paid over time but to cover what do you do with the kids is that the same position you're talking about mr woodward no so this is um a newer position that

position what you're referring to is the early college advisor which is an instructional liaison support position this position is a little bit more encompassing and it's really a direct teaching position where they would have a class of 25 students or so and they'd be teaching a curriculum related to college success which we're currently building now we have a scope and sequence and as i

mentioned before it's part literacy skills because when we kind of reviewed the past two years of early college we felt that some of our students needed some literacy instruction to get them prepared for the dual enrollment college classes it's going to be some general college success support academic integrity goal setting note taking just things that will help students become successful once they take their college

class and there's going to be also some like college planning and development and career planning where students are going to map academic goals to future careers well you have a guidance it sounds like as you're talking that's almost like a guidance function advising guidance like yes but this is going to be a five day a week we envision it to be in the classroom when the group of 25 or so students um for

either a term or semester um so it would be a little bit of a different role than a counselor who does who might go into a classroom for a series of workshops but wouldn't be that full-time every day in that class the um when i look at something like this it i'm confused a little because there's been a lot of positions and a lot of supports and money spent on the early college program

so that's what i thought you were talking about when we used to pay the teachers extra so to give up their prep to teach some classes i thought i heard that was going away and we were going to have a position now that's not the case that they're still going to be doing giving up their preps and doing getting paid extra no so there's two separate positions one is the early college advisor position

which we're thankful that the committee supported as well and that early college advisor position is going to be supporting the early college program by being that in-person support when the college professors are live streaming from their college while classes are taking place on their feet so is that already happened yes correct and that's a teaching position that's an instructional liaison support position

yeah i'm just trying to figure out why this one has to be licensed to be honest and the other one is my question would be is do if he fully staffed with every every classroom has a teacher not yet we're currently looking for about eight more teachers at the high school level uh overall across the district just to give the committee somewhere a little over 92 percent right now with about uh

two and a half weeks three weeks left to go in the high rankings my only concern with that would be when we come back here in september or october and we we continue to take we don't have enough teachers to teach in the classrooms then we add positions like this that takes one more of from somewhere out of the thing probably a quality teacher that so in september i'm going to ask the

same question and hopefully if we're filling these positions then we're fully staffed with teachers in all other classes in conversations with the superintendent and i'm sure with uh principal demaris as well we've talked about the fact that we're not going to create a hole in a classroom position to fill a position it's a non a non uh critical position at this point but uh yeah no problem i'll ask again september

thank you i yield anything further uh do i have it do i have a motion no you do not know i have a motion second in a second deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor cooper yes 12 5 is a discussion and vote to approve the family engagement specialist job description as presented by tom coogan

human resource director and cynthia kudo parent and community engagement center director uh so to give the committee a quick quick overview and i'll let ms kudos speak to the merits of the position um this position would be sort of a lead if you will for those community facilitators that we added through the budgeting process those people will be doing the work of community engagement and family support

at the school level and this gives her somebody in the in the pace center in the in the uh community center to support that work and also to organize and make sure that we're doing uh the right things at all the school levels but at the same time uh sort of coordinating those efforts so that we're if we have something that's really taken off and best practice in one school that we're sort of replicating that across

the system it's a support position working out of the parent center that would basically act as a lead for the work that's going to be taking place at the school levels good evening thank you that's exactly what that is we really uh are committed to this work and we want to make sure that it's done with consistency district-wide this position would also bring back to the district level you know new

services workshops uh new learnings that are that's been identified at each school so that we can create those workshops services and bring those back to our families um it's really important that when we bring in these all these new positions at each of our schools that they are accountable and that we are able to support those positions in this work just a question to the superintendent i

see this one it says reports to the director of the paradigm community engagement center right this is um uh miss kudos position uh that that person will be housed at the pace so the positions that they're talking about making sure everyone's on the same page are in the schools they report to the principal what did they report yes they're school based yes so but um miss kudos position will be working closely with the

community facilitators so that we can have consistency across the board at all schools so just i think that's a worthy goal to have consistency my question would be is all seven of us have different schools with one of those positions at each school miss kudos person who's training them says you know that guy kevin isn't doing what we need him to do he's doing something else my print my principal might say that's

okay how does she how do we rectify that like are you the uh or is it an assistant superintendent that's gonna sort of uh back her up to say nope that person needs to be doing that and as far as the chain of command goes do you understand my question exactly um i mean we do have the assistant superintendent of student services oversees the parent pace but um i just want to make clear that that

person is not supervising the community facilitators but each principal is supervising the community facilitators but that person is working closely as they collaborate to create opportunities for learning workshops um bringing families in etc so that that person will be housed out of the parent center and then the others will be but yes if there was an issue that person would go to ms

kudo mascuda would communicate with her supervisor as well as we would communicate with that principle thank you field i got a question uh miss kudo this this i'm assuming this person is going to be going to the schools to work with those people where they're based yes they'll not only be going to the schools but they'll be meeting with all the facilitators at least once a month to really make

