The Fall River School Committee convened its regular meeting on Monday, September 12, 2022. The session commenced with recognition awards for Durfee High School, its CTE Director Cindy Silvia, and Construction Craft Labor Instructor Carlton Medeiros, acknowledging their success in securing the largest grant for the CTE program, specifically the Massachusetts Capital Skills Grant for the Construction Craft Labor program. Superintendent Maria Ponce provided updates, noting a fluctuating enrollment of over 10,700 students and 30 new hires, though 40 positions, particularly in special needs and ESL, remained open. A COVID-19 update outlined new guidelines, including no quarantine for exposed asymptomatic individuals and a 5-day isolation period for positive cases. Significant discussions centered on contract approvals. A $254,000 contract with WB Mason for special education office furniture was approved 5-2 despite concerns about its cost. The $164,000 PowerSchool licensing contract, for the new fiscal year, was approved 6-1, with the condition that PowerSchool representatives appear before the full committee next month to address ongoing implementation issues. A $600,000 contract for Cultured Care Special Education Nursing Services, representing a $400,000 increase from the prior year, was approved, prompting a request for more detailed explanations for such substantial increases. The committee also approved a $365,000 contract with Precision Human Resources for special education staffing, with members questioning the long-term reliance on external agencies. Two new job descriptions, for an SEL Integration Specialist and a CTE Co-op Coordinator, were approved with amendments. These amendments removed references to the Fall River Educators Association (FREA) contract, aiming to provide greater flexibility in terms of employment, hours, and salary structure to attract optimal candidates. Additionally, an amended Security Resource Officer (SRO) Memorandum of Understanding was approved, incorporating a provision that all SRO salaries would be covered by Fall River Public Schools. The committee also approved two eligibility applications to the Community Preservation Committee for projects at 417 Rock Street: the replacement of a front patio railing system and the replacement of 78 windows. The meeting concluded following an executive session to discuss collective bargaining strategies.
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yep i would like to call to order the monday september 12th regular meeting of the florida school committee deb would you please call the roll mr again mr bailey here mr harp here miss larabee here miss pereira here mr rodriguez here mayor coogan here salute to the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag
0:41pursuant 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 no citizens input tonight no mayor recognition awards uh we do have a few
1:09recognition awards tonight you want to help us with superintendent pots we should all go down the front there
2:08so tonight it's with great pleasure that we actually honor two of our own um jeffrey high school and um cindy silvia who is the director of the cet program at durfee are being recognized and carlton medeiros are being recognized by the governor i have a citation here for them from the governor as well as a recognition award from us for the great work that they did in um obtaining a the largest grant
2:40in the cte program so i will read what the citation uh says this is for durfee so matt damaris principal demaris is here and certainly matt you can come down and receive this and it says on behalf of the citizen citizens of the commonwealth i am pleased to confer upon you this governor's citation in recognition of receiving the massachusetts capital skills grant for the construction craft labor program
3:05to build upon education and training for students interested in all areas of construction fields this 31st day of august in the year 2022 so mr damaris congratulations
3:36and the other citation is for miss sylvia carlton you can just wait right there because we're going to call your name okay so miss silvia on behalf of the citizens of the commonwealth of massachusetts i'm pleased to confer upon you this governor's citation in recognition of your efforts to secure the massachusetts capital skills grant for the construction craft laborer program at bmc durfee high school to build upon
4:02education and training for students interested in all areas of the construction field on this 31st day of august and the year 2022 so we also have our own school committee uh special recognition awards so uh carlton medeiros is the construction craft labor instructor here at durfee and in recognition of receiving the governor's citation for his hard work and partnering in writing the capital skills
4:36grant awarded to durfee high school we honor carlton medeiros and to cinthia silvia cte director in recognition of her receiving the governor's citation for her hard work knowledge and experience in writing the capital skills grant for bmc durfee high school congratulations thank you
5:49is he's got a two-year warranty on it not a teenager
6:09on we go item number four super i'm sorry subcommittee updates do we have any subject subcommittee updates tonight no hearing none superintendents report superintendent ponce yes good evening so today we have an enrollment update although i will say that these numbers are fluctuating daily so i i'm going to say as of this morning we have numbers but they will change we have a healthy enrollment we are up to
6:36ten thousand seven hundred more or less students i expect those numbers to go down slightly because as you know first few weeks of school what we do is we are chasing the students who have not reported yet um some of them may have transferred to other districts so we're tracking those numbers and we will have adjusted numbers but right now our kindergarten numbers look very healthy um healthier than last year and our
7:00numbers are over 10 700 but i would say that's not accurate numbers we will make sure that each day we look at it and we'll make sure we get updated numbers we also have a hiring update just this past week as you know i've been updating you weekly in the friday email but this past week we hired 11 teachers 10 paraprofessionals 6 support staff and 3 folks in the facilities and operations department
7:32for a total of 30 new hires we currently still have 40 open positions although some of those some people they're still posted as open because until they're completely processed they that posting does not come down so and i will say that just like the national trend special needs and esl are two critical areas that we are struggling to fill i will commend our principals for and their teams for creating
8:04backup plans to make sure that classes are there are adults in front of students but we are continuing to process and hire every single day and a covet update just nurse long we shared with families no longer is quarantined required for recommended uh or recommended for staff or children regardless of vaccination status if they have no symptoms right all exposed individuals can come to school they can
8:39attend school as long as they remain without symptoms mask wearing as you know is optional but if you are exposed you're asked to wear you're required to wear a mask for 10 days whether you have symptoms or not um if a student or staff test positive they're required to isolate for five days and then they can return to school um if they have no symptoms are fever-free with the mask and
9:10you know otherwise there's no more test and stay is not required we don't have the the measures of the at-home testing or any of that none of that is required at this time so um thank you nurse long and her staff for putting together we posted these in languages up on our website for families and we'll continue to obviously we will continue to monitor because we need to make sure that we are
9:37um safe for adults as well as our students and that's it thank you any questions for the superintendent uh mr again when you do the enrollment could you please give us an update on the durfee aftertalk uh uh which one yeah and that we were like in the past we were trying to get them in by october one to be the one for the diamond uh partnership i will tell you that we have withdrawn from that
10:05i don't think that we've recruited anybody for that this year because we would have to reapply and we did not um diamond we did not reapply with them this year because we couldn't step we couldn't they couldn't staff yeah my look of amazement is just that if i didn't ask that we wouldn't have known that's all but you're right the only reason i was asking is we had controversy over the october one getting the
10:29extra money that's that's the only reason why i asked thank you are you and i will say mr agyar the minute i s you asked that question i said that yes we have no student comment or delegate report tonight item number seven approval of minutes from the five nine twenty two regular school committee can i get a motion in a second on emotional approval second anything on the minutes
10:58deb could i get a whole call please mr again yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes we have one travel request to come in front of us tonight item eight motion to approve second i have a motion a second any discussion on the travel request for um obviously but the um the verizon people are they now working
11:26for us is that like what is the status when i first saw this i thought why is it coming before the committee if if they're working for verizon and then we're working for now and then it's approved by a person that works for verizon yeah it's still a travel request so the school committee still has to prove out of state travel this is the last year yep the only
11:46thing i would just say is the point of as i looked back into it it looks like dr ron had had asked for it to but i would assume that this comes from the school folks not from the verizon lady that's right right because on the bottom of it says jennifer cooley approving it and it and i was like who's jennifer cooley i've never heard of her before because they're paying for it right but just a
12:07technicality but thank you i yield do we call the roll on that ted no miss drag you yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item number nine acceptance of donations we have three items to accept tonight um i would like to take a motion a second on accepting your donations second i have a motion a second um
12:41why don't you read the uh items for us superintendent oh mr again yeah just the point of uh we see this all the time from uh mr damaris's uh the durfee high one and it's always a very small amount and i think that the point of why we ask for the donations is so that we can accept them but this seems like almost a regular occurrence of a very small amount so i'd like to make a
13:04motion that we have anything fifty dollars or above so that basically this is the waste of paperwork and time for mr maris or his staff so if we did fifty dollars or above as an amendment here for the policy we wouldn't have to get if somebody got 18 donated it'll just save that person's time that's all i don't have a problem with that so um make it 100.
