12.11.2024 - FRPS Subcommittee - Special/Alternative Education & Early Childhood Meeting

okay I'd like to call to order the special ed alternative Ed and Early Child Ed subcommittee meeting Wednesday December 11th 2024 please call the rooll Mr Dr again here Mr Cory here M Pera here here please rise and the flag pledge allegiance to the flag flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all I love how we all just

knew where the flag was it's awesome to meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium 10 these are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible is there any citizen inut time today here no citizen input time we

will go right to the first discussion item 301 Madam superintendent so um the first discussion item is around um prek and specifically a out plan the district reconfiguration update and p uh Pace expansion site we um I'll start at the bottom we discussed at the facilities and operations meeting that the pace expansion um expansion to the new site here at PACE would be um at this point

looks like it will be delayed and that we will not be ready for a September opening at the new site and so we are working with our um current provider of alternative space um to see whether we can continue with those leasing options for school year 26 so I just uh I know we've talked about this and I've asked you for some information related to this topic do you have any of the information that I asked

you for what would you like specifically so on eight days ago I asked for Min copies of the minesa meetings I do not have those is that any days it's not suitable time I don't have them did you request them uh no I did not so you the chairman of this committee asked you for some information based on an item that's here mhm and in 8 days you received nothing you've given

me nothing that I've asked for relative to that is that what you so I didn't give you that you can go on to the next request that you made yep so the next request that I made I can pull it right up because I'm sure it's very clear it's very clear so after it was told to me based on a meeting that we were going to have that we were promised we were

promised let's not kid ourselves we were promised that we were going to have a prek opening in September we would promis that this committee was when I find out that all of a sudden we had a $700,000 deficit and we had to continue this for one full year I was upset so this is what I asked you for I wanted all bid information and timelines for the roofing project at PACE and the dery

auditorium that is a city of fall re y bidding process and I have spoken to the mayor about that and the information refusing to come so for six months ago I've asked for this information refusing to come no the information if you ask for the information and the mayor refused let just call it on the record the May ref made the request I did not say that he refused to make the request total

expenses to date for the project I think that's fair enough okay I'm going to be really clear about this my I your if if I can I should be the go be between you and the city and that if for some reason the city doesn't meet the timelines of your requests then I am responsible I am not I'm offering you some information I let this mayor know that you were looking

for the bid information I it hasn't come you know that I let the mayor know that you were requesting information about total expenditures to date that hasn't come and now you know and all minutes that have the word PACE Center dery roof and dery Auditorium for the last two years that is onview as superintendent okay and I do not have those okay and all email Communications to from or between Ken

Pico Kevin Al Paul kougan Al Olivera Tracy Curley Maria Pon George Simmons Seth Aken and Bridget from the city if it's the will of the entire school committee I will meet your requests yep so basically you can have a vote taken with your peers and I will meet your request Madam superintendent yeah let me just say this for the record as the chairman of this committee I've asked you for some information if you refuse

to give that information that's fine refuse Madam Secretary please note for the minutes that the superintendent has refused to give the information that this that the chairman of this subcommittee asked for we cannot do our jobs without getting information so we had a situation in the minutes of the meeting it's going to if you look at the minutes of the meeting which is why I asked for that which is quite frankly is

something that you and your entire leadership team should have been doing since February of last year when it was promised to us that we were going to do this so that we should be searching for minutes no that you should have made sure that the process was going to go forward so that the PACE Center would be open on time some of those things were and we had when I started the position I

didn't think that it was under my jurisdiction to manage a city project I'll be clear but it is under your jurisdiction to make sure that we have the pre- sites open and when we will have preas sites open and we will we will waste $400,000 well it's only wasted because maybe you don't think it's worth it to open our prek sites our prek sites in the fall with all the respect Madam superintendent there is no

respect being given here yes well no there is not there's none given you to me either if I ask you for some information please give it no we have we have an agenda I'm going to let you know that when you ask me for information from now until the end of time I will ask whether it is the will of the school committee to provide you with that information and I will tell you right

now when you refuse to give it you're eval valuation will be duly noted and quite frankly it's it's an embarrassment we it is an embarrassment it is an embarrassment that we're sitting here today at this site where we will promis certain things were going to happen and they weren't going to happen so somebody please explain to us how we are now in this situation how are we in this situation

what happened between the last 6 months to figure out why are we here right now saying that we don't have we T talk this was already discussed at the facilities and operations meeting I when you actually asked for this to be on this agenda I let you know that I thought that because of what was holding it up it was more appropriate for a facilitates an operations meeting and we discussed it at the facilities and

operations meeting I don't think it makes sense to take an opportunity at this meeting to revisit what all the information that you already have and when you asked me that Madam Madam superintendent you told you asked me if we could bring it up at the meeting and I said the building sure because it's a fac we could bring it up at the meeting you called me and you stated to me since

we have a facilities meeting already can we discuss the pace issue at that meeting and I said to you and I said to you yes the building and I said we are having a special ed alternative Ed and early college early childhood subcommittee meeting where we're going to talk about the plans for that building and that's what we here today for So the plan that we had originally had is now changed because now we don't

have what we what we said we were going to have okay so let's talk about the plans that we do have for the children okay so who do you want to answer the question of how many rooms do we have how many rooms we proposed here and what's the process going going we go follow so the original plans were for 14 classrooms here those classroom plans still remain with an opening in school

year in in the fall of 2026 that that that Still Remains and the plan was what what what was the plan when we opened that in September what are the other pieces of that plan I'm not sure what you're asking that we would open 14 classrooms and all of the amenities necessary to open a prek program here so what is the plan for the prek under that condition we were going to open 14 classrooms in here

for and what else what else was going to be the ramifications of Us opening it because there was a purpose behind us saying we would not be renting the two other sites that I mean the purpose was to house the the classrooms the I don't know one of the results of that is that we we would no longer be using the other two sites I'm not sure what the question is and how

many rooms would that be okay so currently the the idea for this and the the the plan for this site is that it will house all of our half day programs and so we currently have 14 halfday classrooms all 14 halfday classrooms would occupy this site part of the reason for doing that is the needs of those children because those are our youngest Learners those are our kiddos that are coming in on

their third birthday their needs look very different it's difficult for buildings and for principles to have them in a larger School environment we would have them here we would have full-time on-site speech occupational therapy bcva to pull the resources to provide those Services early and get these kiddos ready to transition to a regular school building either for four-year-old pre or for kindergarten

whatever is appropriate for that child here we would have you know facility Wise It's the classrooms it's an otpt room it's speech therapy rooms it's the you know the school nurse the school office what you would typically find in a school building we also here in this building on the other side of the hallway is where the Early Childhood special department is so this is where families

come in when children are referred for evaluations this is where their children are evaluated having the school here at this site gives us the added benefit of when families are here we are able to walk them down the hall to visit the school they're able to meet the principal they're able to see the classrooms and so that was the added benefit of putting all of the three-year-olds here is we

are now connecting them to the evaluation center and I think that's why we it made sense that we were going to do that was why the plan went so everything you said was what we had talked about in March or April whatever continues to be so my questions are around because now it's backed up what are the ramifications of that so like we had this you said this would made the

most sense this was going to be continuity contrary to what the superintendent will say that I don't care about special ed kids uh prek kids that's not true so when you look at it and say well this was actually a situation can we just not put words in into her mouth she never said that so just say what you have to say but stop with the nonsense so app in terms of

ramifications to to be very honest with you we're just sort of status quo for now we're going to do business the way we've been doing business um the last couple of years that we've had these classrooms in the spaces that they're in there there isn't going to be anything that's harder or different than it is this year we'll kind of look next year how we look this year until the site is

ready for for us to move into and the goal when we were there in March of last year was to expand and promote different better whatever yeah that's the problem that I'm having is that we all sat down and said we this was when the tany school issue was going on we it was very uh emotionally charged you know when the school was going to close and the like

we all sat and said in an agreement that this is what was going to happen and it was going to actually happen in September but there was conditions upon that but the benefit of doing that is sort of I I I what I'm hearing is oh we just can't do it so let's but I'm just trying to articulate what else was what are we not going to be able to do that

we would have done so just to back up a little this is where when we had um the meetings last year and had those different scenarios that we had talked about moving into this school year that we said if this was the route we took expansion was not on the table because this facility can hold 14 classrooms that is what we currently have and so this does not give us an opportunity to

expand and so coming into this if this was done today it still does not give us an opportunity to expand but at that point you could expand into the places that we're currently dis occupying for status quo theoretically if we wanted to continue renting them I mean it's not an ideal scenario because there are definitely challenges to the rented space but you understand what I'm saying

now so we're actually what you would just consider I I don't know what you just said like a not advantageous or like not ideal or whatever we're actually settling on a not ideal situation at those buildings so what I'm suggesting is that when we sat at this committee to say we were going to expand and do the things you just talked about half days and all that that all just

kind of went away and I want the discuss we didn't have the space it was never Our intention to continue the rental space once this was complete that was never the intent mention that we would utilize that space to expand but it my only point is that it affects some of what our plans were I guess it delays unfortunate in my opinion um related to that when you look at the um

schools we have other items on here about the district reconfiguration and stuff there's also uh ramifications to how many pre we have in the school what are those rooms everywhere is maxed out so it's a bigger issue than just one but this not doing this expansion at the time when we said it's going to have a ripple effect to other things potentially across the district in my opinion and

the reason why I have this and why I have requested that information was so that we could all see what was said what wasn't said because what if we just keep on just saying oh it's okay let's Let It Go without getting to the issue we never we never get to the real issue that we were told something and it didn't happen and there they're just okay let's just

move on so so one thing I can tell you too is one of the things that we had talked about at that point as well is that we did not have a really solid understanding CommunityWide of what the preschool needs are and so we talked about getting more information about that we talked about strategic planning um so one of the things you received or will receive this week is we are um we've been

offered the opportunity to um get Amendment funds in the cppi Grant to conduct the CommunityWide needs assessment that we've talked about and so um eec through cppi is going to fund that for us and so starting in January we will be working um with a consultant firm and we'll be doing a Citywide landscape of Early Childhood in the city and have that so we're going to conduct a needs assessment we're anticipating