sure that this work is done collaboratively and that the best possible services are provided to families okay thank you any further discussion yeah just one thank you miss kudo can you remind me how many uh facilitators we've hired and ready to go for september would say we've brought on at least uh six or seven at this point i think we have one or two more that we've yet to fill okay i was just checking to see

where we were with that right along on those we've we've added some great language skills and some other supports that i think are really sort of coming out of that that program uh at the school community level so it's it's been very uh it's been very uh fortunate that we've actually had that that's a position we've had a lot of traction on this year okay thank you thank you anything further

um do i have a motion second emotional proof second uh please call the role ms yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodrick yes mayor coogan yes item 12 point six is a a discussion of how to approve the principal salary matrix is presented by maria ponce superintendent of schools and tom coogan human resource director miss ponce well as you know we have a um

a matrix that was approved in 2019 and with the new cba contracts what we're struggling with is the um the compression wage compression our principles are making nearly what their vice principals and other administrators in the district are making we are proposing to adjust the salary matrix for our principles i think that we need to recruit and retain talent one of the ways that we can do that is by

paying our principals a comparable wage so as a result what we've what you have in your packet you had the previous matrix and as well as the new proposed matrix the this new matrix proposes to make that adjustment um by the 10 figure making the adjustment at the low end as well as at the high end um in the matrix we have levels uh schools under a certain number we're looking at

elementary middle and high school as well as the number of students that they serve and principals education so all of that would go into making that decision in regards to their compensation okay anybody have any questions about the salary matrix uh could we uh okay i'm looking for mr egg yeah yeah i think this is um i've i brought this up for years uh even under the prior superintendent um

my problem with some of what we have here is that i don't think that we look at the entire district as a whole when we're determining the make the the salaries levels uh the union contract the non-union contracts how many days people work so we get presented as a school committee here's what we have we got to do this because they're up against it we've had this same conversation two years ago

where we're going to be back here again if we don't do this right two years from now and i think the the real problem that we have is that we don't get into the weeds as some people like to say to actually know before we make a decision in a union contract in a negotiation or an individual contract we have to know if we make x decision this is what is going to put us in a

bind or this is what's going to put us in a bad situation and i think that's where we're sitting at right now in the current situation i asked the superintendent for some further info because i do think we need to we need to compare apples to apples when we're talking salaries responsibilities and the like and the document that she gave us that shows all of the salaries from 100 000 to the highest

it also indicates for the committee and just for the education of the public what i asked for was how many days per year are required for each of the different categories so for instance a principal is responsible for 260 days per year in their contract we have other positions whether in the union some are 215 days some are 205 days others are 195 days and we as a committee as a school

department at least for as long as i've been squawking about this we don't ever say either we can't do more when you know they're up against it or we just got to keep on raising and i for one have been in public meetings where i've advocated for the price of the going rate for a principal to do the work that they do and the stress they have is is up there and i

have the guts to vote for that in public but i don't think we're i don't want to be back here every year having the same conversation and i don't think any anybody on this committee should be doing the same thing but the matrix needs to be adjusted but it needs to be more than that it needs to be an agreement from the school administration to look at this stuff so that we don't get put

in bad situations because right now we are in a bad situation with several positions in this in this district because we have people that are working potentially 215 days whether they're a great worker and do extra stuff for free the facts are the facts we have union positions that are getting 215 days that are getting paid more money than a principal of schools with the same qualifications doctorates cags

whatever else it is we shouldn't have this we shouldn't have this presented to us and if anybody wants to challenge it that's why i ask for these numbers they speak for themselves so we as a school committee don't make the decisions on who gets hired what positions get filled and what positions get created but by doing that as an administration and not telling us and thinking ahead

okay if we do x then this is going to become a problem now this is where we're sitting so i for one am going to support this because i think it's it's needed but i think we need to create some sort of automatic trigger so that we don't get into this and the simplest way in my mind would be that any administrative raise we have to bump the matrix up by the equivalent which is i

think what the superintendent was trying to articulate in her document saying that the matrix got created before it says b the matrix was created prior to the negotiation of the contracts i took that to mean we were just taking a best shot at it lo and behold to quote her figure was ten percent roughly so the end should go up by 10 so now take this forward in the next contract and they get

six percent if we don't move the matrix guess what happens we're going to be back sitting here it's doing the same thing again so i think we have to have triggers kickers whatever you want to call it so that these matrix moves with it and the longer people stay in these jobs they're going to be up against it again so i'd like to make a motion that we approve not only the matrix but also with the

equivalent uh percentage that's given to the administrators union in addition to that going forward i got a question for you uh mr agus so if just using numbers let's say over three years they had two two and two or they got one one and one three are you saying bump the matrix by the end of the third year six percent or you say bumping it every year the two two and two like equivalent to whatever

it is so whatever the raise is that year that's what the matrix bumps correct i could support that i second it so that we don't that's fine any uh i have a motion and a second i had one other comment okay but i'll yield to my colleagues if they have anything to say i was just saying i agree okay so we're not back here in the same situation after union negotiations i agree with

what ms dagger are saying mr aguiar so looking at contracts just so that we can figure this out because i know what's going to happen people are going to say wow these are high salaries oh people are making a lot of money that is true but it's relative to what's needed to create the talent superintendent said she needs to create and retain the talent that we have i can't stress that

enough but when we look at we approved the vice principles for instance you tell me if we don't do something why a vice principal that works uh either 195 or 205 days per year that has a doctorate makes a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars that's what the vice principal at 205 days would make at a at any other schools elementary middle or high school that's what they would make you tell me why

if we don't act on this why a principal or why a person would go and take a principal's job for 126 000 or 120 000 or 115 000.