13:25you want to make it 100. i mean i'd i mean 50 but why not you meant it uh to 100 yeah that's fine with me i mean the intent of it was uh we didn't get noticed but this every time i look at this i say all of this work and paperwork and paper for what 16 and it's not okay so a motion to accept the donations with an amendment by mr aguiar
13:46seconded by miss laravey for a hundred dollars deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss laravey yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor cogan yes on this point then please sure to durfee high school on behalf of uh principal damaris from ohio apply uh prince 16 and 80 cents um from uh to watson elementary school on behalf of principal hogue from stonehill college
14:17alumni engagement office 100 backpacks filled with school supplies and um to follow public schools um for on behalf of claudia acosta and the scl department from decker deaconess home 2 000 pairs of shoes and boots thank you all thank you ted please call the roll we did already oh we did okay sorry item number 10.
14:42i just asked one question so i think i brought this up at one of the uh prior meetings of out of the policy on gofundme and the like if we could just ask the superintendent to get back to us on what that is and not so that people um there should be a protocol on it are you none of these were from no no a separate issue just on the donations i
15:03mean so i just as this was coming up in my head i kept thinking what about the what are we doing with when somebody has a gofundme is there any approvals needed so right now we're funded pretty well and we should be funding things that the students teachers and staff need not having people have to go out and do gofundme to try and get an extra computer like it used to happen in the
15:24past but i think this should be a protocol so that it doesn't get into uh you know how many more times we're going to keep seeing things out there so i'm just asking for some sort of one pager from you on your feeling on gofundme if it's working well or do we have to put some controls in it thank you item number 10 approval of contracts obviously we have a number of contracts here tonight to approve
15:50if anybody has any that they want pulled out i would wish they would mark them if not i will take them as a group i'm looking for a motion in a second but can i just illuminate is one of the contracts we didn't do yes i'd like to pull out the luminate because we don't that needs to come out because um we are withdrawing that one that's on the second page under miscellaneous contracts illuminate
16:15no longer on the agenda anything anything further how about can we pull three four ten twenty three well i'm sorry mr aggie are you talking about the third item down on the page whatever the memo is oh the memo oh the memo so it's a replay maintenance i just had a question on it replay maintenance is number three what's the other ones doubly b mason wb mason is four power school power school's right at the bottom
16:51that's 10.
16:53i had 19 but superintendent addressed that okay 23 power scope the top one applicant tracking 29 000 yep and 28 cultured care cultured cares at the bottom of the page okay and 32 premium human resources precision human resources okay so excluding three four power school for 164 000 power school for 29 000 cultured care and precision human resources could i get a motion to accept all contracts as written
17:37i have a motion second uh deb please call the role and then we'll go through mr against miss drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes mr v yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes okay item number three replay maintenance mr again i just had a question on what passport 365 seat
18:12is so it's the it's the testing mechanism for the g-max testing so they're all it's all part of the test it's all part of the testing and the revive the revive is basically the refreshing of the field so there were some spots that that we needed some base material put in a couple of dips in the field that didn't pass the original g-max test that we did before we
18:40hire revive to come in and do that work and then the the tests follow up after that yeah i think it just said in passport 365 i was wondering yeah just all part of it i didn't think we were dealing with seats but yeah um that just must be that so that was my only question anything further on replay maintenance okay mr yeah nope do you want to take them separately or
19:02go approve okay motion to approve replay maintenance so have a second second uh deb please call the world mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes mr pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes next item wb mason 254 mr aggie i just was this number was very high so i'm just looking for some background on what it what it is it's 250 000 for the special ed staff to move in
19:32and i was wondering what's up with that so basically the um as the special ed staff moved out of 360 um ellsbury street and moved temporarily into where they are currently all of that furniture was really in bad shape between leaking roofs and a lot of it was hand-me-downs already from other buildings so it was in rough shape we got approximately 25 employees so there's 25 work stations so to speak probably
20:1212 offices complete furnishings for offices a waiting room a reception area and some work rooms conference rooms it's modular units all put together in into a configuration that they've designed to expediate or expedite i'm sorry expedite the workload as it passes through um the sped department so there's um it's all modular units it's uh shelving cabinets file cabinets there's a lot of
20:53different pieces of equipment probably total pieces of about 320 different pieces of furniture panels and the like so that is that number this is three we did a three contractor fac bid they do the design work also so that's all in here and this is also in the installation so this is a complete package yeah i just asked because i think i still think even with that explanation that's a lot of money
21:28personally and they must have had something the amount of times that we've moved people and moved places and the furniture that we've had in you know schools we just built a whole high school like you know to to think that we needed to start from scratch there is surprising to me so i've asked the superintendent to send a list of you know what that is um it just it's a real high number sure
21:52with that i yield anything further on wb mason i have a question mr rogers you said that was temporary that they were going to be there so we've moved them from the old building yep before demolition into the pace building and they're in a temporary setting so they have office space now they're working off of tables in that space because we didn't move any of the desks from the old space most of the desks
22:20made it from the building to the dumpster for broken drawers different things like that the deaths we did salvage we put into trailers and we've been distributing those to other areas within the district for new teachers so that was we probably saved about 12 desks of everything we had across the district out of the old building i don't think there were 10 10 deaths at durfee that we saved a lot of tables work tables
22:50for schools but not a lot for office space right i just want to understand where you have them now is there is their temporary spot they're finished area the area is completely finished the new setting is completely finished construction wise okay with this new furniture so this would be the furniture piece yes okay so that's what i was trying to understand to make sure that we weren't buying
23:12again when they made another move that now we were going to be in this position okay so with that idea mr aguirre wb the only other question uh comment i have on is it says funding to come out of the fno maintenance supplies account yes i think this is a one-time purchase like a special account so when you compare year to year you're gonna this is gonna be highly inflated we don't have another account like new
23:37purchases or um i don't believe that it's going to be that far off we did have some other expenses last year not to this size but equal amounts of of this broken up so i don't see you i don't think you're going to see much of a difference from year to year um because we did do a lot furniture wise i mean this is this is a large furniture purchase we did have a
24:00furniture purchase on the opposite side of the building that was done through um construction site if i'm not mistaken yeah and that was around the same amount that's uh much smaller because less people it's a different build out on on the family center thank you are you well set mr again yes ariel thank you sir i need a motion in a second on wb mason motion control second i have a motion so
24:39in a second from miss laravey deb please call the role miss dragon no mr bailey no ms jahar yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes miss roderick yes mayor coogan yes next item up power school um for 164 000 mr again yeah the only reason i asked to hold this was uh i know there's an update later on i had some other questions that were related to it but i know um as you know i've been
25:18sort of all over this issue that i don't think that they've been as clear and supportive as they said they were going to be so i'll still maintain that in my personal opinion but i don't think we should be paying them for year two before we know year one is really ready to go straightened out and everything that's they've told us they were going to do that they did
25:39so i don't want to vote for this tonight for that reason because i still think there's issues and um yeah that's all so i'm not going to be supporting it but if anybody else wants to vote on it without the information so be it but i don't think we should be voting on it at the present time because we're going to take what we have as a leverage and give it away to them we're
26:01going to pay anyway you know motion to approve uh i would i would let mr cabral explain to us what this is yeah so when we initially did the contract with power schools they only charged us for a half years worth of services from january to july to do the implementation piece and now this is the licensing to move us forward into the new fiscal year july to july very similar to what we would pay yearly
26:28for x2 this is all the licensing for all of the platforms involved in powerschool licensing so mr cabral is is it accurate if we don't approve this tonight that we can't move forward with powerschool with this aspect of power school it depends on what power school would do they could stop the licensing yes i mean if the bill isn't paid it's not something that we even talked about because on my end the power school
27:03implementation there were some speed bumps and potholes along the way but it's much more smooth now we're getting the internal supports that we need from powerschool and again 20 years of data in a very short period of time we knew that there were going to be hiccups along the way and as we start to use the system there are things that end users are are requesting as fixes they're also seeing some differences
27:27from one system to another we're not making any major changes from one system to another we're using what's under the hood right now and as we meet with the central office and senior staff if there are going to be you know customizations as we move forward then we would get mr michael isaac and his team and power school involved again though we haven't even broached the subject internally with senior staff
27:49to to not pay a bill moving forward because we're into this for licensing so if they decided to stop then we wouldn't have our data and i just urge you guys to know that also x2 has not been updated since june 27th so if they did decide to you know turn our access off for a time we'd have no way to take attendance we'd have no options or anything because x2 is not set up for
28:11the current school year so right now you're satisfied with the relationship you have with powerschool moving forward i mean moving forward there are things that we're going to work on with them we all know this yes there's growing pains involved however i do feel they have been more receptive as of late to changes and and brian and his team have been on the phone with them it seems like endless hours and as they
28:35find stuff they are very receptive to fixing it i know that we're still ironing out some pieces with 504 plans because the state template that they use is different from what was in x2 so a lot of the pieces are just getting our data in there and they the data will be continuing throughout the school year this time next year we'll still be putting data into the system okay thank you i yield
29:01okay i have um mr anger so the system's been i'm assuming this is on here because we haven't paid it yet this is just on here because we got the you know the new invoicing for the next year so we have to get it into a contract so mr almeida and his team can pay the bills so we can move forward right but he said it was yet too so we must have already had a contract
29:23this in writing here says this is year two year two should have yeah one year two automatic you're when we did the deal initially it was just year one from implementation and what they did power school did was to try to cut some of the cost down to get us in as a new customer they built us in that one block and then moving forward we were always going to be responsible for the licensing fees so
29:43this isn't yet true this is your full first full year right because we paid implementation fees for july through january so when i'm reading this it says this is year two that's not that's not accurate otherwise i've been we've been operating for a couple weeks already without it being paid so if the theory that we can't hold this right now to make sure everything is good we've done it for two
30:08weeks without the payment and they haven't shut us off on it yet and they haven't correct but i i just don't know what their thought process would be new company we don't know if they're gonna turn you know what i mean we don't know if they would turn us off because it hasn't even been a discussion internally about not paying a bill because they have been living up to their end of the bargain
30:27right but it's not automatic if we if we just vote to table this for one more month doesn't mean that we're not going to have services that's what i'm i don't mr aggie i don't know that because we have never broached the subject with the company in the contract does it say it has to be paid by the first day of school what does the contract say net isn't it yeah it's usually net 30.