January through April and then April through roundout July be working on developing a strategic plan for what is the true cost of preschool in the city both if you were a public school student and if you were a community- based program student so understanding what the costs are for a universal pre and a mixed delivery community and then looking at what is the space What would the opportunities be what do we have now

and what would it take to be able to offer more not just through the public schools but through all of our community Partners so by summer we will have that strategic plan complete yeah I think we've been talking about that for how long how how much money is do you think is it the Grant's $40,000 and that's going to cover it yep so I've already me met with um the consulting firm that has done this work

already in other communities and um the grant will cover the consulting firm as well as any additional costs we have from for staff to run focus groups to do whatever we need to do and when we were back in March or whenever the months of the meetings were we also talked about having a plan short-term plan long-term plan I think this kind of fits in y you know with that but

um the time just went by it you know that was March we were going to do all these now it's December all of a sudden we're not going to be able to expand it it it really is frustrating to me um I think it's pretty pretty evident um what I would ask is financial questions now about the pce expansion so if we don't have the money now how much money do we

have um going into next year for the project I'm sorry how much money do we have for the project so we didn't have all of the money because we had $700,000 shortfall but how much of the money do we have I don't have an answer for you I'm not today does Mico have any idea I know all I know is that um in the overall scheme um as other projects were

started as you know the playgrounds as other projects started the goal is to finish what I had started this project had not been kicked off as of yet and therefore where where I was able to move funds around and a certain AOG amount of money I did um just so that I could finish what I started um and and some of that work is is um some of the items that are on the agenda

tonight that were that was not necessarily budgeted for um specifically but it was budgeted for as a package um as I understand that but my question is so at the U this fiscal year yes we were hoping that we were going to get this done let's just assume that the city didn't went got the all that stuff done on time the roof and all that there had to been a partt of money that was in

this fiscal year for labeled for the pace site is that question I don't know if we were fully I don't know if we were fully funded and and let me back up I don't know if we were fully obligated at any given time of a a $3.5 Million number I think what we did was we allocated certain dollars to do certain phases of the operation um some of the work was going to be done um in

house um probably some of the plumbing some of the those items um to put a price tag on them I could only put a price tag as far as a commercial price tag what would it cost us to do pling in 14 prepaid classrooms what would it cost to do the electrical in 14e prepaid classrooms and all the ancillary rooms at a commercial rate so when I'm when I'm putting together these numbers some of those

numbers are based on that and not necessarily what would cost us in house yeah I'm just looking for and it doesn't you if you don't know she doesn't know but the question is pretty clear I think of what I'm asking for right that if we had x amount of dollars to do in this fiscal year the pay center short up 700,000 which is what we heard was the overages in the other one there still

should be a part of money that is going to be up to this committee whether we're going to spend that money or we going to carry it over to the pay center or we going to do start the project and pay for stuff now that was the nature of the question and I think in order to do a an expansion we need that information anybody else have any questions Cory I don't know if I have a

question Mr chairman but I do have a comment and I know that at the beginning of these discussions last year when it was proposed to us on the expansion of Early Childhood that it was a very bold maneuver to change what we've changed over the course of the past year and as we sit here today we look at the changes that have gone on at the westall site where it was Stone therapeutic school

and now it's back to being an elementary school and we looked at the uh purchase of 251 and all of the changes that have gone on there and as we sit in this wonderful facility this is just a recent change over from what never existed previous to the building that was sitting in now with all of these great changes so um the fact that we're not ready to uh accept

the 14 classrooms here at this site is just a fact of the matter of construction timelines and priorities and it was outlined to us last week very clearly that the playgrounds at certain sites in our school district need upgrading and that upgrading is a priority to the finishing of this Center so I don't understand the Bold line of questions Mr chairman when I see all of the work that's already going on this

year the transitions the am the amount of planning that has been pulled off very successfully and uh we're sitting here with the principal of the stone and she can tell you that 251 is probably a great move for that program and I'm thrilled that we've helped fansa Elementary School um help its demographics by opening up the West site to alleviate some of our space problems that existed previously

I sit in this PACE Center as we meet right now and I'm marveled at the way this place looks as a facility and this is a brand new building and I see all of the the the full scope of work and activity that's going on in our district so I accept the delay as just what it is I think all construction projects carry certain delays with them if not all then

quite a few and I'm willing to accept that I yield M so our students now our prek students now they're basically we're going to be using the same facilities as we did we're going to we're going to engage in those conversations we haven't this is all new developments and so we have not finalized exactly what that looks like yet but so so far what do you think thats if I you had to this is what we

had to talk about so let's brainstorm what do you think I I would guess that we are going to engage in conversation with the dases for um Bishop Conley y um maybe there's some expansion opportunity there maybe maybe we would go down to one site maybe we need the two sites what do you mean expansion opportunity there so we still going to keep those students there but ask to see if they

have more space they may have more space within the confines of that building okay they may not and we may have two sites moving into next year as we do right now with 300 North Eastern Avenue at um St Anthony the desert Parish um we those are the options right now the only two things that we're looking at but then we've already been using those OP we already been using we know what we

have right we don't particularly know yet what we can get from either one of those sites in addition to what we currently have if both of those sites come back to us and say no we're good thank you for being our tenants then then we have some leg work to do within the next at best 60 days no no later than that to make a decision I mean I'd say run and work I'm not

surprised that PA isn't done I don't need the minutes of any meeting cuz I remember saying ah this is never going to happen show it to me I said it you million times we've been talking about this building forever and I knew I knew it I don't want to jinx anything but I had a gut feeling and so as my colleague to the right is a little aggravated by our situation so I

um we I I don't remember who else but the bottom line is we have a committee of six people so although I thought that it made much more sense to use tany school and I still think that regardless of the community outrage um I think that would have been best for the district as a whole and for River as a whole because I was very afraid we were going to be in the exact situation where is

now which is possibly not having places if for some reason either the church or the school doesn't want to renew our license we don't we don't have anywhere for these students to go that's a huge problem with 60 days so I'm am upset too do I agree with that behavior at the beginning no I handle things differently I don't think we can acost our Superintendent at any time whether we agree or disagree with her I think

that's not great in public especially we want teachers to come work in our District I think asking questions is important nobody thinks you shouldn't certainly the way we ask um and respond I think is also important as well this is a city project it's not a superintendent project she was not the superintendent when we were sitting here having these discussions advocating at least I was advocating for because I

agree I think stone school moving there was the best move I was forward all the way but there was other moves I wanted to see that didn't happen and now we're here so at this point I agree with my colleague to the left we're not going to sit here and cry over spilled milk and scream and yell the bottom line is a year ago we all as a committee made a decision and

that decision whether I agreed or disagreed I stand by my committee as a whole that's a decision we made and this is the position we're in now cuz we all advocated for those playgrounds um so this is the situation we're in now and I pray that we're allowed to lease those same facilities so we're not farther off because I can't imagine the work that would be for you guys amongst the

million other things you have to do to try to find a location but I don't think this is necessarily a point of blame I think this is a series of decisions by a multitude of people that have landed us in this situation and I will take plot on that blame because I'm part of this committee um so I guess that's it I guess we we're going to wait and see when are we going

to get back to know if we can get at the St Anthony desert or what Bishop col has to say so there's preliminary conversations that have happened in both places okay and both neither one said no okay well that's good but they didn't say yes they didn't say 100% yes okay but they didn't say no so the conversation is is open and um we will look I think that the only thing we

have going for us here is we're not dealing with average landlords we're dealing with men and women of the cloth people who care about Community godly people who would not want to see those kids not have a place so that I think is on our side but if it was anything else I think we'd be in a lot of trouble we need to get but that I there's really nothing

else to say until we get answers from that so that I thank you m superintendent it's a north northeastern a site do you recall the um what it's a net positive or net negative on finances for that uh site when we look at the amount of money we get from reimbursement I don't know does anyone else in the building have that information I can I can only tell you the rent that's all I can't tell you

whether or not it's a positive or negative pH so I recall I'm not positive because I don't have the minutes in front of me but I recall at the time that we talked about the size of those classrooms and not having the reimbursement of the F Group whatever that is 14 18 16 whatever it is MH I believe that the answer to that question was we are at a net four or $500,000

loss if you looked at it in that regard at the northeastern enough site so when I was asking for the minutes and things like that the reason why was because I was trying to get everybody to be able to see this is what it is so when we are looking at a site that not only is it on I upset that we didn't move to this site there's also other ramifications such that

that site is a net loss because that was what was told to us in those meetings back in March or April so if that net loss is $400,000 we have to bake that number into the cost of the rent the cost of the you know uh eom's rent so it becomes a bigger number when you look at it and I'm pretty sure that it was4 or $500,000 as a loss uh and the minutes whenever we

get them or whatever we'll be able to pull that out but in planning that has to be included in some of these discussions because that's a a bigger issue so the the urgency the the what I wanted to have the urgency of this Administration to work with the Mr Poo and the city to say you have to get this stuff done so that we can move this is the reason for the urgency was because

at those meetings we talked about we can fite that bullet now last year because we had exra funds and we had other stuff but now that those are gone this becomes now another deficit that we have to take when we're trying to find as much money as we can for all different things think so that was the reason why I'm asking for some of the minutes but as part of a

plan I think the whole committee should be getting some kind of update to say here's what it's going to cost us now that might affect what Mr Pico just said maybe Conelly has uh the Conelly site has how many rooms currently seven seven how many at the North easn six the rent for nor Eastern Avenue is what 300 plus 237 and the other one's 110 right so for seven classrooms we pay

110 for six classrooms we pay two something so that's another analysis that we have to throw on the table to say is it does it make more sense than to say does Conley have the ability to give us more as you just said and maybe we can get maximize some of that the flip side of that is when we maximize the space in the classroom we're now going to maximize the reimbursement per

all of that so we could potentially take a four or $500,000 net deficit at the nor Eastern Avenue site and turn it into a even money maybe or whatever it is uh hence another reason why some of those questions uh I think need to be asked as we uh proceed uh at the end of this meeting I would like to at least I've never seen the site here I'd like us to

take a quick tour to just say this is where rough is just so we can get an idea of what does it even look like at the meeting uh the facilities meeting or the full meeting we were talking about is there any other space in this building to we talked about the different areas maybe there's a different can we expand even more because to to hear that it's not an technically going to be an expansion

everybody wants an expansion of prek everybody knows we need an expansion of prek so looking around the building quickly just to get a feel for it I think is a benefit to us to the public to anybody else to ask questions so I was going to say train thought I did sorry son of a gun oh I remember can I okay uh Bishop Conley when you start when you had that

little conversation where it wasn't a no did you mentioned increasing space there I did not at the time at the time the conversation was status quo yeah we need we got this we'd like this okay and the only reason that I I said it wasn't a no was because every every one of uh the people were renting from have their own plans sure they knew we wer staying there forever so everybody wanted to

know when we were leaving so they could move ahead with their with their own plans right um so both sides had expressed is it going to be your last year when we sign figure out what they could move on I I don't believe that both of them had definitive plans one seemed more definitive than another um I don't know if any of that came to fruition so I I think that the the fact that they're

willing to talk means that maybe both of them have capacity to wait on whatever plans they will have um and I say about the reason why I say it for Conley is the the classroom space is bigger so we could in theory go from a 10 or a 12 person classroom to a 15 the maximum which would again add three per classroom why Haven we done that already is there a reason we haven't no no the