why in the hell would anybody want to go do the jobs that we need to recruit people if we don't pay them what they need so this is something that i think we need to vote on but i also think we can't sleep on it and we need to have further discussions about making sure this is either the right way or the the best way and the only thing the school committee

can do is hold the superintendent accountable to when we're going to vote to pay somebody a hundred and forty thousand dollars to be a principal 137 000 or whatever it is our only duty and job could be to hold her accountable to make sure that they're earning that money and making sure that that school is doing what they need to do and thrive for the kids that's what we need to vote on here

so people can take this and say we're giving away a lot of money we have the money in the budget this is not going to break the budget but i can't stress enough that we can't just sleep on it this is uh this is going backwards we have some real inequities and i would encourage the superintendent to look at the inequities that are here and i don't want to highlight them all

because it's not fair to those individuals but at the same time we we need you to come back to us and say this makes no sense we're not going to keep doing this thing over and over because right now it's upside down nobody should work 215 days and make 20 some thousand dollars more than a principal who's working on 260 days in my opinion with that ideals okay so we have a motion a second we have

an amended an amended salary matrix um deb could you call the role please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss larabee epstein is pereira yes mr rodriguez yes um i'm going to abstain too not that i have a principle but okay next item is 12.7 it's an interview with dr tracy curley applicant for the position of assistant superintendent chief academic officer for the florida school department dr

curley is the superintendent of schools recommended candidate for the appointment to the position of assistant superintendent chief academic officer welcome dr curley thank you um i i guess i will talk first i've i worked with i worked with dr curley for a number of years at durfee high school she was one of my superiors and we worked together closely on a number of projects at durfee i have

i have tremendous confidence in her i think she's um found her niche and she seems to be excelling in this position so i hope i hope the rest of the committee feels the same way i think she'll do a good job for us she's a durfee grad and i know she knows the ins and outs of fall river and um i wish you well any questions mr mr hart thank

you mr mayor yeah i echo what mr mayor coogan just said i've known uh tracy i know she's born and raised here in fall river she's uh familiar with fall river she's a product of fall river and i think she's been in our system for quite some time and i think this is absolutely uh something that we should vote on so i commend you congratulate you and i yield thank you any other questions for dr crowley

mr aguiar thank you so just want to be very clear that this is item number 12.7 correct yes yeah so this is the interview portion so um dr curley is the into you know being interviewed by the committee so i think it's important just in a general sense that the public looks at us like what are we doing here here's the agenda item the agenda item says it's an interview

with dr curley so some of the things that happen when you go for an interview some of the first questions are tell us a little bit about yourself what you want to do for the district i i think we owe it to you to give you at least a couple minutes to say why you want this position and what your you know your things i have one or two

questions for you but i do think as an interview i think it's important for everybody to know this position is for the leader of the academic instruction so i just want to give you a chance to say a few words about it and i do have two questions sure i think i thank you for the opportunity um it's really a humbling experience i think to be here um i have

i am from fall river i was born here raised here and i did i am a product of the fall over public schools that's something of which i'm very proud and my own experience has made me um an advocate for public schools in general i think that i i know that i left the full over public schools very well prepared for next steps i um i went on to boston college i earned a couple

of master's degrees on at institutions and then i returned to boston college for my doctorate about six years ago i completed that and i think you know i talked about this a little bit in it during the interview process i think my experiences really do parallel the experiences of so many of our students not all of them um but certainly many of them and i think many of the students that we are um most focused on

you know supporting and making sure that they have access to all of the resources that are out there i was one of those kids and i don't know how intentional it was at the time outside of um individuals really kind of looking out for me and and letting me know about opportunities and you know kind of reaching out to my parents to let them know what was out there and what was possible for me

but what i know is that right now i love being a part of the fact that i know that we're i'm part of a school system that really is focused on exactly that not just for a student in a classroom but for all of our students in a way that i think is um universal but also very personal so for me this is you know it's just an opportunity to really um

participate more deeply in in the work that is underway and to support all of our school leaders that i have so much respect for um in doing the work at their schools so um again i thank you for the opportunity to make the statement and i'm happy to answer any questions that you have thank you so one of the questions and this is a combined with something that was already

asked at the meeting so i also felt it was important for us to get the questions so that we can know what was asked during the interview process that where there's other candidates that's the same thing so the one question that i want to ask you is it relates to growth it talks about turnaround work and a prior question and what will your approach be to ensuring that the fall river public schools com continues to

move forward it goes on to say growth occurs when there are consistent cycles of feedback and support at every level of an organization can you please provide specific examples that illustrate your leadership in building these systems and supporting your team through accountability sure so i think a lot of the work that we've done this year really has been focused on exactly that