30:48so we just got the bill a couple of weeks ago um so that's why it's on this agenda so i think you understand my point i do and i also don't think to be totally honest that power school has done what they said they were going to do and i'll send the video i went back and watched the video of the gentleman that sat before us and said we're going to make sure
31:09everything works seamless i have the video it's all 50 seconds it said we're going to have a dedicated person just for us all of this promises that they said they were going to do and you can sit up there and anybody else can sit up there and say that they've been better and all this other stuff but if we're being honest they didn't do what they said they were going to do in my opinion
31:27and that's part of my frustration is that because i hear from people all through this department just like everybody else does that things aren't going as smooth necessarily as what we would want case in point the special ed one we prom they will promise us it was going to work seamlessly we've got a memo today that's i think it's a little bit of fluff in my opinion but it says that we're working through a
31:50couple things i think there's bigger issues with that special education module than what anybody wants to say and we paid 30 grand extra for that so when i voice my frustration it's not you mr cabral it's just a point of these people told us they were going to do x y and z and everything was going to be great and everything else i already think we're probably having some buyers remorse going through this program but
32:12we nobody wants to say no get a mountain here in front of us and let's hold them accountable to what they said they were going to do nobody on this committee or in the administration wants to do that we just keep oh we're working with them we're going to try well you keep on trying because it's going to continue to get worse and then you're going to come back to us and say we need to go
32:27somewhere else to do another uh expense to do this that and the other i know it's coming i can feel it it's coming we're going to have another expense on our hands and that's why i want to hold these people accountable to say no you said you were going to do something and do it so we can take the vote i'm voting no with that i yield okay i got a motion
32:45from mr hart and do i have a second i have no can i answer a question so mr cabral in your view your perspective do we have a reason to not like it at this time like at this time there is no you know i don't have a feeling or mr michael isaac and his team have not given me a reason to say mr almeida hold the bill don't pay the invoice
33:17and i go back to say what and ask again what is the relationship that you have with them are they your beck and call are they answering emails are you are they helping us with the with these uh hiccups like what is the relationship communication frustrated with the relationship i was frustrated early on um very frustrated early on however some of those frustrations that we had with the company were in fact due to
33:43some of our historical data the way it was put into x2 historically over those 20 years so it's not just like grabbing from one column and bringing to another there were differences in the way that power school runs and the way that x2 did um and again mr aguiar is correct because he said that there were districts that they did x2 to power school well ms aguiar didn't say it they
34:04said it but they just exactly he's just reiterating those were their exact words correct and i've listened to the 50-second clip over and over again as well however our data did look differently than some of those other districts so early on i was very frustrated tracy dr curley myself and the superintendent we met endlessly on this stuff and we were concerned early on however we had a
34:27meeting and they brought more resources in and things were moving along much smoother i will say that there are still some issues with the iep process that you can't necessarily clean up all the bugs when you go live so kristen farias and her team and brian and her his team have been working with them and they have been much more receptive so things are starting to come together but i've
34:49been completely transparent and forthcoming with the committee as this process has been going on there will be bumps in the road can i expect to be smooth sailing out this you know from this point on i pray every day that that's the possibility you know but there will be a big project like this with the amount of data and the amount of gatekeepers in the process we are still going to have hiccups
35:12so mr cabral you're confident moving forward yes thank you i yield uh can i before we go can i get a second on mr hart's motion to approve it then mr anger say that again i need once a second second i have a second mr again the um my only point in saying this and it's not to be critical of you mr cabral but you're the chief information officer and this entire power school conversion
35:39falls under you does it not fall under mr michael azak his team special education around so when i when i'm advocating that we hold these people accountable it's in a way to try to help you to make sure that you can tell these people that we're holding you accountable to it because you're putting your name and your reputation on the line for power school so when you say to me that you think that's going well and
35:59all this stuff i'm going to hold you to that personally because that's the bottom line is that you're the chief information officer you guys came to this committee and said we want to change the power school and spend two or three times as much money as we spent on the last one you and your the superintendent at the time the other administrators all said that so when i when i'm voicing my
36:18frustration it's not too personally but make no mistake about it power school is under you as the chief information officer not mr michael azam thank you are you anything further i can sitting here understand mr aguiar's frustration every time we talk about power schools i can feel it and i feel it as well my hesitation in voting no is that if they do pull the license then we're going to be in big time trouble
36:47um i'm all for holding them accountable i'm all for having them come back to answer questions from the committee um 100 behind that but my hesitation in voting no is that it's going to cause bigger problems if they do pull the license and we're having issues like you said with attendance or what have you i don't think we want to even go there um and because you can't tell me well we
37:13get 60 days to pay the bill did the bill come with a due date you know like i get my electric bill there's a due date kevin kevin's looking okay because if there's a due date and they're saying the bill's due in 60 days ninety whatever ninety days and mr aggio wants to hold off on this i'll totally support that but if we don't have a due date then i'm hesitant
37:38that i'm going to sit here and vote no and regret that later when things blow up i mean if we could figure that out i'd be interested in knowing that okay sorry take your time and also i mean if the committee would like we can get power school to come into a technology subcommittee meeting and sit down with that group first and then mr aguiar and that committee can ask
38:04questions and if we need to bring them into the full committee we can try to set something up i think that's a great idea concur miss rogers can i propose that we approve with the caveat that we have them come in within the next like 45 days and we be able to sit down and have a meeting so that we were we're covering both bases but it's not a blanket yes we're gonna
38:31prove no questions asked it's we pay the bill so we don't lose access do i think they would pull access probably not this is a large contract like let's be realistic but in good faith you know this is sort of like that last good faith effort and you sit down with them and we hash out all of these concerns but we have a plan like we need to meet within 45 days and that's an arbitrary number
38:56but i think that might be a good compromise i think that's a great idea that's fine you say we pill the we pay the bill but you guys are going to come in here and answer a lot of questions okay you'll set that up scott yes i'll reach out tomorrow morning all right let's let's let's call the roll on this one good idea miss rogers um dad please call them mr again no mr bailey yes
39:19mr harp yes ms laravey yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes ensuring that that's the caveat yes yeah mayor coogan yes mr mayor mr aguiar and mrs rodriguez's uh suggestion i think it's a good one i've been asking for four months five months for them to come before us but i think it should come before this full committee not the subcommittee because there's people are on on the subcommittee that have rightful
39:45questions and they're hearing some of the same things i am so i'd like it at a full committee meeting where we sit down and discuss with them next month sure perfect thank you i'll give you enough time scotland scott wisconco scott scott next month next month's meeting okay next item up is another power school um item mr aguiar naviance renewal service my question is what grades does naviance address so
40:11it's coming from the student services contracted account but is that the high school high school so why wouldn't it come from the high school budget if we're looking at when we talked about doing what we do in the budget so that they're like um centers of the high school i think you know i'm not opposed to it i think mr woodward has said it was beneficial and i thought he might said they tried to do
40:33it in middle school so whatever but if there's an expense from a school it should go under the school for truth and budgeting so i'm not opposed to it but i think that should change should happen in the future with that motion or approve do i have a second second i have a motion second deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms laravey yes miss pereira
40:57mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes uh next item cultured care special education nursing services um mr aggie you had a question i'm just curious it says the contract will pay for special education nursing services for the current year it's a significant increase from the fisc prior fiscal year i'm just looking for there's nothing else background as far as what what does that mean significant increase and what