Conley classrooms are at 15 oh it's the 300 Eastern Avenue 300 Avenue the classrooms are a little smaller so in respect to the the space and to the obviously the instructors and students it it is a is a better fit if we can go to Cong I just don't know if the area so the school is not us to run along so there is the dases offices there um all the education offic for the

dases are there and up until September of last year South Coast collaborative with it okay so we were in theory not sure where how much space we were actually going to have okay the space we do have we are so occupants of and it's very secure um so I guess what I'm saying not that I don't enjoy what you're it's okay but just to be grief I think at least I from what my colleague

on the right is saying and and I think and I'm not sure what um Mr Cory thinks but I would say when you're speaking with them it would be most advantageous for us if we could house all of our students there for many reasons including cost right now um not just reimbursement but other issues that make it make sense when you have all prek together um and adding the fact that they have three kids per

classroom extra um adds up so when having those conversations like in my opinion that would be the best situation possible for us I don't know how what you think I think there's definitely some benefits to that as well it's going to be figuring out if the space at family will allow for that right but if let's say let's say they both say yep you guys can keep exactly what you have okay

great what if Conley says what if you know Easter na says yep you can keep what you have but Conley says yeah you can expand so now we no longer need Easter na would that be better would that be better or would be better to separate them I think best case scenario and you know the idea of moving here is that we have everyone in one place because right now we're dividing

Services between two sides ex is it doable yes it is is it you know is there some benefits listen with of everything's doable but is it better that way yes so what I'm saying is when we're having those conversations Kenny it would be awesome if we could by you know some powers that be please you know maybe all of a sudden they like look at all this extra space we have that would be more beneficial I

think just in case you're wondering where we're coming from when you have those conversations and it may come and it may come the cost so I'm not saying that the rental cuz the rental will be higher if we if we have more space but there may be some minor Renovations that we have to do in a building in Conley every time that not surpised would be some of that so we would bring that back obviously to

the committee we can have the preliminary conversations um I would just like to see what those numbers work I think with increased reimbursement and just issues of Staffing and services and yes we're going to pay more in rent but we're also not going to be paying rent possibly at one so is it going to I think it would end up putting us in a better position at the end of the day but obviously

we'll make it work no matter what and we'd be happy for anybody in the community you know to let us keep um you know leasing obviously we we thank them if you're watching thank you all right that I Y the um when you look at the um when we I think we want to expand I think that was what everybody was saying last time so I think it just needs to be

went item number one was roll off plan of how it's going to go and the roll out plan is not only looking at this site but would be expansion so I think some of the comments that are being made along that line that I think we need some um solid meeting something to you know push the envelope here to have this be a priority because there is ramifications of not doing expansion and

the comments about the class sizes in all of our schools is going to be reflected on we we' got to do something on that end too and if there's no space there what are we going to do so not just to go to the next item yet uh but I think that it I think we should probably get something to the full committee to say here's where we're at what do we got

to do we have to have another subcommittee meeting so be it um but my last comment on the pace expansion was when this was brought up last night I could I'm pretty sure I heard the mayor actually not say that it was not going to happen he was trying to say that it could happen Am I Wrong did anybody else hear that same thing or well I think eventually it's going to happen just not

going to happen anytime soon no I mean in the current year so when I brought up yesterday I was not happy with the fact that it was going to get you know moved down I was of the belief that everyone that was the fact whether we're happy with it or not but the mayor indicated that that's not the case we're going to get this paperwork roll and maybe you know I hear anything like that I didn't

hear that to be totally honest I I look at the construction piece and say I say yeah and telling me I look at the construction piece saying how much I have to do it's if if it was just a matter of getting it done and Money Was No Object then anything can be done in a short period of time the issue is is neither one of those things are true we we do

have a financial burden that we're going to have to to um to get through in a time constraint uh that that we need to work through so I don't think that I I can't with looking at what's finished right here now commit to a time when it's going to be done um we were rolling along what I was referring to was the piece of the uh fire suppression system yeah because that you can't start yours

until uh that is over based on the building inspect the city and that all there very little we can do in the building so I understand on your end you could see but as far as the city part of them getting the why I was upset and why I looking for this information say how did this take that long back in March we were told and Miss Perera is 100% correct she stated right at that Spence

of bordon and I agreed with her that we're saying that in order to do this we need the roof to be done and the fire suppression system to be done in enough time so that we could turn around the uh construction that Mr that was stated 100% on the record that's why I'm aggravated because we didn't push them to say well if you got to do these two things before we can do ours I was

waiting for somebody to say when is it going up and when it came out at the facilities meeting that they hadn't even bid the fire suppression system you can understand why I'd be upset or anybody that was looking at it would be upset you told us it was going to be done by now and it hasn't even gone out to bid by now so that's the piece of I think if

you can get that info it's going to at least drop when you can start construction whether that's uh partial whether you can spend some money you know in the current budget because there should be a pot of money to do some of that work now so that even if we're not sitting here this time of the following is saying no it's going to be certain in 2027 now you know that's where I'm at

with this so I do think it's a valid questions to ask I think all the information I asked for is valid I would like to get it as soon as possible um anything else on the pace sorry oh good I think the roll out is covered in this um you guys agree yeah the the district reconfiguration update this is a an issue that came up back in same time frame that we had a situation where we

needed to figure out are we going to redraw the lines for the whole uh all of the schools are we going to look at all of our um class sizes and all that and do a plan can we get an update on that so we have not uh we we've started only in District in terms of looking at um those class sizes and we so this year we added we had to add a couple of um

classrooms um in grade two in grade three um we added those over at um Henry Lord community school because of the high numbers it's certainly that and you know other things that have come up have certainly prompted um our thinking around needing a full scale reconfiguration in the district uh we've done we started having some of those conversations in housee and um and also started um thinking about work that

might need to be done with um someone from the outside we think that that you know are knowing the district is um important in terms of really understanding the neighborhoods and where the lines are now and what those um what the struggles are um the way the lines are drawn um but still think that we will require uh the assistance of some you know outside Consulting to do some of the work for us and our plan

would be to reconfigure the district um for the fall of 2026 because com into this year we really feel that you know by mid year of a particular school year it will be important to um be able to message to families because this isn't going to be a small scale situation like the one we had in opening West doall where we had many families most of the families came from fonica some from tany um Spencer

bordon this would this is really a project that would reconfigure the entire district and you know many many many of our families will be impacted and so we would move forward so that you know just a little more than a year from now we would um have some more definitive plans that we'd be able to share more wiely any comments fine so the only thing I would say I I do think we need to do something

soon because it's we're at crisis mode in my opinion on class size and space in my opinion when I asked for the report uh that you gave to us it had um the class sizes at all the schools uh very alarming on this level of the numbers at our schools so what is the plan now either obviously you can't do much now it's in the middle of the school year

but what is the most immediate plan to address some of those class sizes because if we don't have any space and we have all the like we can kind of predict what's going to happen in September of 2025 what is the plan to address any of these issues before the full scale reconfig ation and is there plan so I I I mean much of that will is going to depend on the numbers being uh more

stable from um going into next school year than they were this year I think we reported out I think was more than we had more than 500 additional students in the district this year uh which is which which is a lot and we are certainly reaching capacity at grade levels in a way that uh is requiring us to to move students so I I think the interesting thing is we do have some schools with

relatively low class sizes right it was what allowed us to close two kindergarten classrooms because we had schools where the average class size for kindergarten was more like 15 um and we were able to collapse classes and still keep those class sizes in in the low 20s so um much of it is the conversation that we start having right now but there I mean to be honest there isn't an opp

there isn't an opportunity the space is finite and I think that we we just need to take a look at there might be some um reconfiguration very small scale but so that we're not in the same situation where as kids come in we're busting them across the city because that is the you know that is the school but we don't have any large scale plans for next year um mostly because we we can't there there there's

there isn't space there isn't another school there isn't um you know there isn't another site into which we could into which we can move and I don't think that's a new I don't think that's a new phenomenon no but I think that is something that we need to plan out for um in in the next in the next couple years for sure so my personal belief on that is that we have known some of these

issues and I for one would want to answer those now with the plan not necess not the full scale plan mhm but to just say that we've acknowledged that these have been issues for a long time and we haven't done anything to change it is where're on we have we opened a new school we open the West do school which was I mean and that's an interesting piece we've talked about

tany I was on board right as a an absolute site um there for opening our prek I do have to admit in retrospect I I don't know where we would have put the more than 200 students that are currently at tamy I don't know where we would have put them this year um at the elementary level so uh it was and remains a a perfect site for prek but I I don't we don't have an alternative

site for those students yeah I would just employ you to try to do something relative because it is an issue when I look at the report and some schools in the South End have class sizes of 28 in first grade uh and other other side of the community has 22 uh that to me is this there's some inequalities there along the way there's other also some things on the report that weren't necessarily didn't tell the

whole picture related to special ed or elll so it's more complicated than just the straight number but I don't think anybody would would debate the fact that our class sizes are way too high and we have to do something about it and all I'm asking is that we don't wait till 26 to get an outside consultant come in oh you know so we known and we also know we

had a um when you and I have spoken about this the demographic chat or have we paid for that we were said last July that we were going to utilize to make these decisions across the whole school and that was over a year and a half ago at this point or whatever when it came out a long time ago and we haven't done anything with it so we paid 15 grand for

it we it tells us something we didn't do it so I'm only imping you to try to do something sooner than later m per um I think that to your point I think if we would have moved all the tany students to West we would have had to find a spot for the FCO students that were there we would have been pushed come to shove last year you know what I mean but whatever

that's passed um but um I agree that I love that you said when it's not going to happen right now it's going to take a minute I hate when people tell me something's going to happen when I know it's not that's just um you know I you just know it's not it's nice to say it because we love it that way but the truth is just better so I like that but

what I would say is we need to get rolling on whoever you think you need to hire to assist with this redistricting that needs to be like immediate yesterday I would rather be too early and too ahead of the game at this point we're never we're not ahead of the game anyway but I mean that should be something like an immediate thing that we get done so that this that process

can stop going because it is going to be you think we had passion over one school what do you think's going to happen when we move kids all over the district so we need to be very strategic we need to make sure that the communication with our parents is so Stella um and our teachers our Educators um and we need to do that sooner than later and keep that conversation going

so I think the quicker we find information the quicker you can develop a plan to make sure that there's going to be bumps no doubt but at least to try to make it as smooth as as possible I do know that you know Mr had looked um last year into finding a firm that could help us and there literally wasn't anyone like we couldn't find some so I don't disagree with you that we have to get

back on the hunt again um for somebody who has the capacity and kid who can get us you know on their calendar so we need to F there we don't even know obviously that person exists other schools have used it right so we should just look at like what's the last school in the are to read District probably a big school right like a big city like Boston or something who they use yeah I think we

have some Talent a lot of talent think that's where some of these things are not something that we need someone else to come in and pay someone quite frankly to tell us we know like the people that work in this building the pay center everything's through one place uh Mr Michel lasac was at the meeting last year he had chots and graphs and maps and everything else so I do think we know we have Tech

transportation that knows the problem is is we just won't make a decision the meetings need to be start start the time is now to plan for next year it's December before you know it it's going to be well we can't do it because it's too late and I think we have in-house people that can look at it and maybe not do the the whole thing but maybe there's some Pockets where this just makes sense

to do or do we change some uh grading do we change a school to be K to to instead of I will say I can say that out loud I do think that will be part of the plan some of the configurations the grade level configurations um that are housed at particular sites I I think will be part of the change maybe that's so I would employ you again to just get your

inhouse folks put their heads together and I I do think we have talent that can come up with some ideas shortterm as well as long term anything else on this item okay we'll move on to 302 uh plan on Staffing special education positions this was put on the budget on the agenda because we've heard this at every uh meeting uh it's something that we all know uh I for one I'm very concerned

about how we're Staffing or not staff if we can't find people what we do so uh that's what this is about to try to say what is the plan on the Staffing and if anyone has any questions during that process pleas let me know Dr K yeah I'll start I mean I think that you know it is a recognized need we are you know we continue our recruitment efforts we are trying to do some work through

bargaining to potentially recruit some candidates specific to our special education program and we are using agencies so we are open to using agencies despite the fact that the agency Staffing does cost um considerably more than it does for us to hire in house um and I think that what we're trying to do and actually just came up last night in um in terms of an email you know uh one of the agencies

that were using was advertising that Fall River schools which made it seem like Fall River Public Schools um was looking for a special head staff and that we were willing to hire unlicensed staff um and that was how was advertised they weren't referring to us they were speaking about other area schools um but it was certainly something that caught the attention of um Mrs Oben chain and

she reached out and said oh no we're looking for high quality staff um I think it speaks I think seeing that um you know other schools that were advertising that way speaks to a huge need it's not just us we have other schools that um aren't often in this position who are also using staffing agencies so we're competing with other schools now uh for for a staff in the staffing agency so we recognize it as a

need um we are you know I think that you have some some of the data that you check your HR and our own records um and so Mrs om going to share some though so just um what you have in front of you just numbers broken down by school of vacancies the bigger piece at the bottom of the total so back in October um I believe Mr agar had asked me about