we set goals um as a central office team for teaching and learning around the implementation of our high quality instructional materials and that was something that we knew would be a lever for us coming you know coming out of the last couple of years in moving forward and we've really made it a priority the committee has helped us prioritize that in terms of approving funding for new

materials and we have worked really hard on our team to support schools around implementation so a large part of our year was really about going into schools on a regular basis and observing in classrooms the implementation of those materials and what you know impact they were having on teaching and learning and based on observations we always met with school-based personnel to offer feedback and then where we

weren't seeing implementation we were able to you know work with school-level teams to just ask questions because that's always our first step we're not using materials what you know what's happening and in hearing from school leaders where some of those barriers were and working with principals department chairs coaches and sometimes directly with teachers to you know increase understanding around

the importance of the implementation why it's a priority in the district and making sure we were doing what we needed to to support it and over the course of the year we saw people we saw you know an increase in the with the fidelity in terms of that implementation and that work continues now we know that we'll um we'll see some you know we'll also look at student outcomes in terms of what

that you know what the data says about how successful we were in terms of that implementation and the impact that it had on student learning and that's something that we've supported schools to unpack over the course of the summer item analysis student performance and we'll continue to do that as we get more refined information from mcas thank you the um my second question is about i'm

personally concerned about durfee high school and the achievement performance and the likes so what are your thoughts about different high where they're at where you'd like them to go and how are you going to be able to influence some of those positive changes sure so i over um over the course of the past year i've been able to spend more time at durfee than i have previously and had an opportunity to

hear some of the feedback they got out of there out of their site visit got to listen in and participate to a very small extent on the participation more of you know listening in terms of their action planning around recommendations and actually had an opportunity today to sit in on a planning session with durfee leadership around you know how they are internalizing the district priority and the steps that

they're taking in terms of school improvement i'm encouraged and i'm encouraged because i think that they have a leadership team and teams of teachers who are who want to get the work done but they're putting some real systems in place which i think that you know haven't always been there they've been there you know some things were improving while other things weren't and and there was a lot of

putting out fires and we see that sometimes across schools but i'm encouraged by the structures that are um taking hold at durfee they they're doing a lot of work right now about get the durfy way and and what that means and how they want to do business and what their expectations are for their staff and their students and and how they're going to support families and i think that

as they continue to build that in their school we are going to see some fantastic results i i i feel that very deeply thank you the uh the last uh not just a comment so when reading the job description one of the things that basically really stuck out to me was the assistant superintendent for academic affairs is responsible for the academic outcomes of all capital letters students in the fall

river public schools now i think based on what your your answers were here and what i know of you and you work with the superintendent i think that's a worthy goal for everyone what i just want to make sure is the role of the school committee can only be as i said on the prior thing to hold the superintendent accountable so we can only have so many conversations where we say the academic outcomes for our students

are not good like i've been having that conversation for years with superintendent after superintendent including this one what my statement is going to be i'm just going to tell you right where i'm coming from with it is that the money that we now have invested in the people and the supports for all across all the schools there should be zero reason why we have not had academic outcomes improve for

all students i'll tell that to the superintendent and i'm going to say that's the same thing to you dr curley so my only stance is going to be to the superintendent this is what i expect as we move forward i think she's ready for the challenge she's got to build a team but i can't stress it enough that that's the main focus it has to be always that and if you do that i think we're going

to have success and if you need things as it goes i need you to step up personally to the committee and say this is what we need to do and push madam superintendent to get this done because we need to improve the outcomes and um i am going to be supporting when it comes up on the next vote but this is the interview so thank you very much for your willingness to serve here and i

look forward to working with you thank you mr pereira thank you mr certainly your resume is very impressive as well as your work experience here in the district you've been here since 2009 correct yes um and the the matter of different roles you've taken is also impressive it seems like you're very well-rounded as you know fall river serves a very diverse community and that diverse population is continuing to grow

what is your approach or what you believe your approach will be in supporting sel services to our students that we know many of which are in need sure a lot of all of the discussion really right now is around this idea that as as a public school system our like our first priority is um in our responsibility really is around that academic piece we all know that the academic work can't be attended to

tended to if students don't have the social emotional skills and they haven't um you know the social emotional learning piece isn't there so we are working right now we spent the day today i can give you an example we get we spent the day today really digesting the instructional priority for the district which is around providing for all students access and engagement in grade level work that's

the goal grade level work that's what we're here to do but knowing what that means in terms of and we have you know we've referenced all of the supports that we have in place for students in this idea that we're all mobilizing it's not like sel staff is mobilizing around the sel and our academic staff is mobilizing around the academic piece but that we're all working together tomorrow we're going to spend

the day talking about our sel priority and what that means in service of the instructional priority so for us i know that in some ways it it appears on paper when you look at an org chart and you see assistant superintendents who appear that they work in lanes or silos that's not the goal here our goal is to work with the superintendent superintendent in collaboration for all of our kids so thank you