41:25is this why do we have to hire an outside agency to handle nursing services we got more nurses now than we've ever had in the district so not sure what this is mr almeida so this is a contract that we have on a yearly basis the amount changes every year it's all dependent on what the students have in their ieps so the nurses follow the students essentially to and from school and in school
41:49and what was it last year i believe it was about two hundred thousand dollars last year so it increased by four hundred thousand dollars and i would i'm superintendent just under the same as the other piece in my opinion when something goes up four hundred thousand dollars uh it's worthy of at least a one pager beyond just passing this contract because i have questions probably everybody else
42:15has the same like what but if we don't ask the question we don't know it went up by 400 000. what is it that we're having can we hire in-house you know those are the questions that go in my head as we look at these things so i think it's a service that needs to happen so i want to vote to approve it but certainly not the way i i think we should be doing it
42:32with that i yelled motion to approve second i have a motion second that please call the role on cultured care mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss laravey yes ms pereira ms rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes the next item is precision human resources staffing of special education teachers and assistants mr aguiar you had a question so once again this item and i apologize if some think that i'm asking
43:03too many questions but here's the bottom line we get a piece of paper that says the precision home human resource contract totals 365 thousand this will provide for staffing of special education teachers and teacher assistants to the district funding will come from the operating budget special ed contracted services account that's what i'm reading here so my question would be just like it should be from for
43:23anybody would be what is this is it are we paying for the staff are we is this a consultant are we doing you know a little more meet behind the uh information and it's probably explainable uh but certainly it was lacking information that's why i asked mr coogan precision is a company that was formerly known as delta staffing we use them from time to time for specialized staffing requirements when
43:49we're unable to fill a position i believe this number is based on what we spent with them in the prior year and an estimate of continuing certain services they also provided services during the esy program we were unable to find staff for either paris or special education teachers or specific special education related services that needed to be provided during that time so they're sort of our stop gap
44:14for um unable to fill positions that are compliance issue for us and how many staff was it in that number i don't know what i can tell you is that um essentially i would say their rate for the teacher staffing is probably somewhere in the 40 to 45 an hour range the powers are probably a little less which is comparable to what we pay for what i'll call a loaded salary for a
44:40pair or a teacher with their salary and benefits attached to it the employees in that unit belong to precision staffing they send them to us and then bill us hourly for them and we have agreements uh with them or just we just it's an annualized agreement based on our needs but in the agreement is it a contract does it i articulate anything about responsibility uh in other words essentially it's their
45:07employee they have to go through the same vetting process as if we were hiring them so cory's background checks etc and they assume the responsibility from uh comp and as well as uh you know any benefits associated with that salary they pay them their employees working on our site i think it's similar to what we had to do with speech services in a different contract correct what i'm asking is if
45:28we could through the superintendent get some more information on that the contracts that usually when this happens we're paying a lot more than what we would have to pay if we had our own employee in certain cases i don't know about these contracts because i haven't seen them but um once again it just begs the question of is this every year like what if this is every year then why
45:49it is true mr um aguero would pay somewhat of a premium if you like i don't think the premium might be as high as you might be anticipating what i can tell you is that those positions or positions that we're unable to fill we continue to post those positions for ourselves so that if we can fill them with our own employee we can go that way and discontinue the services so that's why that number kind
46:08of fluctuates because their staff floats in and out of our building as needed we can release them anytime we can fill it with our own employee so if you had the same number last year then apparently you didn't spend the whole thing based on what you just explained i think last year we actually spent a little bit more based on compliance issues with special ed services i think last year was a increase spending more
46:29doesn't go with what you said about if we find somebody they can release them and we hire the person so correct it just it begs a little more of the question that's that's all i we need to staff i get it but if you told me every year we're going to have to keep using the employment agency to staff educators in our schools that i wouldn't be for that year round and year out we're going to
46:49address it so that we can try to not have that happen this is like sort of an emergency thing not every year and i don't know that data because we don't get the data what types of staff is it what teaches is it or any of that i don't get that all i get is this saying we're going to use an agency and it gives me a little heartache to to look at it so whatever information
47:08you can get i'll make a motion to approve and hopefully we get more info thank you thank you all right i have a motion i get a second second motion a second that please call the role on precision human resources mr again mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms yes ms pereira mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item 11 approval of grants we only have two grants tonight do i have any questions on the grants
47:39mr egypt yeah the one for the it's 494 thousand for the pre-k and uh the partnership but as i was going toward it it was all from citizens for citizens it was all other places so are we just strictly a pass-through and why are we involved in it we're a partner with them kristin's actually online but we're a partner with them so we are providing some additional services um kristin are you there yep
48:04i'm here so this is the commonwealth preschool partnership initiative and so what this is is we have partnered with peoplelink preschool and head start each of those two agencies will be opening a classroom at their facilities those students will be registered filtered through us and some of those slots will be reserved for children with disabilities excuse me the remaining slots will be
48:35available to families that meet eligibility requirements free of charge so similar to if they were enrolling with us but it opens additional space the grant is also funding a special education itinerant team that will be going out to those sites to provide services to students on ieps and so the need that that addresses is often times when children are referred at two and a half for services if they're found eligible
49:06and currently enrolled in those programs they then have to leave those programs and come to us in order to receive those services and so this allows them to stay in their current setting and we would provide the services there so it's a mix of both expanding access to full-day preschool slots for families with a partnership with community programs and bringing special education services to students where
49:32they are currently attending so what would have happened in the past under that condition under if a student became eligible yeah so a couple different things depending on the center the student unenrolls with that center and comes in and rolls in the floor of the public schools we do have some children that dual enroll which means they spend half of their day at the community based program
49:57and half of their day in one of our classrooms which creates some unnecessary transition so this allows the student to stay there in their community program full day and still receive the services that they need and this is a new grant or is this this is a new grant so it's not new to the state but it's new to fall river this was the first year um people inc had actually reached out
50:22through the mayor's office about interest in partnering with us on this and so it's something that we've been working on with them so this is we are cohort three in the state so it's new to us but not new to the state so it would lessen the burden the emergency burden is what you're saying foreign for children and also open more full day slots so when we talk about the idea of expanding access to full day
50:51preschool through the mix delivery system this is part of that work and so partnering with community agencies that have space in their centers as well to provide alternatives to families they provide longer day and full year access in their programs and so for some families it meets a need that we're not able to meet the um my last question on is the um when you look at the funding for
51:19children that fit those categories that you just talked about is there any reimbursement from the state for those seats if they're registered with us so we're working on getting all of the details um we have a meeting with the state coming up and then mr aguiar is also connecting with new medford public schools has this grant and has had it for a few years and so um we met with their team once already and are working
51:44with them um to learn through what they've learned over the last i believe three years that they've had this grant so that we can make sure we're maximizing on what it's available to us for families what i was referring to though is outside of the grant if we have a four-year-old that becomes eligible and needs services and that opens up another slot uh is that reimbursable to the state for children