Staffing and where were with vacant positions and as you can see um and just so that the public hears too you know back in October we had 11 open inclusion teacher positions we still have 11 open inclusion teacher positions doesn't mean it's the same positions because every time we hire someone other people leave too so it just the number stayed pretty constant substantially separate teachers

back in October we had 14 openings now we have 17 openings um inclusion par professionals we have one current opening and we didn't have any in October par Professionals in substantially separate classrooms we had 16 back in O sorry 18 back in October we still have 16 and overall the most concerning piece is the you know the amount of unlicensed Staffing and these are staff that don't have waivers or

emergency certifications either these are primarily our wonderful par professionals who are stepping up and doing the hard work to be the teachers um and we have supervision plans that are approved by desie for all of them um but they we have 16 um classrooms with an unlicensed or um non-wedding positions the classroom positions is really when I look at the number of substantially separate

classrooms the classrooms at Henry Lord have had consistently noncertified teachers for the three years I have been here and that is a major concern of mine the bigger um so when we think about planning forward right I also have um a subcommittee or subgroup of my supervisor team really looking at the barriers to inclusion because if we're going to have a thousand kids in substantially separate classrooms how do

I have more inclusion opportunities for kids that are ready and you know developing the skills for inclusion say maybe at you know some of our other elementary schools so that I can take the high quality teaching staff and put them in front of our you know um students who have the greatest Challenge and aren't ready for inclusion yet that is one of kind of my plans is to really look at the barriers to inclusion for

many of our sub separate students so that we can either look at skill development for them or if it's class size and now we can't get them into inclusion because those rooms are full we need to address that because they deserve a spot in the general education setting to so we're doing that analysis right now so that as we're going into budget season and we're planning for next year we can make some

recommendations um to the superintendent but that is really my focus um we've had great success with our grow program that is the three classrooms we've opened up um that were students from our prek that would have typically been substantially separate but now they're in this partial inclusion model as we're trying to build their capacity um and I've gone to see the programs myself um and the students

participating in the inclusion classroom they look like typical K kids in a in a kindergarten classroom it's wonderful the way that the classrooms are embracing them the students are doing well again but the classes are large and that is something that when you think about sensory needs just like personal space needs um being able to communicate those are all challenges that in a larger classroom can be a barrier for

our youngest most needed kids so that's overall kind of what I'm planning to really look at what are we doing with our students to teach them the skills to get them in front of all our certified teachers which are in the right general education classrooms right District staff wise um you know we still have a couple openings for our team chairs uh the supervisor team has picked up

several of the meetings um and we have some retirees covering for our medical lead um we have one psychologist opening one OT opening we are fully staffed with codes right now we have four slps or speech um therapist openings we are using three contracted providers right now um to provide the service across the district most of it is the supervision that you heard about on Monday night so

that our students can continue to receive the services from the slpas from the assistants um and then we still have the slpa openings um we have three one we have currently one person in the hiring process so hopefully that will be two soon and then the rest of our district team is uh fully staffed um and I want uh the committee to know that last time when I looked earlier I don't

have it in front of me but we have 21 agency staff members current currently working in the district um most of them are power professionals and speech staff we have a few that are teachers I think it's three at this time um I'm working with five different agencies um that I'm in communication with daily um but we again we want to bring in high quality staff to work with our students our most needy students

make question Mr Cory so miss Oben chain just trying to think out of the box uh the challenges that you just outlined are nothing new we know that they've been prevalent for quite a few years seems to be the trend in the growth of special needs case log I don't know I don't know what's going on out there but but our our demand for special needs just continues to be very demanding uh

my question is thinking out of the box if you're going to use par professionals to cover a classroom are they available to receive professional development so we do um have them participate in the curriculum professional development that we um offer on our PD PD days they also participate in um professional learning within the school day um so we engage them just like they were certified

teachers we want to be able to certainly support them um to do the job of a teacher because the the teacher the parents that are stepping up to do this work really um it's in their heart to do the work they are working very hard and so we want to support and grow them and they do have um supervision and U mentoring coaching from either a special ed coach if the building has that a

cluster coordinator um some of our uh Team chairs who are also certified teachers just depending on the bill are they dedicated adjustment counselors just for the special needs case load or are the adjustment counselors in the building handling the whole building plus most buildings with substantially separate classrooms or specialized programs the programs have their own um dedicated adustment account so I asked

that because I think that votes very well you know because if if they're dedicated to that case log that case load then there's a lot of specialty work going on with within that case load and if you're giving the par professionals the necessary professional development as you just spelled uh I would think that the instruction you know for this particular child School child would would be maybe

if you call it maybe not the highest quality because we're not looking at a certified teacher but we're looking at a person who understands the environment of the classroom uh is being trained in the pedagogy of such so they can work with that case load specifically and they're getting um the supports around them throughout the rest of the school so I would hope that we're we're moving the curriculum and

we're moving the social emotional development of these sub separate classrooms forward even though we're having trouble attracting full-time teachers sure I mean the whether it's a par professional or certified teacher we're always collecting data right so our we can't collect the data on the curriculum on their social skills and all of those pieces to make the adjustments so are the students making

progress yes but what there power professionals are being asked to do in a classroom where again some of them H are participating or have participated in the jet program that we offer to become teachers you know some of them are comfortable and rather stay where they are as a par professional too so the other thing you have to though understand is that desie does not support that as a long-term solution so

we do have to move either move parents towards lure which we have done and they've become great teachers right or we have to say you know we have to do our best that if the parent doesn't want to pursue that then we need to do our best to find a certified teacher because every year we have to submit our lure and write these plans and then get them critiqued and they you know the

oversight by the department the next question that comes to mind also I'm just trying to think out of the box uh I hate to sound naive by asking certain questions like this but an incubator program in partnership with the universities around us such as Bridgewater such as UMass dmth and and and seeing if we can specify in and incentivize the students at the college level to maybe pursue this track with

maybe a tiff agreement with the district to come here and give us at least their first three to five years of service in our district just to bolster our our people yeah I mean you know again my my team is open to anything I know that I have spoken to Bridgewater and UMass myself um and there's many other districts doing the same thing that we are with them um I can say is that uh we

do have a a four course program that Bridgewater is OPP is it bridgew that is offered I can't remember no UMass maybe um that it takes a person with a teaching license already that's not certified in special ed and through the score courses they can work towards being able to get their another license as a teacher so that's already I mean as a special educator so that's already in

the works that we're doing doing here again it's it's there's a lot of people buying for a very small pot um so so this this seems to be a condition that that that's not only affecting our school district I want to make that clear this this is a condition that's affecting other school districts as well as to my understanding it's even affecting certain collaboratives that not not just the collaboratives that

serve us but collaboratives in general and that in itself is a whole special needs expert Think Tank a collaborative but it just seems to be out there in the real job market that there's just not enough candidates but yet the demands within our school district are growing right so we have to get creative with the people that we have and how can we like I said look at these you know the

inclusion opportunities so there's more co- teing opportunities so kids are in front of not just one but two teachers with expertise in all of those pieces because you're right we're continue to pursue more candidates but if they're not there and the agencies are having a hard time finding them or whatever they're not choosing Fall River whatever that may be we still have these kids who

deserve a great education from us in Fall River and from what I've seen in my past experiences working in the district I know that those needs existed even a few years back when I was still working but going into those classrooms I saw a lot of love I saw a lot of dedication and I saw I saw a lot of positive affect from the children themselves so I don't for the public certification I do not

want the public to think that we're failing in our responsibilities in servicing these children because I don't believe that we fail I believe that we're succeeding in our efforts to work with these children and to forward their own case loads uh even though we're struggling to find certified teachers but I think that we're still moving the bar and raising the bar moving forward with that I

yield I don't really have any questions now thank you for your work um I like the concept of seeing if you can navigate um getting some some of our Scholars into um classrooms where they could be co- teing um and maybe working that out so that we're staffed better but the reality is in order to be in compliance we need teachers so we have we have recently implemented some new inclusion protocol that I've asked um

principals along with my administrative team to start working with classroom teachers and you know um other par professionals to say who is showing the skills that they are ready to take the next step and if they are then what how do we get them there so we have protocols and rubrics and different ways to measure that so we can make sure that we're making good decisions that are you

know sound and in the best interest of students to help to help move that along of course um and I mean did what Mr Cory said I know you're that you and the department are doing a fine job and we obviously care about the students of for you obviously care um but with that being said I I hear what you're saying we need teachers and that's not something that you can do alone that's

going to be a conserved effort and then the other thing to remember too is that there are pieces that par professionals cannot do or uncertified they cannot write IEPs they cannot they can't look at that's not within desie regulations so the other piece is the more that we have power Professionals in the teaching rule it does put the burden of those other responsibilities for special education

on the teachers who are certified of a that are certified so we have to balance that too and that's you know primarily when I say the agencies that's really the reason um because we have there other responsibilities I wonder if they're even seeing not that you know this I'm just thinking out loud if they're seeing a lot of specialed graduates in college like people specializing so the know and

when I go to um Mass Urban special ed director meetings um they have the monthly but they're like quarterly in person and when theyes we get to sit at a table with the um College whatever especially a department from our area and every area that's represented there whether it's Worcester or western Mass their colleges in those areas are still saying the same thing that the candidate pool has decreased

overall so we have more kids who require special needs but we have less you know people going into field so that's the fact of the matter and so we just have to keep doing like I said I think it's an effort a district effort right to to get our teachers to get to get people to want to work here cuz we had over a 100 special education students move into the district between July and September wow

that's significant yeah I yeah one of the this just is very alarming uh you already known the data and it's just I'm not sure how we address it but it's crisis mode this isn't just sugar coat you can't Sugar Code this this is crisis mode when you're looking at your substantially separate classes hence the reason why we're at in the contract we're asking to give them more money because we need to recruit them I quite

frankly think it should be more talk you know we can it's legal to talk about it but at the end of the day the um sub separate is not going to go away tomorrow and you can get six unlicensed people at just that one School uh I think we should look at something relative to moving people so that one school doesn't have six openings and another doesn't because that's not an ideal situation but having

six sub separate classrooms in one school is not um there almost half the classrooms that are in that school at Henry there's 1 substantially there's 13 substantially separate classrooms yeah and if you're looking at the ones from other schools they so the subpar is one thing that we have inclusion that's open the same thing I would say talber here has three I don't know how many they have total

but uh three I think somebody came up yesterday and said not one whether that's true or not you can dispel it if you want but the person came up I believe and said that no kids are getting serviced and all this other stuff but I don't believe that to be the case but no no we do have a subgroup of students at talbet um in grade six and grade eight that are not getting some of

their inclusion Support Services primarily in ela um according to the Special Education team over there as well as the administrative team they were able to cover most of the math services so they are being receiving their services um parents have been notified again we are going to have to work on compensatory services in those pieces um but it's not accurate to say that none of the students at talet