thank you i plan on supporting this i wish you a lot of luck thanks miss lara hi dr curly hello congratulations perfect uh perf person for the job all your experience uh is just proof i think you can do it gonna do a fantastic job and you have been doing a fantastic job in your your former uh jobs with us but uh she asked one of my questions so i'm just gonna ask the one your

leadership style like how would you go about motivating and supporting the staff in to help us you know keep up morale and ensure that people are feeling appreciated and supported and that they have that vision for the excellence you know that we we're all striving for uh how would you go what's your leadership style sure so i i think some of what you talk about is really around consistent messaging and i think that

when someone believes really deeply in the work it's easy to have a consistent message it's not about trying something new or chasing something shiny every day and so for me because i do have very deep rooted beliefs around providing equitable access for all students i think it's an easy thing for me to talk about all the time in terms of kind of this leadership style i think i think that's a piece of

it but i like to do the work and i like to do the work with people not for people but with people and i have a real willingness to take on that work and collaborate with people i i do see myself as a you know we did a little exercise today around kind of who we um who we are as leaders and i know myself to be a person who

you know who really can see the big picture and you know kind of bring people into the fold i know where we want to go and i think that when i think about mobilizing people to actually do that work it's around you know it's it's about an enthusiasm you bring to it that i think is is authentic when you really do love the work so i think excitement and collaboration are really what drives me

thank you thanks good luck thank you any other questions for dr curley hearing none we'll move to the next item which is 12.8 is a discussion and vote to approve the selection appointment of dr curley i have a motion in a second any further discussion on dr curley mr agnier just just a comment uh as in preparing for the um for the meeting for the interview and for the this issue when i looked at the posting

for the position um when i look at the postings they tell like anybody out in the public what the salary is for instance you know so when i looked at this one it doesn't make sense to me that it was posted that the salary of 120 to 135 and the other ones were posted at 1 25 to what i don't have in front of me but like they these are just things that

yeah it's 120 to 145 for the other two so we just had a conversation and i think i showed my frustration about how i'm sick and tired of coming here every year and voting on that same matrix for the principles but i'm also sick and tired of coming here and having what i would consider just missteps over and over because this job shouldn't have been posted like this so i as i already said it i am

supporting dr curley when we do these things though we're supporting somebody with the guise of okay so now we advertise the job at 120 to 135.

okay that's what we tell the public here's what we're gonna you advertise it it's 120 to 135. everybody's watching 135.

i guarantee anybody on this board and anybody watching at home she should get more than 135.

if anybody wants to challenge it so be it but i'm making this point because i'm sick and tired and frustrated with just having the wrong stuff done i just i really am just tired of it and we shouldn't be sitting here again so we're going to make this determination today we're going to appoint her and then we're going to have to negotiate a contract and i guarantee you when we negotiate that contract this isn't going

to be accurate anymore and what do we look like to the public when we went out and advertised the job to let people know if you want to come work in fall river and be our chief academic officer assistant superintendent the salary range is 120 to 135. that's what we told everybody when we went out and searched for people and once again that's not accurate so now we're going to do something again

that goes against it and that quite frankly i think we look like fools over and over when we do stupid things like this there's no other way to put it i'm personally tired of it that we as school committee members work hard to try to do what we need to do we shouldn't be sitting here once a month and have this type of stuff go on so i am voting yes but i i'm so frustrated i

can't even tell you so with that i yield i have a motion in a second uh deb called the role for ms curley mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez mr rodriguez she's frozen again frozen mayor coogan yes um we have two other items that the superintendent is going to speak to right now um oh congratulations uh dr curley very nice

um 12 9 and 12 10 on the agenda uh superintendent ponce yes at this time we did have a finals that i was bringing forth today but that candidate notified me on sunday that he was withdrawing for personal reasons so i would like to ask the committee to table and hopefully next month we will be bringing forth another candidate are we going to re-advertise the position uh we're going to meet with our team and

reassess and then go forth from with next steps okay 12 mr chairman oh mr just um i was trying to ask miss rodericks if she wanted to vote yes so if she does say yes i will let the secretary know when you when she just says the answer is yes so she wants to be recorded as yes she got frozen on the screen the um we're up against the timeline and this

is not an ideal time for any of these positions assistant superintendent positions to come in um my personal opinion would be the start of the school year is coming and it's coming real quick and we're trying to whoever applies for any of these jobs also has other jobs so there's it's back and forth but i would employ the superintendent to call for a special meeting at any time that she feels is

necessary because we need to get these people started even if they can't technically they'd have to give notice we need people in charge of these departments or some decision based on what the superintendent wants to do to start the year so thanks my employer have a special meeting thank you thank you okay so then we're going to go to 12-11 which is an update on powerschool as presented by scott cabral no i'm sorry

oh yeah okay yeah emotion to table table second um twelve nine twelve ten i have can i have a motion i just move my motion why would we need to vote when the guy's not asking that's right let me just let it drop yeah because his name's on it so what are we gonna table it so we bring him back next month oh yeah if he backed out he backed out

all right let's go to 1211 then um back to dr cabral for his update on power school uh good evening everyone i'll be brief tonight with power school i can tell you that as of july 1st we are live um our core data is into the system there are some pieces that we will still be uploading data as we go through the course of the year mr michael lazy and his team will be