52:11for children who are in this these classrooms that people link in head start no our own yes they're reimbursable at um fifty percent right any anybody that's on the five that would be fifty percent i believe so yes i could say better but i believe it's half for preschool okay thank you for the information appreciate it any other question on the two grants emotional proof i have a motion second
52:38second promotion second please mr argyle yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes ms yes ms pereira mr rodriguez yes mary coogan yes committee of the whole 12-1 is a vote to approve the selection and appointment of virginia's wong snyder nurse for the florida public schools ocean approved second i have a motion second anybody have any questions on a new nurse dad please call the role ms drag yeah
53:07yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms larabee yes ms pereira mr rodriguez yes mary coogan yes 12.2 is a discussion and vote to approve the district handbook is presented by maria ponce superintendent of schools so what you have is our yearly submission of the handbook aside from cleaning up some language there are two additions in you got that today the district technology policy as well as the student
53:42transfer policy which both had gone before the subcommittee each subcommittee and now are being inserted into handbook other than that there are no major changes any discussions on the district handbook i'm looking for a motion motion to approve exactly i have a motion a second deb please call the role miss drag yeah yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss larabee yes ms pereira mr rodricks yes
54:08mayor cooper yes 12 3 update on power school as presented by scott cabral our chief information officer mr cabral so we opened up school there were bumps in the road second day of school the system was very slow internally we found that there was a plug-in that was running in the background that was causing some lag for end users we turned off that plug-in and powerschool is looking at why it
54:39would slow it down as well as um we're thankful that internally we found that to make it a little bit you know smoother for the end user um attendance is being taken in the system uh teachers are able to submit conduct referrals they're able to add student journal logs um on the special education side the iep live data was migrated over from aspen um kristen and her team and brian and
55:02his team are still reviewing with powerschool some inconsistencies in certain fields however the majority of the iep data is in there for every student i know that there is a call this week to go over that as well again we had a trainer come in to work specifically with the special education district staff who were trained previously but didn't necessarily feel that they were trained well enough to use the system
55:30that happened over the course of last week and the goal is also to be able to start doing some of those trainings internally with kristin's staff as well as brian staff health module i have to say was a very smooth transition karen long and sally borges were amazing this summer the nurses were using the system during summer school so that helped because we were able to get some instantaneous feedback and have time to
55:56work on some of those issues there are some pieces of data that are still not in the system but it's not going to affect you know the nurses right now on a daily uh basis and and again brian's team and and karen and sally have been working um very well together and you know in squashing problems as they arise or actually finding issues um and fixing them before they're seen to the you know the end users
56:23enrollment module that was the smoothest um piece i believe just because we had quite a bit of lead time to work on it and the parent information center under cindy kudo and brian's team were able to work that out work out all the bugs i will say that we're in the support side of that now the project is done so we're already receiving support on that side and they have actually been very
56:48responsive to questions and to helping us on that side we're not in the support piece yet for any of the main sis system because we're still in the build-out um so as we start to finalize some of this we're at about 94 complete of the main project we'll start to go into the support side when brian and his team feel that they're able to sign off on the main piece um as far as imports from aspen
57:13like i've been saying for months we'll be doing those imports for the rest of this school year into next summer there is just so much historical data there so they're bringing over the pieces that they need now they're leaving the legacy stuff so we can get this school year running smooth and and people trained on the system as we move forward and then as there's some pockets of time they'll
57:33continue to you know bring pieces in the sims team's focus for term one is to work on translated reports um creation of report cards traditional and standard based and progress reports um we're looking at the 504 training now brian actually had a phone call this morning with them and they're going to set up some training because brian actually saw not a floor on their side but something that comes over from aspen
57:59there were too many fields and he's actually recommending that we there's about 100 or so 504s right now active that they get cleaned up internally by us and not imported over from aspen because he's going to see some data loss there so they're working that piece out now he's going to begin to start working on the state reporting training for the school level staff the one piece about
58:21power school that's different from aspen is we'll be able to see chain logs and changes to the system so brian and his team will be able to see errors more quickly than we were in the past with aspen and again continue importing data files and the big piece for this year is looking at options for continued training and then customizations as we move forward brian has been working with the buildings
58:47the principals the admin team and as there's a customization he jots it down and then we look at it from a district level to see what we're going to customize as we move forward
59:02mr aguiar just a comment for superintendent so where it says opening a school uh teachers are able to submit contact referrals and add student journal logs and i know we've spoke about this in the past about keeping uniformity with all schools making sure that the conduct is ended in a similar fashion is that has that been done or is that in progress that's in progress we actually have um some
59:24training coming up for consistency's sake um i agree we need to we saw lots of um discrepancies uh even in within buildings so yeah whatever you can do and it's not to be critical of anybody but we really need to see if a student gets a conduct it needs to go into contact referrals in the same fashion from each school because when we get the data it's all skewed because somebody says they had zero contact
59:51referrals doesn't mean suspensions and i would sit here and say how does that even possible that with 800 students 600 students you don't have so conduct referrals are going to happen it is what it is i think the schools need to know that they need to put it in so that we can help and if one school's got tremendous amount that means maybe they're holding kids accountable more than other schools but
1:00:12so be it so all right i think we're on the same page thank you are you anything further for mr cabral okay thank you scott thank you number 12.4 is the second read and vote to approve this security resource officer's memorandum of understanding as referred by the facilities and operations subcommittee and presented by ken pacheco chief operating officer second i have a motion to second any
1:00:40discussion on our agreement with the sros and the florida police department mr aggia were the only changes to this uh uh the name fall river public school i see that highlighted a lot and i don't know if it was if i was missing something yeah so it's a boilerplate from the state this is mimicking what the state has um they they took more ownership in the sro uh operations of uh of the schools and um
1:01:11it keeps referring here and there to um the different uh sections of of the law and and uh so this with the exception of borrower public schools this is the state document and and this has been signed off by the chief already but this was last year like we approved this three um march of 2021 right so when i uh i was not the subcommittee but i'm looking at it the only things that are
1:01:40highlighted are the yellow for the name so there's no changes whatsoever in this document or the mou uh the operating procedure or anything like that that exactly what's changed in in the document is the document itself has has had a facelift the last document was a lot less pages there's a lot more information in here uh in this document than there was in the previous document officer galveo's
1:02:07here um so certainly he cannot uh ask but answer some questions maybe it's just something that's not getting me if this document isn't the same as the prior document then everything that was different if what we're approving is the same as what was done before and there was anything new should be highlighted in yellow when you said there was additional verbs in here and stuff this is all state law that's been added
1:02:31so this document is the is the document that we had with all of the improvements that the state added to it all right maybe maybe sergeant gavio sure explain that better good evening everybody sergeant galvao um if you if you see something highlighted in yellow it's because that's what it was tailored to the floral republic school district so this is a boilerplate model mou developed by the state
1:03:02i took this mou and i tailored it to the forward police i'm sorry the forward public school district i created two other mous very similar to this for other school districts that we have mou's with but with this particular mou that you have in front of you if it's highlighted it's because it's been tailored any particular section has been tailored to the former public school district so the one that was signed
1:03:27march of 2021 the only thing that was that it wasn't doing is show fall river public schools like i i just don't what i'm looking at is one document in mou and it's signed on march of 2021.