Middle School are getting inclusion Services all right the um we also talked about the staffing agencies and I thought at since the start of the year we were trying to get as many staff on agencies as we can and the way I in my personal opinion analyze the budget is if we have a budget budgeted position even the increased cost of the special educator on a um through an agency is

going to be cheaper than what it would have been especially when you're adding the benefits so we have a whole load of money that is available or unspent but we have these vacancies so I'm of the we should be going to staffing agencies if that needs to be all year but my question for the superintendent is how did it go to the um did anyone um in administration tell principles directors that they can't

hire an agency this school year we did have that one point it was like in mid October I think or the end of October through early December um that we had a pause what was the rationale for that at that point it was it was a cost thing because at that point we were projecting that if we were going to staff if we were going to fully staff all of our

open positions we were going to be over budget and we were still trying to find but we did not I wouldn't want to give the impression that we turned away you know so many teachers and Paris we did have I think it was you know a couple we had the agency reached out with a couple of of pair professionals or something like that it wasn't like we were saying no to Staffing coming in

that wasn't that wasn't yeah I had uh information from a principal that the principal had the person in the queue and it was told no you can't have them and that wouldn't didn't for classroom teacher staff I'm just saying agency staff you know okay um and I I don't believe even at that point it was a budget issue so U if somebody can prove otherwise I get we don't want you to go

into a negative budget but if you take the person's salary add the benefits you know the amount of money they're making I just looked at it today on uh one of the the things that came through the agency is charging for power profession $32 an hour with no we pay significant we we pay in some cases depending on it it changes by agency yeah I'm saying the one that was on the report that came out

today said $32 an hour when you look at that when you start to figure in new benefits and all that it and then as I said last Monday night if we're halfway through the year and that money hasn't been spent at all there's definitely money in those lines uh I just think we should do whatever we have to do and as far as this member you got to if it's a

staffing agency so be it I agree because slpa question was on the person last night was talking about the uh not being able to service kids does that Happ so for their lure for an slpa lure they are required to provide to receive supervision um you know I don't know the hourly amount but it's specific amount of hours the way that our contract language is is that slps only there's a a specific amount of slpa

that they s service Depend and it ranges from like 1 to three if they're servicing students in some capacity so at the time the slps resigned and in the middle of the year so it leads us to there was no SLP that we could assign to provide that supervision so I believe and again I would have to really go back and and dig through the um when people left versus

when we could secure people to cover but I want to say there was like two two to three weeks where it was a situation at I want to say Doran um do you remember the other I can't remember that were temporarily on that was temporar the three Learning Centers and the three Learning Centers so again what did we do we immediately reached out to staffing agencies we reached out to people who have worked

for us Us in the past um my previous speech and language pathologist from hobi who's retired brought her back so we could get those Services up and running as quickly as possible and they wouldn't have a cap because they the contract is what's the cap on so it's it's this language around like I Ser I can service x amount of kids and ser and supervise three um slpa right Kristen

it's I don't know what I to look that's our contract language so I think what he's asking is if we bring if we as we brought back your former speech pathologist they can supervise up to what whatever they we didn't have any caps on that for people we brought in for the contracted providers they don't have that when you get do you ask them to just be the supervisor or you

actually so some of them are doing evaluations for us they're being they're supervising the staff they're doing again they're doing whatever the needs are um in the district yeah just whatever if they're if they're covering an SLP position they're doing the responsibilities that the SLP who's not no longer here would have done just that our slps have different responsibilities it doesn't seem as bad

as what they made it seem like but it's still not an ideal situation gu is that yeah I mean again the need is great for speech and language we have a lot of speech and language staff um it's just unfortunate when people leave in the middle of a year it's very unfortunate I do also want to share because I think it's important that we've had slps and SLP leave and then come back to the

district so they leave to pursue different opportunities and I think this year alone we might have had two that left and came back so I mean I do want people to know that too because so the Recruitment and all that I I think HR should have a um role in that and I'm not sure how robust that is in the current U environment or whatever but one of the things that I

think just really doesn't sit well with me is when we do studies in this follow schools and the studies make recommendations on certain things and then we don't do that so when you look back at the human resource study that we paid for from three four years ago one of the positions that they recommended was a recruitment uh person a coordinator of recruitment or something now we still

don't have the position never been brought up never but like what we pay for somebody to tell us that this is what the need is and then we don't do it so I would implore the administration to look back to some of that stuff and yes that's another position but it's valuable because they will affect this so I think we should be looking at hiring a recruitment coordinator so that

they can be the point person on all of that stuff rather than peace me you you know little things like that I have been in communication with u Mr LA and trying to have AAR take over um some of this especially with the agencies because we also want to make sure you know I'm under the belief that we need to spread the wealth right so I ask that all the

resumés go through me and then I take them based on the you know the experience the preferences the education and I send them to the building and uh special education supervisors that I feel like that would be the best match so that not every agency you know gets to know Dr B and they're given her all the candidates and other people don't so I did ask Mr L I think that that's what

HR um um could help us with is making sure not only to recruit the people but making sure that we're you know placing them in the best um fit for both them and our isn't that am I just naive isn't that an HR responsibility in general at most organizations like shouldn't they be the ones doing the recruiting I would imagine like no no disrespect but if I was hiring someone to do employment

recruiting I don't know that I'd hire you I'd hire you to run a special ed Department it doesn't seem like to me that seems like a no rer I assumed this was something that was the responsibility of the HR department so I think it it I think what this maybe we need to look into the superintendent needs to look into who who works for the HR department what are their duties um

is it that they're spread too thin do we have to hire somebody who is going to do um you know maybe recruitment for the district part-time or something 100% I would support that it's 100% necessary we can't expect our principales to go out recruit recruting teachers they're running schools that should be the human resource department that should be the department of people who go out and

engage the community and go go to colleges and go to different um job fairs and such that's not a principal's job it's not a job of the director of special ed or or the superintendent even for that matter it's her job to make sure he's you know he or she's doing it so I think that's kind of information it's a little surprising to me to be honest with you because I thought they

were the ones that did the majority of that heavy lifting and I feel they should be the ones doing all that heavy lifting your responsibility should be when you are given resumés to look at to be like Yep this is acceptable to me or a principal is given resumés to say yes I will interview and I will find the person who you know suits this school or the students best it's their job to do

the hiring I'm not trying to take that but it I don't think it should be their job to do the recruiting right I mean the matchmakers human resources make some matches so I think that's definitely something the superintendent needs to look at and I support help if they need help there cuz it is it's a big job it's huge yeah I would say to that uh I would email the superintendent

and ask her that because she should be able to respond with what they're actually doing but emailing her and stuff like that is no big deal and I think it's something that we should should I'm not in HR I'm not working in HR at all with Mr La coming on Mid July whenever it was um you know he's stepping into an already pre-established Department he's in the process of hiring

a new person for his office um there are certainly layers of um recruitment that HR takes on yeah as a former building principle you know I will also say there's an element of my own recruiting that I do like to do and that is really important for me to be able to do because I know the landscape of the community I'm building for um but there are layers of Recruitment and I think

it's really important that we can establish some consistent layers of recruit recruitment but at the end of the day we are all recruiting all of our work is a recruitment right um because people want to be part of communities and communities are different and no one HR Director especially in the district as large as ours would understand the intricate details um that are necessary on that like one-on-one recruitment

level right I don't I don't disagree with um I certainly don't think we should have an HR department that's doing hiring for principles or specializ I I'm not remotely suggesting that what I'm suggesting is it should not be your responsibility now if a principal chooses to go the extra mile and take part in these things that 100% I agree but I think it should be the main responsibility of human resource

department with that being said I realized Mr L just started you know brand new and I get it and with no means um you know throwing anything you know saying he should have been doing things he wasn't if I was going to do that it would have been it would have been on the previous the previous one right so but I think because he's new this is a great time we're talking about recruiting

he needs but I think we should be in my opinion your decision but in my opinion Human Resources needs to be taken the lead and stronger role on Recruitment and I shouldn't it shouldn't be the assistant she has so many things on her plate I I just it boggles my mind and I'm not suggesting you're complaining she didn't but we're talking about trying to find people for for those positions or her dealing with staffing

agencies and things like this I would just like to see a human resource department who is going to start working on making recruitment their top priority and how are we going to navigate that and I think I know that I'm willing to invest if that needs to be hiring somebody or whatever it is I don't know not my job come and tell us what you need but I would 100% support

assisting them in that um you know what that IDE so um I realize we're talking about crisis level work here I'm so again at the risk of sounding naive I just a question to you madam superintendent um looking at Department of Education desie um do you think uh do they consider having major recruitments Statewide are they going out like as the state level government trying to create

a campaign um with all the universities in our state and colleges in our state to try to get an active recruitment going on for for young college students to go into teaching and maybe focus in special ed can desie do something like that or do they do something like that so there are out there are efforts right now around this I mean it is a major crisis I was actually with um I was at a

an event uh with other superintendent they talked about the fact that I want to say in the 70s about 30% of college students were in the were going into the teaching profession and now it's 4% so there just aren't people going into the profession yeah so so I so the department of Ed in massachusett they are they have started up some efforts around that we've been lucky that we actually have a very strong relationship

with UMass Dartmouth with Bridgewater we've had some very strong programs in place um and you know where we've done some work for them with agile professors and things like that so so we've had that kind of thing in place which not you know every district has but still the candidates aren't there to actually attend some to some of these courses um Mrs OB chain referenced one of the

programs that we had put together you know a package deal for courses and it was specific to areas of need around multilingual Learners and our students with disabilities and and the Staffing there um we have a you know we're working on a grant right now so that you know it's all about it's all about building the pipeline um they're and so they're offering District's money to pursue grow your own programs or

partnering with um you know International candidates and things like that so those are all things that we've pursued do I do we need help absolutely do I do we wish every day that there was all the things that are happening we definitely need we definitely need more help there's no doubt about it I you see the numbers here um and that's for special ed and we have openings in in lot of different positions I don't

disagree um around having someone on our HR team whose sole focus is the recruitment because if I'm naming one thing that is really you know that everybody is working on it it is that piece and I do think that um it's something like that that kind of splinters efforts and everybody's working on this and people aren't getting trapped ction and it takes them from other parts of their jobs um and so