rolling over the school year into the current year with schedules around thursday or friday of this week and our last big lift that we've been working on with powerschools is the iep information has started to flow into the system kristin has stepped up and been working with powerschool on some of the data miscues where we're seeing data that should be in and they're not seeing it

so we've been working through the list of students on that and our big piece for this week will be the sims team will be training all of the admin at the admin institute on wednesday and thursday and then we'll be fanning out the training from there to the buildings as we begin to open any questions for um mr cabral on the updates thanks okay it's something actually different it's about um the parent square

now like can parents get onto that now or do they have to wait when school starts no so we're actually going to be sending out um some information on that we have been over the summer they can sign on anytime as long as their email is in our system we have a hotline that we're going to be opening up in the next week so parents can call and speak to the tech

integration team so that we can make sure their information that's in powerschool is matching up to our nightly export to parent square and then they'll be able to use the app it's very simple to use we've been doing some data and text and information back and forth between members of the central office team and brian and his team have gotten a real good handle on the software there's also going to be an

extent of extensive training this week with the admin team so once they learn how to use it we can start to really push it out to the school okay appreciate that i yield thank you okay mr aguirre so the question i have is on the special needs i think you said that's sort of outstanding or still somewhat so well it's not outstanding the information is into the system so our

export of all of the historical iep data and now the live iep data that the former assistant superintendent and his team wanted to be in there those two years of data that started to become populated into power schools so now the problem is we see some data miscues where student hasn't should have an iep that's not in the system and or there's an iep in the system that doesn't need

to be there so there's some cleanup work that's been ongoing kristin it's been about a week so it's been about a week um we're on the phone with them four five six times a day so we're hoping to have all of the the miscues cleaned up within the next week yeah i i think you know the date is august 8th school starts in three weeks so whatever like to me this is

a part of this system that didn't work properly and um we paid extra for it and i get that you're trying i get she's trying to get mr michael isaac's trying i can tell you from my perspective this should have been already done well long ago i remember sitting at a at a special education subcommittee meeting where it was said that oh we're going to be able to all summer because july 1 was the

live date that all summer we were going to be able to have the clerical staff other staff all hands on deck we're going to get these things done blah blah blah and now we've got two weeks left and now we finally got live ieps and things are getting real in three weeks i i'm i'm still frustrated by it you don't have to give it to me they dropped the ball it is what

it is i understand all the points all i'm telling you is that in my opinion i wouldn't want to be working under those conditions under the last minute and then you're going to tell me we've got to do this we've got to do that that's that was the worst part of power school hands down but my other question for you would be on the chromebooks you had mentioned i i think that the

policies are all in place for starting the year fresh with the new policies related to correct kids taking care of their chromebooks so my question was that plus are we ready to roll everybody's going to have one we want to one throughout the district yeah we're one-to-one and then some we have a district stockpile of devices that are ready to go at a moment's notice the high school numbers are a little bit

increased this year we're ready to go with you know putting more devices into the high school we've actually also the team has gone out to some of the elementary schools and pulled out the very early going chromebooks when they first came out those are all now out of circulation and being replaced with new chromebooks yeah and i think you had mentioned that i'm not trying to add it to your list of

things to do before the start of year but it will be a technology subcommittee meeting in september and one of the questions is going to be that looking back at the data that you were looking at saying how many were damaged what do we have we lost because if we don't continually ask you people are just going to keep on ruining this stuff and think it's just they're free correct just a heads up

six weeks from now we're gonna have a meeting and that's one of the questions that's going to be asked for the subcommittee to give to the full committee thank you i yield anything further for mr cabal hearing none uh thanks for the update 12 12. discussion and vote to approve the camera installation is referred by the facilities and operations subcommittee and presented by scott

cabral chief in motion to approve i have emotional groove second i have a motion in a second um you might as well tell us exactly what you're doing down there and then we'll vote mr cabal please okay so the the quick version is the system that's at moore and now is a proprietary system the company can no longer service it for us because of the age of the system you cannot get camera replacement and you

cannot get software updates the servers that run the software the company no longer exists they've gone under over time just like many tech companies do what we'd like to do mr pacheco and i sat down we'd like to go with a company called vrcata we are using them now for card access they are an excellent cloud-based camera solution it will allow us to no longer have servers on site it will allow us to

maintain the software from anywhere if i had to be away at a conference or on vacation and there was an issue i could get into the system and assist from wherever i was in the world and it's also much more secure the system that we have now fails quite a bit and it's a rather time intensive process to get it back up and running this will allow us to have

the cameras up and running 24 7 365 and if a camera goes down i unfortunately get a text real time to look at that camera uh how many cameras got in one there are currently 79 so right now this proposal replaces the 79 the newer cameras have a better focal length and um more viewable area um so there may be some areas where a camera comes down but it gets moved 30 feet down the hall just

to encompass more you got in and out of the building correct more and his interior and exterior okay thank you very quickly uh mr hunt scott uh just on that the fnoma he gave a great presentation my only question is um i asked about the parking lot there's cameras in the parking lot correct will that will those cameras uh cover the walkway to the yes there actually are two cameras on that walkway