1:03:42the only thing that's highlighted is this yellow for four river public schools and then it says something about the salary of the sro shall be covered by the public schools there was no other changes from the last year's document this is the first time that this particular mou which was developed by the mou commission since the geel act which is the justice equality and accountability and law enforcement act of 2020
1:04:10this is the first mou model developed by the mou commission which i took from that time in 2021 and tailored it to the former public school district so i know there's been a first read i think this is the second read but i don't the mou that was prior to this was about six to seven pages this is a much more extensive mou developed by the mou commission
1:04:34so i don't i'm not sure if it's if you sign off on it on that first read or or whatnot but i know that this is the first time this is being brought to the full committee yeah the the only thing i'm trying to and i'm hopeful that i can say this once again and somebody can understand it because the one that signed march 21 last year the mou by the school committee approved on march 8th
1:05:04and the current one which is different the only thing in yellow in this new one is the fall river public schools thing based on what you're saying because of the law and this and that from the state that there's a lot of things that are changed in here from the prior one so when you get something that says here's the yellow highlighted changes all of the things you're referring to should
1:05:24look in yellow in here that are not in the other one mocked up version so when i looked at this i looked at and said oh there's nothing changed it's all just for our public schools i didn't really look through this as much as i probably would have if you said oh this has changed a lot because the state can tell you whatever they want as a model but this is between us and you
1:05:45correct and and from 2020 as soon as this was passed in 2021 as i spoke with the superintendent at the time we actually had a uh a sub committee meeting regarding this and was brought to the attention at that time and that's when this was first presented so i don't know what's happened since then but um the other mou was completely completely different than this one this is a completely different action i'm not and
1:06:11i'm not suggesting that i would say it different what i'm saying to you is i didn't even look at this because we were provided a mocked up version which is highlighted in yellow the only things that were marked in yellow were fall river public schools names whether it was through the subcommittee or not this is what we were voting on now and i didn't think there was any changes and
1:06:30you're telling me the whole documents change so that's hence the reason why i have some concerns now i've had concerns in the past about the mous and we changed some things in the prior mou that i think were good one of them was the prior uh sergeant i don't think you were on at the time actually acknowledged the fact that the sro's duty was to help us maintain order
1:06:51in the school no i would i was around for that you know so is that in the current uh yeah because the state said it's spoken to more in depthly so i would say yes it's in there but you can understand that's some of my you know frustration with it has nothing to really do with you sir the part about the salary of the sro i've said this bad nauseam already that we need in a different
1:07:15agreement with the state with the city so that we fund all of the sro positions has that happened uh they had a meeting last week they have another one scheduled and two that's part of negotiations negotiations with kevin and bridget downtown right so i agree with you we're on the same page on p on whatever page in one of these documents it says the salary of the sro shall be covered by the former republic schools
1:07:43it's just the uh lieutenant or the captain that's the outlier right now correct right there's only one out and that's the one we're working on kevin the sergeant right i'm so excited so i'd like to approve this and make it make an amendment that says the salary of all sros shall be covered by the photo of public schools as amended by mr aguiar do we have a second second all right let's have a question
1:08:15miss rogers oh kevin are you done i'm sorry are you done oh sorry yeah the only reason why i say that i'm not trying to i think everybody agrees if this gentleman is working tirelessly to help us with the schools and that why would we not be paying it's a no-brainer but now we got to wait for months after months after months why don't we just that's why i'm trying to do this let's
1:08:35just put it in and if we at the beginning of the essay we can only afford eight sros including the sergeant that's the decision we make but it's foolish to have this gentleman working for the school is basically full-time but his salary is going to be paid on the city side and we have money right it doesn't make sense okay mr rogers um just a quick question is it safe to
1:08:54say that the previous mou we drafted together and now the state came in with their model i'm not sure who drafted the mou which was in effect when i first came in um that that was just an mou that was in existence prior to to me coming into the into the office um all i know is that since 2020 um that the jail act enacted this mou commission
1:09:18to come up with a with a model mou for all municipalities in the state so that's when i went off of yeah i'm just trying to clarify for folks in case you know there's some questions there about like how that came to be i read it as that mou that original one that was signed off on last year looks like it was something that was drafted internally like this is between florida
1:09:38public schools with maybe some guidance but now there's this template that we can go back and use and that's why this looks different than march of 2021 is that that's actually that okay with that i yield okay so i think we should do this in two parts first because it's funding mr aguiar's amendment to um approve the former school department funding the the sergeant or lieutenant i
1:10:05don't know what your role is now there uh mr currently a sergeant i'm promoting yeah um so could i get a second on mr aguiar's motion i got a second yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes ms yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes now the second reading of the sro agreement between the schools and the city as amended by mr aggie mr aguiar we had in the past had a standard
1:10:36operating procedure if i recall and we looked at the two documents to make sure that they went they were conflicting at one point i think you helped clear that up so i would assume that because it's not here as part of this vote there's nothing in your standard operating procedures that would be counter upon my review of the standard operating procedure procedures which has been completely updated since i've been in
1:10:59the office nothing com you know it's it's in tandem with this mou thank you sir okay can we get a roll call deb miss drag yeah yes yes mr hart yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes item 12.5 is a discussion and vote to approve the sel integration specialist job description as presented by tom coogan human resource director and claudia costa lead school adjustment
1:11:32counselor scl coordinator
1:11:46good evening so this position we sent we sent a memo in preparation for this discussion this position was budgeted in the spring when the budget was created this position is designed to function almost like a coach for the school staff in their common planning meetings and their preparation meetings for the expansion of the sel services that you've so kindly uh invested in this
1:12:13year so the role of this person would be to go from school to school in an itinerant fashion and work with those staff in those buildings during those meetings to make sure that they're up to speed and also to monitor the data that comes out of whatever seo programs or data that we're compiling that we're required to report back to the state that person would work in cooperation with uh and under the direction of ms
1:12:35costa who supervises sel services across the district you want to add anything miss costa so we're also looking with this position too to really look at what are our students reading and how do we incorporate this as well too and really work with our seo in our castle competencies in our in our books in our history in our math class and being a support for our teachers as well too to be able to feel more comfortable
1:13:03incorporating that thank you any questions for the sel coordinator miss costa mr aguiar so i think in theory we had talked about this in the past and as i'm looking at the job description and some of the responsibilities like number two the bullying designee for the district who is that currently so i am the i'm in charge of the bullying and i have a coach here with me yeah so um
1:13:32it almost looks like this is a an administrative type position in some ways when it looks at uh performance and supervising folks in the schools that are working on these teachers and the like that we're trying to embed sel into all of these different functions and um they're not going to be supervising anybody it's providing support so that way they're more comfortable in the delivery of the sel so not necessarily
1:13:59supervising anybody at all but should they they're coaching so it says on the required con qualifications leadership or supervisory experience preferred but now we don't need that we want to make sure that they're able to go into these meetings and provide that you know that that support in coaching with the teachers um they're not going to be evaluating or supervising anyone they're going to be
1:14:23working alongside with me in our schools um as well too just really looking at where some where do we need to to enhance maybe in some of our um our programs and the the effectiveness and then coming back and working with sel team to make changes if we need to and to support um schools as needed and how about the summers like what what do you think a summer would look like in the like planning
1:14:50position teachers though they're they're not going to be working this summer this position is free well that's the decision we make well that's what we talked about i'm just saying what's here i can see what's here yep but everything that you're explaining i'm not opposed to what you you're explaining but if we have to dig and try to make this the best possible position that can can do what it needs to be done
1:15:17for one they need to work in the summer they need to work longer hours just like you do with koster and other people in the administrators union because that's when the real planning will happen and all this other stuff they might need to work a flex schedule some nights some different type whatever it is to me everything that you're looking at here is not a coach like an educational coach and i don't
1:15:38know why it should already be negotiated to the frea nothing against the frea but you have to follow the rules of the frea so that means the timing the schedule like this is more of a position when you as the director superintendent tells you you need to do something they need to do something we need all hands on deck all the time we don't necessarily need the position only during the time of schools uh we
1:16:01need them in the summers we need other things so a lot of what i'm reading here i'm not opposed to i think it's definitely needed but i think we're missing the boat on how we're going to select the individual the other piece of this i think some of this looks like a contractor like a consultant type of situation potentially that we might get somebody that's the perfect person for
1:16:25this type of job but if we have to have them in an fra position and they're retired and they might have a skill set that could do some of this work as a statement we can't do it if we pigeonhole ourselves into how we're going to fund it so i'm not opposed to it but i think some more work on how this gets paid how many what are the hours and
1:16:43i still believe that when you put here leadership or supervisory experience preferred we're gonna need that because what happens is a person goes in and they're trying their best to implement in a school and everybody's telling them you know bug off or whatever you know we're not gonna they don't if they don't have any supervisory authority they're gonna say well you know i'm in the union with them