I think that I don't disagree I think that is something that we're going to pursue in this budget process um and as we think forward into our strategic planning is around a more robust um system structure for that human resources department when you get together with other superintendents around the state are they singing the same song M absolutely so I think it's time for desie to maybe step up and and

use you know their money coffers to it's it's like uh when World War II happened all of a sudden now you had the works progress administration step up and give a lot of veterans a lot of work in the field to to bolster up you know whatever it is all the jobs for the events coming out of War I think it's it's time for desie to step up and create a program

Statewide you know for young people to step into to as young recruits to staff schools and especially with special needs I really think I if if you guys could you know tell Des heing we really need you to to to give us some backbone on this crisis obviously it's a crisis and we can't we don't have all the answers and we have limited funding but I agree with Mr agar that maybe we could

give some extra stip and some extra funds to try to bolster our case for special needs in the classroom I mean I don't know I'm I'm just trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat I don't have any answers but it's good that we're discussing it the one thing I would add to that too is I we we we've talked about this we've agreed with this idea that the the potential because maybe for

the most immediate impact is offering a stipend um to special Educators um Sub in substantially separate settings and in our alternative setting I think that um that I do think that is something that could have an immediate impact we will always have the debate and we we were still having it today about what that dollar amount needs to be to be attractive because I do think the important thing is that we have to

recognize we need to attract people the biggest pool of people are people who work in other districts because right now the colleges and universities don't have the pool for us so we do have to attract people who are currently working in other districts some because some of the things that we're talking about um that would require uh some languaging contracts and things like well if we could hire people

parttime par professionals part-time people who are who are going to school Monday Wednesday Friday but there are par professionals we could grow our own right while we do that we we provide them part-time employment while they're in school but that is the that that's a grow your own program it takes time to grow we're years out from accessing that kind of pool so we really need to focus

on the kinds of things that are going to attract people who are already licensed and already experienced um and that so that we can attract them District that's the conversation now yeah I had a quick question when you were talking about offering um classes to Paris you had said for class oh yes was that a certification or what was it that you so that's actually for Teacher so there licensed teachers so we might

have second grade we we know that General classroom teachers okay so not for Paris for licensed teachers you're saying hey take we're going to offer you these four courses so that you will then be able to um assist better in our special needs population is that cor they're not necessarily certified in special ed they're certified teachers so I could be a science teacher so courses would certify them in special ed it

would allow them to take the entel and that would be the course work and they could it's the path a licensure so we take a general classroom um General classroom teacher we support them to become special Educators so I'm a general classroom teacher I want to become a special at teacher um I take these four classes take four classes then I can for the test the test and now they can join special education

department okay so four classes test I can join the department now and what incentive are we giving them thank you I need like broken T I'm not a teacher um so what incentive we give them no incentive other than hey you're going to get these classes you're not going to have to pay for these classes or did they so would we do course reimbursements oh so they would have had

to pay for the classes so what was the incentive just like exactly so I think that it's it's it's the lure pathway offer them and in some coures is this a special lure pathway that other people don't receive I don't know the extent to which it it existed it was advertised before so we worked with uming it so you guys okay so we worked with UMass dmouth to sort of develop develop this crossover program so to

speak so we can get these already licensed teachers into the special and MLM right andl world yes correct okay but the incentive is basically you have to be interested in it there so there's no incentive currently right all right I was just checking because maybe again if we if we provide it I feel we need to provide incentives for our special a teachers I've been for our our teachers

at the at the RPA you know they need to be incentivized we have teachers who are doing not that every all work isn't important it is all important but we we know that it's different um and it's harder when we're looking at recruiting teachers we know where we have holes and we know why we do um so I think God if we could work something out where we're I get we do tuition reimbursement but

maybe paying for first you know giving an incentive uh you know beforehand because that is if you're doing tuition reimbursement you're paying for it first you're taking the time to take the the you know and as you know that's part of our negotiations know so that's what I'm and the par professional pathway is the jet program which we've the district has had for a while I think so that is

something that it helps the par professional take the path and become a certified teacher but it's a lot of cour work for them sure but I think if we're providing um I think if we're providing them with within incentives they do it but that means like that means support so if you have a par who you know is is you know a younger person who's also got a family

and and is working and now we're in cost worth they can't quit their job because guess what they need it to pay the bills but they're doing cwork on top kind of incentive programs you know those people need are programs where hey you can work top part-time but we're going to pay you this amount because you're going to school for this and then you're going to stay here you know those are the programs going to

incentify those poers otherwise anybody knows they can go to they first of all pretty much anybody can go to P college for free right now right so we don't need anybody so we need more to incentivize them to come in here other than saying hey look at these programs not on you not on any of us obviously but that I yed so the only my only Comon is that um I agree with M BR saying that

the we need to ask each about what are they doing some you know there should be already Improvement stuff already the pipeline there might be there might not be I don't know but one thing that they continually um gets me and a parent had told me this one time I was on a committee uh about 10 years ago and there's there was a lot of stuff going on we going to hire a new principal at

dery high school and this and that and this parent was very vocal and stated we don't have time for a dress rehearsal and ever since he said that it's always stuck with me that we don't have time for a dress re so when we say that the HR Director got hired in July anybody got hired in July it's now December and my feeling is we don't have time for a dress rehearsal if

you're in a school you're a teacher you're in there you phone you know you can get support but we can't just keep saying oh it's no we got to wait so agency and the time I'm not saying that I I'm what I was saying is that we've been coming in in July with all of the priorities we haven't added well we actually have the US dment program the Bridgewater program there were pieces in

place that we were moving forward but as far as one person in HR taking on recruitment we don't have that set up in the current structure um right and Mr La has been actively involved and to your point we do have standing recruitment efforts that do exist across the district that have been led by HR um but I think we would all agree that we're at a different place than we were over the

last few well since Co and and moving forward and especially since we've had the ability to be able to add so many positions to our budget um that has also increased the need for the recruitment specialist specifically but I was just clarifying it was going in a direction that there was no recruitment happening in HR and I wanted to clarify that there is recruitment that is happening in HR

um but that there's also a building based decision-making thing as you know as a principle yourself too um that we like to control the waters with which we live in um and so it is a balance of Both Worlds coming together to get the work done across all of these Avenues you should control your water it's definitely a joint I'm not suggesting otherwise my only this as a Committee Member it it bothers me sometimes when

it's just you know I've only been here for a while or whatever we heard that with Matt Malone for four years straight and he kept saying oh I've only been here 3 years you got to give me a chance like at some point we got to say no we don't have time for a addess year so we have to get it done when we look at HR some things that bother me like we still

have positions major positions that are not filled in HR I heard and I brought to the superintendent that we were paying somebody to work in Portugal while they were here like there was a reason for it and I'm not suggesting otherwise but like when as a Committee Member if I start hearing those things that makes no sense in in general like but fill the position why do we still have a position open maybe we don't have

candidates and that's not our prview but we still right now with all these needs to have a position and I think it's a pretty major like there's not many people that work at each child so every position is Major conducted interviews this week I mean it's late I guess I guess that's all I'm saying is I think that this time like okay let's just say no more dress rehearsals let's just get

down to what we thank you all so our next update is on the stone school and I'm assing you want Mrs shw to talk or do you have something to say oh no I I pr sure so we opened on time which was kind of amazing I did ask my I was um I had a seure out today so I was blessed to be able to spend some time in the third

fourth grade classroom and sometime in the fifth grade classroom and I asked the kids what I should say about the new stone school and they all said thank you that was what they felt that they love the auditorium yesterday we had our first awards assembly and I think that was like they were like wow we can hear people CU we used to reverberate off the walls of the cathage inventorium um at um at the Old Stone

and um they're just they're just loving the space they're loving the fact that this is what they deserve they feel this is what we told them when they came in Lori was there I think the first day and we told them listen this is what you deserve you need to respect it you need to treat it well because people worked hard for you to get this and they have been

phenomenal a lot of the concerns that we had about you know our kids trying to go to the prek they don't do any of that they have asked we've had kids ask can we go down and help help you know help in the prek like read in the prek we're not there yet but we're working on it but um we were a little concerned at I mean I was a little concerned over the

summer and I called keny in a panic one day and said you have to come over here but we opened on time the place looked like a school everybody worked hard to get I cannot say enough about facilities in the in the district supported us 100% everything that we asked for for they were very open to coming over and providing to us while also moving everything from the first floor to the

RLC downstairs everything was done in time for us to move in um all of the chalkboards were put up the bulletin boards everything was done the only drag we had at the beginning and Ken knows is that the playground wasn't finished and so you know trying to tell a bunch of kids that there's no playground and no basketball court when you're a high schooler that was kind of a tough cell

but we were able to put some things in place in the building to get kids uh actively involved in activities um so they weren't feeling the M we opened the playground oh my gosh a month or so ago um and I actually sent a video to um to the administrative team of the kids were just so happy and I don't actually know if it was the kids with the staff that

were happier because we we were all out there on the swings and all of that as well last week we opened up the basketball court because we were holding because the basketball court is on the back parking lot and I did not want to be responsible for balls flying over fences and hitting cars so we held the kids um and did not let them use the basketball court until the Nets were up

and the Nets are up and the kids are absolutely loving it so within the building almost everything is done the only room that is not completely completed is the art room um we're just waiting for the floor to finish being laid down there like 3/4 of the way down they're working on getting the rest of it done and then we will open up the music and art classrooms right now we're using um

a combined space for them and this is their first time actually having a classroom up until now we've always worked off carts for art and music so um they're delighted with the classroom that they have but they can't wait to move into their room space as well um the only thing um the other thing that is being worked on are water stations we have a water station on the first floor

they're building water stations on the second and third floor and those are um that's the only things that I could think of I walked the building today to see if I was forgetting anything um I know that we have made some requests about reinforcing the gym walls things like that are on the list they're not critical at the moment um but again I just wanted to say that um even though I

was concerned about our capacity to open and look as if we should be open I although I was concerned we did and it was it was the best opening we have ever had uh lessons were learned from the last time we moved to a building we use those lessons to our advantage um the only issue that we're having today is that every time we have a horrible rain

like this we get a few leaks so I mean nothing horrible but everybody's aware and there were people over there working on those before um some of the new things that we've been working on at Stone this year you guys uh very nicely gave us the option to have one early release day a month that has been a God's end because we have um in our building we have 12 grades we have a