currently they'll just be swapped out okay and just get into real briefly how this is going to be a significant improvement i know we've talked about it before so so basically the camera is now i mean i know what a tube television was in black and white so that's basically if you look at the cameras now that's where the technology was the new cameras are 4k technology so high def

so you're going to be able to see very close detail um and and the piece for us when mr pacheco and i were looking at the systems is ease of use um i can easily teach a building administrative team how to use the system much easier than i can and cheryl's in the audience that system was very difficult to use i'm pretty versed in technology and i had a hard time to understand how to use

it and actually how to retrieve information if we needed in you know video for evidence it was very difficult to do this i can go on i can click the dates click the time it downloads it automatically can be shared with the admin team can be shared with central office and if need be shared with the four of the police department with a click of a button and the in the cloud-based system um

that you're going to be installing it more and we're going to expand it through the district the hope is to to expand in the district and i could come to you with many camera systems that i'd like to replace this one is the one that needs to be replaced right now because i can't get software patches for it the other buildings most of them are on a cloud-based system um a different manufacturer but they're

you know they're the same they're like a toyota and a mitsubishi they're two different companies they do the same thing um we like the ricotta here because the card access system talks together with that system so as we move forward and replace card access systems we'll be looking to vercata to match everything so it's a clean across the board and where do you see the uh where do you see the next

school is there next school that you're going to be working on or right right now it would probably be cuss okay um and at casa will also be the addition of we'd like to use more and as our model and and add exterior cameras at cusp because there are some areas where we could indeed add cameras okay thank you keep up the great work thank you very much i'm miss pereira

so i just wanted to say just for the sake of people listening um that are concerned about the safety of the school that this is a huge improvement right you were saying not only is um you know it's also easier to add additional cameras with this system correct now what we'll be able to do is this system will allow us to in-house ad cameras so that proprietary system is no longer there it's technically called open

source so any member of my team could add a camera after a member of ken's infrastructure team adds the wiring right and also we're going to be able to i mean these cameras are much better than some of the the outdated system we're using now so we're going to be able to zoom in on license plates or um so the community can know that our schools are very safe if you're going to

be even remotely outside the school and do anything the least bit inappropriate we're going to have them um pretty much 100 percent chance that we're going to be able to see that license plate and pass that information on to the police if necessary correct or you know school administration so i'd like to see these cameras obviously as you know as i spoke about the subcommittee i want to see cameras everywhere

i want everybody to be seen um and i think that uh you know that it's important for the community to know that that's those are the steps that that you're taking and we're taking and and we will come back to the subcommittee and then to the full committee with other buildings but my mantra has always been finish one project first and make sure it's 100 correct and right i don't like to have

five different major projects going on because too much can go wrong at that point sure you're always going to get me to agree with with that thank you for your time thank you anything furthermore mr aguiar the um i use i think you said 79 but the quote says 59 just yeah so when they when they did the quote it was they didn't count one of the floors in the auditorium but this

quote represents the full 79 cameras in there they assured me of that and it will yep i can have it i will they'll they will update it this way it just said 59.

the um and it also says in there that it assumes all the wiring all these other things are you anticipating additional expenses or is that not at mourinho the the infrastructure that was done there when we built the building is all fiber optic to the exterior cameras and that has a shelf life of 30 plus years i don't anticipate any wiring issues if there's an internal wire issue

we've already spoken that we would deal if the company comes in and says camera 131 the wiring is no good we'll take care of that internally with our low voltage group and this is 270 thousand dollars this also encompasses um the card access as well so they are going to be replacing the readers while they're in there so this will be card access the same system across the board that's what our hope is

to do in the coming years i know you said that across the district there's needs and this and that so i'd like to personally request an update on each system and how many cameras are working and not working because i for one have gotten notice from schools parents families whoever oh the camera's just not working and we never hear about it and then so we really have nothing to go on so

if they're not working i expect you to come to us and say we need to fix them but i have had that happen multiple times where oh this cameras are not down like it's okay it's not okay thank you are you okay anything further did that please call the vote mr yes mr bailey mr harper yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez she's still blocked kev yes she got um okay locked up

yes your internet got locked up not here for your free information we have retirements resignation appointments and regretfully a few death notices could i get a motion to accept motion give me a second second i got a motion a second here's the question for the superintendent for something to look at when i when we get these we don't have anything to do with the hiring but you know i've always asked questions about

the steps and where people get so is it even though it's busy are you still reviewing all of the um steps and making sure that i had a few questions i'll ask you offline but i just think it's important when we put it out there that we've done our due diligence ahead of time thank you uh i got a motion a second deb please call the roll miss dragon yes mr bailey yeah

mr harp yes ms laramie yes ms pereira yes ms rodricks mayor coogan yes um item 14 new business any new business to come before mr chairman just may we uh ask since mr billy just came back i don't think he should be recorded as a no on the uh last vote for the cameras so if we could just ask him his vote i don't think he should get him mr bailey