1:17:02i'm i'm not so sure i can push this you know we're going to get into more issues so if we're going to do it let's do it right in my opinion and that's some of the flaws in my opinion when we were looking at this position we didn't want someone in a social work background like i am we wanted it to be someone who's a teacher and a teacher's support for all of our the teachers
1:17:23really looking to to coach and support them in their capacity to build our stl in our district anything no i don't disagree anything further yes yes yes oh i'm sorry everything that's okay sorry hi claudia um so is this a position that you possibly foresee maybe two positions i mean our district is huge right is this something that maybe you can see two positions or i'm excited to even push one forward
1:17:55right now because i think this is great to have someone just solely focus on this um as our into our district this large just the fact of having one person focused solely on this to me is exciting to push forward right now i mean you say that they'd be visiting schools and supporting teachers and coaching i mean there's a lot of teachers i mean this is a k through probably eight is that accurate are we
1:18:22going to go right through 12. i'd like to go right to 12 right through 12. so that's a lot of teachers that's a lot of land it's a lot of schools i'm just i mean if you want starting with one is great but i i see down the future um this may be moving on to a couple of them maybe three i mean i think it's important work um and
1:18:44i really hope we vote for this tonight moving forward thank you thank you any further discussion i have a question ms rogers um so do we want the bullying coordinator to be somebody who's a teacher or are we looking for somebody to be because you said this wasn't going to be somebody with a social work background you know how i feel about that but you said that this isn't going to be
1:19:06somebody with a social work background that this was going to be somebody with an educational background right and so do we is that what we're looking for in terms of the bullying coordinator position the bullying coordinator so this curriculum that goes on our berlin curriculum so the teachers are the ones who roll that curriculum out so we want to make sure that they're getting the coaching and the support
1:19:27that they need um with this curriculum that with the curriculum so having someone who has done the curriculum or has been in front of a classroom to be the person leading that curriculum and that support to me is is is how i see it um being most effective okay i think i read that differently when it said bullying designee because i read it more as like the person doing a bullying investigation
1:19:53that's how i read that yeah so the school adjustment counselors okay ones who do the investigations and um in all of our schools okay so that's different so then i guess my other question because again like social work hi scl this is what we talk about all day long how can we because not every teacher gets trained in social emotional learning and so this is a very specific type of position that i think is greatly
1:20:17needed right how do we infuse sel into our math into our history we've talked about this ad nauseam right how do we make sure that the person that we bring on or the or the three or four or five people we bring on um are actually trained in doing that work they may be able to put that on a resume like yeah we did sell activities but that might just look like morning meeting
1:20:43in their classroom how we i think when we're hiring for that position we have to be very very clear on what that background has looked like and we have some we have amazing teachers who do amazing amazing um sel work in all of our classrooms um again i'm a social worker like you having someone who's had been in front of students in the classroom capacity i think they'd be a better coach and a
1:21:12support for them so i i think um i agree with you on that but and i see this being a super amazing position yeah i'm not opposed to having it be a teacher now that i'm understanding what you're saying the bullying thing had gotten me a little bit but now i'm understanding that a little bit differently i just want to make sure that whoever we're bringing in truly has that experience that can bridge because
1:21:35you're really talking about somebody that's going to bridge those two worlds that never should have been siloed in the first place um and it's not just our district that has siloed them everybody has siloed them but if we can bridge those we make sure that we have somebody that's really invested that really understands what we're doing they're going to be in good shape but i do agree that we have to look at
1:21:56what the hours are and what's the availability what do those folks look like and with that i yield anything further mr again the um none of the required qualifications indicate you need a teaching license here the the other question i would have for mr coogan or superintendent so it's almost like this i'm looking at this as like a department head of scl in some ways how many days a year do the department
1:22:27heads currently work 205 this would be if we if we don't act on this it'll be 183 right correct this is the this is the kind of points we are making why we need to you know asking questions and trying to get it right is not necessarily a bad thing and i think that we can my recommendation would be to make a motion to approve this uh position um and the terms of employment leave as
1:23:00uh for the superintendent to do a little more work on coming back with a taking our feedback and coming back with a recommendation so i don't want to vote against it because i'm a big proponent of it but i think i raised some valid points and i think we need a second look at that particular piece but let's approve the the rest of it and then come back to us with any changes
1:23:18would be my recommendation i'll make that a form of emotion i have a motion to approve item number five contingent on review by the superintendent um do you have a second second promotion second deb please call the role mr yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss laravey yes miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes yes if i could just get some clarification we posted it as length of year salary
1:23:49hours benefits etc as negotiated per the frea contract so if we're saying that this is not going to be an frea teacher position as it was intended we're going to have to post it again as that's i mean please we are we feeling this like when you say it's posted like what does that mean well we're just approving it today so right so if we're going to put so you're saying we need to create a new
1:24:15job description and change the terms is is that what you mean for the future posting first of all so my recommendation would be we approve the job description and my emotion was to take out the terms of employment regarding pigeonholing ourselves into one of those things so we can apply for the position so people can apply for the position that and then this is going to be open so that we can get some feedback to say
1:24:35maybe the 205 makes more sense maybe in s to start off with like we've done pilots for certain other positions maybe that helps us you know but i wouldn't want you to to not advertise but the terms just need to get be taken out because we didn't agree to those i don't i don't believe yeah the s9 is a good idea do you think that no right it's just item number 12.6
1:25:02is discussion and vote to approve the cte co-op job description as presented by tom coogan uh the human resource director and cynthia silvia cte director go ahead ms sylvia please so the co-op coordinator position is a position that was which was in the budget in the spring when we went over the budget it was approved if we're going to grow as a cte program we need to have a co-op coordinator we
1:25:40need to have our kids out in the community out in these businesses working in unpaid internships paid co-op positions just like every other regional vocational school that that has a uh co-op coordinator also with being career and college ready this co-op coordinator also con also works with our guidance department with our articulation agreements so that our kids can figure out what pathways is necessary
1:26:11when it comes to both college and career opportunities and you know our schedule is a little tricky but i think we can get our kids out in employment now let's get our 12th graders out there let's get our our kids working and and getting everything that they deserve within their pathways and with earlier the cte capital skills grant is going to make our kids even more marketable when they
1:26:40get those certifications in the laborers union so i think it's imperative as we grow as a cte program that a co-op coordinator slash intern placement person be in place to get our kids out there and get you know get on site there's a whole there's a whole process that goes with that so um i totally agree with everything you just said 100 i think that you're doing a nice job in my opinion based on every
1:27:13interaction we've had you've picked up things that we haven't done in this district for years i think we're definitely on the right track the only thing i would suggest relative to this same exact thing is the comments we just had about the prior job description is i think pigeon hole in yourself to say the salary length of work here and hours and benefits through the frea contract is not going to be helpful to
1:27:32some of the things that you need you need a person to do all of those things that you just suggested with no restrictions no conflicts no you know you're the director and you want to say to the person i want you to go out there and pound the flesh night times after hours this stat get these kids working get them i get it summer's a key point for a co-op coordinator yeah for sure yeah so my
1:27:58only comment would be that i think we should take out the terms of employment again and come up with a better plan of how this is going to be a coordinator is almost like a coordinator they're coordinating things they're not necessarily teaching it could be a qualification to say they might have had needed some experience in that but as you know from the vocational it's not like a regular teaching license
1:28:19and there's different things correct guidance license would also be uh appropriate for that position right but if we have a guidance license the guidance is in the administrator's union so now it gets into like where do we put these things so my goal with this would be to give you no restrictions whatsoever to go find the best person that's going to do what you need to do and give them the
1:28:40go-ahead the way these things are drafted they're binding us a little bit and i'd rather do say it now and have it go and then you come back to us and say by the way we can't do this i need to give this person 20 hours overtime because they the times that they're needed and i you know like without the flexibility so that's my only comment but i 100 agree with what you're saying
1:28:59what you're doing so keep up the good work thank you i yield well okay um so uh mr aguirre is that uh is that in the would you like to offer an amendment that strikes that last line so they can go out and look for who they want and come to us and tell us how they want to structure it or would you just let it go as is my for what it's worth i'm only one
1:29:22member to bring up the things that you know so i just think to get the best we've done this with other positions we tried to say for the first shot at it we usually go out for a non-union contract for that first year feel out see how it's going and then we see the needs and how they're going i think what happens is we put these things in these contracts and
1:29:41say we're going to do it with the and nothing against the frea but they got 900 teachers that they deal with or whatever but this is something that we need to it's new i i want to give you the flexibility i want to get the best person then at that time if they want to join the union then we figure out where it goes how many days and that so i
1:30:00would recommend taking that out and give you the top watch what if their best candidate that you wanted totally didn't have one of these qualifications or something but they're awesome and they could make a difference for our kids if we don't do this and leave it open you might not be able to hire that individual that's my only point secondly my other question on there was what does