curriculum for each subject in each grade and just trying to make sure that we are building capacity all of the time is really difficult we've um added two department heads that we were sharing with RPA and I think we're playing well together yeah I think we're doing okay um so we're we each get them about 2.5 days but Kyle and I are kind of the same personality and if he needs him a little

extra I'm fine with that if I need him a little extra he's okay with that um we haven't had to Duke it out in the parking lot yet but um having them there has been they able to be there on those early release days we had an early release day today and uh the department head for ELA was doing some things with those teachers and it has really opened up our ability to do professional

development for our Paris that for me was really important because we've added Paris over the years we hadn't had time to kind of update our trauma training we um hadn't had we need to do a lot more work with deescalation strategies then safety care allows I mean safety care that's part of it but it's not all of it so we've been doing a lot of work with our par professionals around trauma

training you know being trauma sensitive um what the impact of trauma on students brain develop is development is and all of that and um we've gotten really good reviews for that today we had a very um very active and interesting training about deescalation everybody left happy and laughing so I I I'll take that as a win um like I said the the department heads supporting are amazing we opted

this year to do something different with our plc's and we are doing one to one plc's three times a month so I do all of the social studies plc's my VP does the science our department heads do math and Ela and then we all get together once a month and the reason for that is that we really wanted to dig into internalizing the C curriculum that we have um we've gotten a lot of very positive feedback

from our teachers I love it and what I've been able to do is pull the Paris into it because we really want our Paris to be teachers in the classroom Beyond and and I'm amazed at how much they want to be a part of that process um so it's a little bit of a you know I spend a lot of time at 6 o'clock in the morning trying to figure out how I'm going to

cover people so that I can have the Paris there but it's time well spent because their ideas are breathing kind of new life into some of the curriculum so and we've also been able to encourage two parents to go for the teaching license so so there you go the only thing if if uh somebody said to me what would you like for stone the only thing that I can think that we like in Ken

aware is a working kitchen we've never had a working kitchen we our food is delivered the kids aren't going hungry or anything but our food is delivered from the virus now is it it's from um actually Henry Lord Oh Henry Lord so the food comes to us and you know the kids get options they get choices for their food and all of that but it's just not the same as if it's cooked in the

building and it would also allow us to have hot breakfast once in a while for your kids um so for me that's the only wish list that I have right now is for a working kitchen any questions Mr Cory so according to that need uh M Miss Shaw on is are we planning to stay at 2501 longterm is that like a long-term proposition all right so if that's the

case then I say you know we can we can make plans moving forward to get a working kitchen in here I think there is a plan we already have so we've got about $80,000 worth of kitchen equipment ordered um that we'll be installing and um she will soon have um she won't have a cooking kitchen but she'll have an operational kitchen that she will as as Miss Shaw said the hot

breakfast once in a while will be an option um as it is with all of our schools that don't necessarily have cooking kitchens but do have operational kitchens so it will be equal to all of the other schools when it comes to that for the public certification um um the summary that Miss just gave us on the stone therapeutic school should be a PR uh campaign for us to be able to attract

other special needs teachers in our district because uh I'm going to praise you um marelen because of your Vim your Vigor and your enthusiasm your passion at running this very special piece of our schooling in Fall River it's a therapeutic school it deals with a very speci profal population you're dealing with all kinds of professionals teachers Paris occupational therapists and the

like uh and uh and I'm really really pleased to to see you give such a an uplifting report right now and it's still in its formative stages and I know we still have work to cover uh the your building I'm very pleased with uh last week at our facility subcommittee meeting Mr Pico outlined the need to fix the playground there because of the challenges of the Topography of the playground so those are challenges that

we have to face on the Fly and so I think that that fed into some of the delays here for the pay center uh so if it's work that needs to be done it's work that needs to be done I get it um as a Korean musician I'm very curious as to what does the music program look like at Stone I was so let asked me that because I have big news about that so we

have we have now my son is a musician and my son would not have made it through school without that sax ofone so I am passionate about music so I have been begging for years why can't we do some like instruments and things like that people are reluctant and I understand it because the kids are not necessarily their longterm etc etc etc we are doing it um um Mr bontia is

amazing he has been working closely with me we are going to start five or six kids I think it is on instruments um and I could not be more excited for that um Mr Montgomery is our Music Teacher he is just phenomenal he's a phenomenal human being and he does lots of really cool things with them like Home Depot buckets as drums who knew that was a thing and

um I didn't and the kids love the class but this opportunity to add this little element I am so excited about it because like I said I truly you know for my own son we had to find the thing that was going to get him through school and I feel like for some of our kids this might be the thing that's going to get yeah there's no doubt there's no doubt about the the benefits uh the

therapeutic benefits that music would provide a child creative side of their brain to balance off all the other cognitive stuff needs to go on and I just think it helps to distress a child for the rest of the school day that they would be much more ready for classroom instruction once they have a little bit of musical therapy uh throughout their day like that so I'm really happy to

hear that I'd love to see that program just continue to flourish and grow in the future and uh I I I really I can't wait to visit your your place just to see what's going on operationally uh I want to thank you personally I know how hard you worked through this whole transition moving from the westal site to now 251 and it seemed like I know there was a lot of work that went into

it but you made it feel like it was Flawless and for that my hats off to you thank you very much um no I mean just thank you for sharing it's nice when I hear the good stories that make me tear up I knew they would love that building and the mural on the outside came beautiful it did everything's great if there's any issues in the future with you know if you're

feeling that the music department so as far as not being able to use instruments you said because they're not here that long what is that well sometimes our kids come for short periods of time you know we have some of our students come are some of them are longterm sure kids and some are not they're it's a very individualized program so I think there's always been this thought that well when they get to their regular

school they can do it um but Mr vontina feels like eating five kids is worth it I agree 100% I don't think that should be a barrier I don't know what their regular school means or what any of that means wherever they are they should be able to receive what whatever any other student does and if that's ever an issue please come back and let us know not at all it shouldn't I'm not saying you're

saying it's an issue at all but just so you know I have to say that you know I can't like support say it one more time that I can not say enough good things about everybody who helped put that together and my staff who has made this such a positive experience for kids you can't you can't you can't put a price on that you know those kids came in that

first day and they knew that this was their new home and they've loved every minut of it great thank you Sharon thank you uh last uh item is the RPA update that's great um so I'll start off with some quick Twins and uh move into some other things after that I will uh kind of feed off Mary Ellen with the department heads last year we had one department head position for ELA we had

um promoted that person into a vice principal role and kind of went the rest of the year patching it together uh not unable to fill that so the two individuals that were able to hire have done significant work for us U holding plcs on a regular basis connecting with the directors uh it's a definit different look for us um in our academic so we really give them a lot of credit

and also if we do get out my money's on very own so I I just think we're giving a lot of good opportunities for our kids right now um and I think that comes in a lot of different ways that when you sit down and reflect about it you realize how many opportunities they're having um right now with our holidays just getting through Thanksgiving uh making sure that 17 of our families gut full turkey

baskets um with sides uh and our kids are working on those things to they're working with the local churches on either side of us to um they had a lasagna event they have every year our kids go and cook lasagnas for families within there uh within their Community uh the turkey baskets the um Co drives and whatnot our kids are actively involved in that and it's kids that are in our um student council our

representative to the school committee uh NAA quando became our president of our school council this two weeks ago so she was elected it was a very serious event we canit and uh it should be uh we are getting a lot out of them and they're getting a lot of of the activities that they're doing as well uh a little bit of collaborative work uh Dan fits called me from about westall using our facilities for gyms they

didn't have a facility so they are spending Wednesday afternoons our kids leave at 1:46 to come over at 2:00 for both gym classes and for uh basketball practice so I think it's just a nice partnership that's going on so far um uh we're taking some of the monies that we have for Shannon Grant right now and using them for quite a few things one um District already uses the Harvey from

the for Hoka um the couple who runs that Gallery comes over to our school once a week uh and works within our art teacher and our newly formed gallery to start putting up some of the kids' work um they are talking about social art um and I won't go into the curriculum cuz I don't know it uh they do and so but it's a nice touch point for our kids that's not just we're offering

MMA through that we're offering basketball through that we do have those other kids who don't fit that role and they need the Arts they need music uh so we want to make sure we're trying to reach every student you might have seen my plea for Christmas trees on Facebook uh I went out there within five minutes we had five Christmas trees uh donated had to stop telling people to donate

Christmas trees RPA I have a good bunch of uh friends in the community and uh people who care about uh the schools and so we have a Christmas tree on every single floor that people are taking pride in within the school um and decorating them for the Flor color or whatever it is to make it look uh really nice and festive inside the building um I want to talk a little bit about

special ed in the sense that Lori and I have talked in the past I've talked to um Sarah maderas who our supervisor we don't have a team chair it's the only position we are not filled at RPA fortunately um she serves both those roles and does a wonderful job certainly a shout out to her um but we are looking at our sub separate population in a little different way our class sizes are

so small that with the opportunity during IEP meetings if it's a student who may need is to be in a small classroom setting we have that across the board why are we having them in the same classroom with the same teachers all the time when they can move and then into inclusion setting and get the same responses um so we have been able to move kids on their I to get services in

the regular setting and I think it's been a huge benefit for our kids um but it is one by one team Me by team meeting and making sure it's what's right for kids not just saying let's get them out of there um in our ninth and 10th grade we moved our sub separate class to not just be stable but to uh in one setting but to move classes as a group as a

cohort and it makes sense for them to get up and move and and have that uh experience too uh We've instituted quite a few field trips and a few field trips moving forward with Title One grant that um we want to have our kids do a couple things one is to realize the good things that are in flover that they should be taken advantage of in the community um Went to

lizes went out for um a quick lunch after that but they've also been the extended where they might not have going before like a pack where our kids have enjoyed to play uh and really have great discussions on the way back um with those type of things so we're really trying to get our kids in good space all the time to see what else is out there um facilities I'm going to ask Ken and

Scott to help me out a little bit but um we are trying to well I'll first say a conference room that we put together which is we call the student Commons it's a multifunctional room has all brand new furniture brand new um ceiling brand new bathroom brand new school store in there um new floors uh looks great serves as a multifunction room for us um we have our Tuesday meetings with

Amy and her group in there but we also have kids St the student council meetings in there we have pizza party coming back from the field trip we do it in there so it's really a multi- function room and it's away from everything else so it's it's very well contained very quiet uh and it gives us a good space to really uh support whatever the initiative is going on so that's complete and looks great um we

are still working on a culinary Department I think Ken can probably help me out a little bit on what are with some things uh we constantly have stuff coming in uh and we Chase and I were just talking on the way in today about um what a classroom would look like for them outside of just the kitchen and the um Cafe yeah so we we're waiting on a dishwasher um and a different oven um

instructor girl had asked uh that the oven that we had originally thought would be ideal for the situation really didn't fit what she had mind so we we're moving that particular piece down to the cooking kitchen where we know we can you know use that piece of equipment um in fact um Gloria is using that downstairs now while we're waiting for the other one uh so that kitchen piece is just set