oh yes okay thank you mr aguilera anything further mr when mr cabral was up i meant to ask a question i know we talked about uh cameras and this particular building being new how has the process been here at the high school with um a new building all the cameras working here at durfee are they so all of the meraki cameras are currently working we're working with the vendor and the integrator that put

the cameras in in the courtyard right now there's been some issue with those they've been up and down as of late at last talk with adam keane this morning they're looking to probably do a firmware upgrade of those cameras so i'll know more in the coming days of where those cameras um what happens with those but the meraki cameras that we're under control everything internally here are up 100 of the time well

i'm not an expert on this book you just explained to us why at martin we wanted all the rocky cameras for a certain number of reasons why would we have not all the same cameras here so these cameras were part of the building project and that was what was recommended by the integrator at the time we use meraki cameras everywhere now so the meraki cameras i personally love the vacated cameras

is the tie-in with the card access system so that's why we're trying those there but when you take a meraki camera and a vacated camera they're one in the same camera they're actually the engineers that left meraki so they're the same camera they just have a different name on them it it makes no sense to me why we have two different it's just maybe not you it wasn't your call correct but somebody put the

cameras that you want are in the majority of this building so the cameras that we use the majority of in the district right now or in this building we are we're test betting those vacated cameras in that other building before i make a major move because i i do anticipate after sitting down with ken and then sitting down with the two companies that i am going to make a shift to rocata in the future

but right now the meraki cameras that we have in the buildings are 100 all the time they're a very reliable source but i like the new integration with the card access system it will literally time stamp it will facial recognize the person that signs into the building there are some things that rocator is now doing that meraki is not doing so looking you know towards the future to future proof

ourselves that's why we're looking at that vendor for that system yeah it doesn't make any sense to me but that's okay the uh i would assume that you're going to give us the update on when correct yeah i'll put it in a friday email yeah with that thank you i mr chairman i do have a on the new business something i'm sorry mister i have something on the new business

but i didn't know if this was the time i became this new business go ahead so we had had in the past is a thing called a fair share amendment and uh that's a bill i don't want to go into detail i think everybody on the committee knows what that is it's going to provide resources to public schools um if the additional revenue that's coming in from a sur tax on income over one

million dollars will generate two billion dollars for the public education it's going to come back to transportation and education now the only thing i'd like to do at this present time when you look around the state school committees are taking a stand on whether they support the fair share amendment or not i can tell you that i personally support it we need the resources so i'm asking that we um

we make a motion that uh the fall river school committee supports the fair share amendment and endorses its passage by the voters in the upcoming election i i i thought we we had a presentation on it but we never took a vote i don't think to actually you know so that they can go around we have people dedicating their time to go out and check it we just should also

weigh in if we don't support it so be it but i'm asking you to support it because i think it's important and then while we can join with all the other school committees that are doing the same so i would say mr did you make a motion yes yeah second all right we have a motion a second um deb called the fair share amendment is the millionaires tax is what we're talking about

anybody have any questions about it deb call the role please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms larabee yes mrs pereira yes ms rodriguez mary coogan yes item number 15. we have a request for executive session mr assad yes the items would be mayor national large chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes for july 18 2022 regular school committee meeting

it's also national chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective buying relative to all administrators and employees represented by the florida administrators association as the chairs determined that no concession may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to

collective bargaining relative to all paraprofessional employees of the former school system represented by the forum and federation of paraprofessionals as the chairs determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national launch chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective body relative to all cafeteria employees of the florida

school system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 393 local 1118 the jury's attune chair is determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national law chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all maintenance employees

of the former school system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 93 local 1118 as the chairs determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national large chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collector bogdy relative to all custodial employees the former school

system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 93 local 1118 as the chairs determined that no possession would have a detrimental impact on the partnering position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all safety security employees of the former school system represented by the

american federation of state county municipal employees council 93 local eleven eighteen as the chair has determined that no concession may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee passionate laws chapter 38 section 2182 to conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiation with non-union personnel specifically the new assistant superintendent chief academic

officer for the forum school department to be selected and appointed by the school committee no procession at the august 8th 2022 regular meeting before the school committee dr curley is the superintendent of school's sole recommended candidate for appointment to the position of assistant superintendent chief academic officer for the forbes school department the committee would reconvene they may have made up your

statements at that time i i need a motion in a second for executive session motion second second i have a motion second deb call the role to go to executive session please miss jackie yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss laravey yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez yes we're back from executive session deb please call the role ms drag yeah here mr bailey here mr here ms larabee here mr pereira here mr

rodricks mayor coogan here uh anything further come before the committee mr hart uh thank you mayor um a motion to uh approve i'm sorry uh vote to approve the executive session minutes for july 18 2022.

second i have a motion a second deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms larry yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez mayor coogan yes mr mayor mr hart a motion to approve the paraprofessionals contract as negotiated second i have a motion to second any questions dad please call the roll mr argent yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez mayor

kogan yes motion to adjourn exactly second promotion is second to adjourn deb please call them all yeah yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms yes ms pereira yes ms rodriguez yes adjourned