1:30:18it pay because we usually when we have these things and we're going to go out we have a range so we have a certain number that as we're advertising when we say it's in the free a to be negotiated well we can't advertise we've got to like to me it should be a range put out that you think is going to get the best candidate and then you know we go through it like that and
1:30:39i don't think there's anything wrong with just stepping back a little bit support the initiative but maybe we don't deal with the uh union piece at the present time are you okay my only concern is it was in the budget as a teaching position so as they said it was in the budget i asked the superintendent so um why don't we amend it as you suggested take out those uh the
1:31:03fra a piece and let them come back to us with as you said either an administrative thing or an s9 for a year let's see where we go sounds good okay make a motion i got we have a motion to amend um the cte co-op job description to remove the freea reference and let it get switched to an s9 position and give him one year at that to see how it is i
1:31:25have a motion by mr again a second by mr hart deb please call the roll to approve it as amended i mean what's on the amendment first i'm sorry mr argue yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes now on the vote to approve the job description um can i get a motion in a second so moved second i have a motion a second
1:31:51deb please call the role ms yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes yes 12.7 is a discussion to vote to approve the south coast educational collaborative capital reserve fund as presented by superintendent ocean improved ponds i have a motion i have a second any discussion on the fund hearing none deb please call the role mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes ms laravey yes ms pereira yes
1:32:27miss rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes oh hold on a minute no okay 12.8 is discussion and vote to approve the rental of the cusp auditorium on sundays for the calvary ministry of the assemblies of god as presented by ken pacheco chief operating officer mr pachico so each of the every time we really have a rental um for religious organization i bring it to the committee to take a look at it we were very
1:33:04successful with the two groups that we have um no issues um everything runs rather smoothly this this would be uh cuss we have one more we have a program at mo and we also have another uh program rental at um one henry lawton so this one here would be for cuss we've sat down with them as far as price they know what they're covering what what expenses they have
1:33:35so we just wanted to bring it off your approval any discussion on the rental or mr anger is it the same as the terms the same as martin yes it's shorter amount of time um but it's it's just about the same as morton and henry lodge it's relative like it's not exactly one church is going to get it cheaper no they're all paying the same price the only concern i had was it said two classrooms
1:34:00here others have two classrooms also what classrooms would that be and it would be close as close to um the uh auditoriums as we can get and it would just basically be and it's not used every single week but it's a ccd kind of class yeah music room is right near there yeah i'm not opposed to it just that if we make a decision to say they're going to use two rooms what the poor teacher
1:34:23that's working in there if that or the principal like we they should be having to say that's right in my opinion we those two rooms you're going to use like we won't dictate that we'll we'll try and get them as close as we can for their purposes but we won't um and the agreement would be that they obviously treat it with respect and don't yes thank you emotional proof second motion a second any further discussion
1:34:50dad please call them all mr again yes mr bailey yes mr harp yes miss laramie yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes 12.9 is a discussion and vote to approve the 2022 eligibility application to the community preservation committee for the following project replacement and restoration of the front patio railing system at 417 rock street is presented by ken kico mr pachico so we've had quite a bit of
1:35:24projects actually two very successful projects with using the cpa money to work on the administration building this is to take care of that front patio railing and depending on the pricing and funding availability it would also do them the old current uh main entrance area um so that's what this particular piece is for is a one that will follow this um for for another operation but this one here was going to
1:35:58cover those two major portions the front patio is uh is really deteriorating rapidly now um so we're concerned with that and um and the front entrance if funds allow uh we'll do some work on that one this is just a uh this is eligibility start to get the ball rolling yeah this is the first round yes any further discussion on this item yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss laravey yes
1:36:31miss pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes 12 10 is a discussion and vote to prove the 2022 eligibility application motion to approve second same thing it's just the windows so this one here is 78 windows on the building so this would be to try and do as many windows as we possibly can with the dollar amount that normally would be allowed from the cpa we've we've had grants of 220 240.
1:37:05this project will be much more than than that at a standalone probably in the 400s so we'll phase it in we'll get as much done as we possibly can we'll probably if if it makes it to the next round and we do get a an award we'll buy all the windows and then put in as many as we possibly can and then ask for another um another grant next year again this is
1:37:31just the first steps exactly um motion proof this is emotional we already have it oh we have motions mr again yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes ms yes ms pereira yes miss rodricks yes yes we have for your information item number 13. we have a number of retirements resignations hiring i might ask you regretfully a few death notices if someone make a motion to accept can i withdraw sorry uh can we withdraw the custodians
1:38:09and vote on that after please are we on are we are you voting for notifications oh i thought we were voting all hirings no no all together okay just uh just the notifications we're shutting my laptop down that's right but when we get to that man okay one question sure mr just reviewing it the um there was a position student support specialist at durfee is that the um we've changed the names a couple times
1:38:38but i thought we were changing those over to um the sel um if you recall at that meeting we agreed that we would have sel liaisons k-8 and that we would leave the high school as student support specialists so it's like yes it's like where replacing an existing one like it's not a new no no position is just replacing one of the four that okay thank you okay can i get a motion in a second
1:39:11i got a motion for bobby in a second from mr hart could we call the role on that mr again yes mr bailey yes mr hart yes miss larabee abstain mrs pereira yes ms rodriguez yes yes 14 new business i do have one thing that mr again pointed out um i i we will reconstitute the recognition committee because i thought that was something we did at the beginning of the year but um
1:39:45i have two people that volunteered that want to be on it if i have a third i'll put a committee together anybody who want to volunteer from up here the recognition committee which is what we did earlier when we honored some of our people at work um mr aguiar's kind of chaired that the last few years i don't know how that wasn't up and running at the beginning of the year but i'd like to
1:40:05reconstitute that and get it going i have two members that did volunteer to do that mr aggie are miss rogers i'd like to throw a third on there miss laravey volunteered okay so we'll put that back in force if you don't mind so we definitely have our stuff because the end of the year we'll be uh doing a lot of that stuff and i appreciate you guys stepping forward um do we have a request for executive
1:40:26session there would be a need there would be a need um do we want to vote first we want you to read it i'll read it you'll read it first go ahead national large chapter 38 section 21 a7 approved executive session minutes for august 8th 2022 regular school committee meeting master lawrence chapter 38 section 21a7 to review and approve executive session minutes for august 29 2022 special meeting of the school committee
1:40:53national lawrence chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all administrators and employees represented by the forward fall river 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 21 83 to discuss strategy with
1:41:14respect to collective bargaining relative to all professional teaching employees of the forward school system including coaches title 1 teachers nurses occupational physical therapists and specialists in the teaching profession represented by the forever educators association as the chairs determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee
1:41:35national laws chapter 30 38 section 2183 discussed strategy with respect to collective bargaining relative to all paraprofessional employees referrable school system represented by the four of our federation of paraprofessionals as the chairs determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to
1:41:56collective bargaining relative to all civil serve civil clerical employees the forward school system represented by the florida city uh forward department of civil service clerical employees association as the jurors determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on a bargaining position of the committee national laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining
1:42:19relative to all government employees including without limitation paraprofessionals parent workers and clerks of the former school system that are paid from federal state grants and represented by the former public schools government programs as the chairs determined an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee massachusetts 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with
1:42:39respect to collective bargaining relative to all cafeteria employees of the florida school system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 93 local 1118 as the chair has determined that no concession may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee match john lloyd's chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining
1:43:00relative to all maintenance employees of the forbes school system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 93 local 1118 as the chairs determined that an open session may have a detrimental impact on the bargaining position of the committee national law chapter 38 section 21 83 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining
1:43:20relative to all custodial 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 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 safety and security
1:43:42employees the fraud school system represented by the american federation of state county and municipal employees council 93 local 1118 as the chairs determined that low possession may have a detrimental impact on a body position of the committee the committee would then reconvene and may or may not have statements at that time seeing a need for executive session could i get a motion a second to go in
1:44:03motion second i have motion a second step call the role to go into executive session ms draga yes mr bailey yes mr mark yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes mayor coogan yes
1:44:29yes sir back out of executive session deb would you please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here mr heart here mrs larabee here ms pereira here mr rodriguez here here anything further to come before the committee mr mayor mr hunt a motion to approve the executive session minutes for august 8th 2022 the regular school committee meeting second emotional second any questions deb
1:44:54please call the role ms draghi yes mr bailey yes mr harper yes miss larabee yes ms pereira yes ms rodricks yes mayor cougar yes anything further mr hunt motion to approve the executive session minutes for august 29 2022 special meeting of the school committee any discussion i need a second second i yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes mr rodriguez yes yes
1:45:27second i have a motion to second to a second deb please call it all mr again yes mr bailey yes mr yes mrs yes mr yes mr rodrick yes yes adjourned