I think we're we're going to throw um the a whiteboard and I think we've got a um a board that to put up in the in the um kitchen area itself uh and uh dining room electricians were there last week to um service one wall that didn't have any Outlets so they took care of that as well um so we're close uh really close on that we're waiting for um chairs

tables a pastry display case for the uh dining room area which would which will just about complete that area and then we're going to do a little bit of work in the storage space in between that classroom and and um The Culinary um I think weit the bathroom in there to right yes and security Wise It's probably both of you but U we talk can I anybody have a question on the kitchen I do um yeah

Mr Riley I had a chance to uh I I visited your school just a couple of months ago and I was very thrilled to see the work on the kitchen I know that there has been some delays in getting it up and running but that's according to the instructor that we hired and her expertise so I'll be patient but I'm I'm C curious to know uh the kids are going

to be in there doing the Hands-On work at cooking the food right under her instruction yeah they already are in a sense but not in there um they're working on things that they can do in a small setting outside the kitchen now like make jellies that kind of thing did some pancak Stu do they seem excited that kind of work and we hired the right person let me tell you um she's very

thorough I spoke to her she seems very passionate about her Endeavors it's been her life work so she's really good at what she does um you know I I couldn't help with that just watching the Food Network on television there's an alternative schooling in uh outside of Los Angeles um and one of the programs that they're running is they have a bull cart and they any any kind of Civic events in

within the city or the community they get the kids from that Alternative Program cooking on the Bullards and they're making money now and and the food that they're turning out is like really good stuff and so I just I I can't help but my mind just races in that direction moving forward for our alternative program to maybe I I think you know the options are endless and I just hope that we keep

driving that whole thing forward because a kid in that Dem demographic I really think that a Hands-On piece of curriculum such as uh culinary is very important for their growth and development and sense of their own responsibilities sure we know our kidss going to get their first job is going to be in retail it's going to be in Food Services right and so we're meeting their needs right

away besides meeting some other needs at the house if their home alone and need to cook uh need to support one of their siblings that they have that ability as well absolutely um can I ask questions along other lines to Mr just going to go to Kitchen first and then the next okay go ahead my only concern on the kitchen is the time you know we took a tour um I

still think it should have been done earlier and I know's reasons it's frustrating and all that recently was uh I I realized that they don't have chairs in the kitchen where the kids are with the yeah this that's not culinary kitchens two things you shouldn't have anything that you can trip over and a chair where someone can sit down or a chair that they can trip over so we don't use cords can't have cords

running in kitchens I worked at Diamond vot for 16 years there wasn't a chair except for in the office of The Culinary instructor there's not another chair to be found anywhere and chairs stools um at the high school at BMC dery high school there are no chairs in the kitchen none whatsoever anywhere to be found the only chair you shairs you will find is in the lab which I'm sure that

we're going to have a a related room that the name that's usually used in in vocational settings um and that lab would be the classroom so that's where you want students sitting down um in in dery's lab there is a a kitchen area where an instructor could show students and this one is perfectly set up that we can do the same thing in this lab so stools I I don't believe that it would

pass muster I don't think the desie would would if they walked in there would tell you to remove them um that they don't belong in to trip where are they going to do the lessons I guess is that so they can do lessons in a classroom that's where they should be doing the lesson um where they're sitting down but they shouldn't be the kitchen shouldn't be a place to do both

like if they want to do a if if the instructor and I'm sure that that she's done it forever would do that on on whether it be the board or whether it be the white board um she would show what they're particularly doing it could be a video and then the students are working on those stainless steel IOP counters where they would be doing exactly what's going on in front of them to be sitting

down is encouraging something that shouldn't happen in kitchens and that is that it's not a place to so you're saying the staff doesn't want to I'm saying that that that it shouldn't be there I I we if we need to buy 10 stools I'm going to say that if desie walked in there to do a safety inspection which they will eventually because they do it all CTE programs they're going to say that they got to go

that you don't have schools inside a classroom and that time it's instructor I haven't talked to glor I I just learned that we needed uh stools that were never asked for in that classroom now um to be totally honest there's going to be a dining room next door that it's going to be a while before the dining room would be active there's no reason why that isn't the place where

you could do that work you could move a board in there a portable board yeah that board in there it it in a classroom it doesn't belong my only feeling is just make sure the instructor is the one that's running it you know she should have a say in everything including what was purchased what wasn't purchased you know whatever they would never purchase because it was never in the design I'm

saying think she wants it having them have that conversation with the principal what do you need I think early on some of these delays made of you know whatever we had the dishwasher we talked about that and I just think the earlier the better but um kitchen yeah I mean I think with that being said we started doing this I think before we hired anybody right hence why we bought the wrong

stove we bought the right stove to the to the designer of the kitchen it's the wrong stove for the instructor it's not it's not I don't want to say that the stove was too versatile for the instructor the instructor said that she didn't need certain things so we're getting a different stove that will do exactly what she wants it to do and nothing more that stove that were moving downstairs has stove that did too much

yes absolutely so it steams it does it does um works like an air fryer yeah that stove we going to move downstairs to The Culinary Kitchen to the nutrition and it's not waste what do you mean nutrition the kitchen the nutrition kitchen the person who serves the food for the students so it's not it's not Wast not going to be a waste it would have been put into that new kitchen

anyway we would have bought a second one put in there remodel that kitchen right so that's fine I mean there's only so much you can do we had to get started before you could hire somebody that went in I agree instructor should have a say to a certain degree I mean we can't every time we hire a new instructor change out a stove or anything like that we're in agreement

there so now we're done I would say and with that being said I would also say that goes with with OSHA certifications I agree with you I've also worked um in schools in inoke schools and you don't have stools in a kitchen that's a complete 100% no now um I've worked in healthcare too there's certain things same things you just do not have because of of of you know safety issues um but I

think as long as there's a spot because obviously people need to sit if they're going to take notes we can't expect students to stand whole time or you know an instructor for that matter um although I think most teachers probably stand most of the whole day anyway but um right I don't remember sitting when I was teaching but um certainly the students need it so then that would principal Riley is that resolved I mean

would do we have did she ask for stools because she wants this is what I'm gathering instructor asks with stools cuz she wants stools in the kitchen we shouldn't have stools in the kitchen cuz it's unsafe is this the conversation you've had with her or can yeah I think I can talk about and make sure she has a spot obviously if the dining room right across the way can be used for now great

but if that's eventually getting used by other things then she's going to need a space or he she whoever the instructor is going to need a space in order to be able to give like the lesson plans out do we have that space there um we'll find it cuz we we did look at a space right next door it be moving a couple of different people out of that area um so what I'm hearing isn't so

much that she's asking for stools what I'm hearing is that she was trying to solve a situation because she doesn't have space I can answer I so that right when we started she um wanted to condense she thought she had two spaces to work with she wanted to do with all those two spaces um she did talk about stools early on um if you look at those tables they're wider than this so like

hide him underneath there take him back out was her thought process I think in a good thought process to save money save space all that kind of stuff uh and a sto to what Ken says yes and I think one of the big things for her was uh it had three slots in it that were about this wide so if she wanted to do something like Thanksgiving dinner or whatever she

could never put something like that in there so it would have to be something that was a normal like stove yeah I mean I could care less it's a stove we have bigger we have bigger problems we're using the stove somewhere else my point was to say hey we didn't know we hired her after so we have to do a little bit of fixing to make sure it's it's what um you know it's what the

instructor makes sense to what she's teaching right to give her the tools yeah she's done 20 years in BCC too so she has a good background what she needs but BCC is different than RPA right just saying right in terms of where we are with students where we are with behavior where we are with certain things that maybe we have to be real cognizant of maybe even more so of

keeping a and are is safe also for the instructor's safety right for everybody everybody's benefit absolutely um but yeah I think if if what I'm hearing is she needs space so that she can also children can sit down and be able to write so you're going to work on that and it'll be done work on that and hopefully on the same floor yeah I hope it's the same floor that makes most

sense right it just happens to be on the second floor that we don't use for anything else got so we're securing some space for that yeah yeah I just the classroom next the I just that's next door would be ideal that's because then why what's next door right now um it's an administrative office not not I'm not trying to move administrators around anything but here's my thought process I

don't know whose office it is I'm not trying to move anybody it's interpreters but my my thought process is when you're transitioning students this it's a time where things can happen so if we're now we're in a class where we're in a kitchen and we get to do a little free stuff and now we're transitioning to sit down to learn something and we're going to transition back to a kitchen I mean it would it would make

sense to me that the safest best way to do that would be across the way as opposed to like hey let's everybody go upstairs and let's everybody come back down so I don't know I'm not the principal there or the teacher there that's a decision for for you the more qualified of us um but that would be my thought process thank you just an effort of time I know it's been a long night uh

the windows project Mr P give us detailed explanation of when and how and why you know all that so I think that's this week right it's all self-explain that in that particular piece it's it's ready to go that contract will be signed hopefully within the next 60 days um if if everything checks out and um and then the bidding the window procurement will go out uh when that company is selected

then we move forward yeah if you could just get a one page to the whole Committee just explaining that not necessarily that just so we know it's happening when in time the timelines the best you can absolutely and then the last one is the security room I put this on there because when I visited there was it's in progress and I just wanted to get a quick update on how that is

when you know all the buzz is making sure everything's working so Mr the KY and I just spoke um he wants to add a second monitor for the front door in the main office so we'll do that as well um Mr minson is one of our low voltage guys had to order a resistor he was on vacation today wouldn't have been able to do it with the weather the phone is

being moved into that room tomorrow um and then I'm actually uh we ordered a secondary monitor because um RPA is one of the schools that has 130 cameras um so they'll need two monitors so the placement of the first monitor was off uh so we'll add a secondary monitor that'll be done on the 23rd um because the the screen is actually coming in um and then uh the last piece was just a

workstation which we already have in house um and then you sit down and turn it over to just right ready to go and the uh security buzzers and the like that's all falls under you at all the schools um so that one is uh can and I both take it whoever gets the phone call first because it it falls under the door hardware that one is not part of card access um so that's why

Travis is helping out Travis is on Mr Pico's side um but we have that relationship so he's taking care of that piece like I said he needed the resistor tomorrow he'll take care of that the will get moved and then we just have to figure out what to do with some of that old wiring we can't cut any of it out that's in the old spot but we can either

box it in um uh Ken had talked about possibly boxing it and on the floor so we get a carpenter involved to box it in and then there'll be nobody sitting there and so it'll be done soon it'll be done during the break of vacation I can't I have to take the network down to do the final pce and I won't do that with um central office staff and students in the building so we' done

vacation weeks do make sense any other questions on this Mr card no almost okay thank you all very much um any new business I got just a question does you don't need to give me an answer now but going back just talk about the RPA that man mural remember we were having somebody come in can you maybe let me know it's just a what we were doing was digitizing yeah so it has

not been done yet okay no we will I promised her before I was under the ground that I would so she reminds me every time I see her I'm glad she does good for her no new business can I get motion motion toour oh sorry oh motion to adjourn second by Mr Cory all favor I Ved thank you all very much