Somerset Berkley Regional School Committee - August 18, 2026

All right. Item number one, discuss and act approval of a memorandum of agreement for the custodian's contract July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. At this time, I will entertain a motion to approve the memorandum of agreement for the custodian's contract July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. Moved. Second.

Moved by Mr. Ventura, seconded by Mr. Gloss. All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Next item is Discuss and Act on the Approval of the Side Letter of Agreement with Paraprofessionals regarding Long-Term Substitute Teacher Assignments. This time I entertain a motion to approve the Side Letter of Agreement with Paraprofessionals regarding Long-Term Substitute Teacher Assignments. So moved. Seconded by Ms. Aventura. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? At this time, our next

item is Sunset Friends of Music Membership 50.

They're leaving you all by yourself. Okay. That's fine. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good evening everyone. My name is Colleen Hart and first I'd like to thank you all for allowing us a few minutes to speak to you today. I am the new president of Somerset Friends of Music and I'm joined here today with Jennifer Theriault who is our new vice president and Donna Murphy. We're here today to discuss Friends of Music. We're here today to talk to you about the Music Town Festival and

what's going to be happening. I'll let you take it off. Okay. In June, Somerset Friends of Music elected seven new board members. We were excited to welcome so many new members who are committed to preserving the strengthening of this long-standing Somerset tradition. As with many lead as with any leadership tradition, there has been a great deal of work involved in evaluating our organization, our

events and our plan for moving forward after careful reviewing the planning timeline for this year's festival. The board made the decision to pause the parade for 2026, organizing a safe, successful and highly qualified parade requires months of preparation. coordination, volunteers, sponsors, and community partnerships. Given the timing of the board's transition, we did not

feel we could deliver the type of parade that meets the standards that serves our community well. This decision was not made slightly. Our intention is not to eliminate the parade, but rather to take the necessary time to strengthen its foundation so that it can return in the future bigger, better, and more sustainable. While the parade will not be held this year, the Music Town Festival is very much alive. We are

excited to continue cherished traditions, including the Festival Ball, Concert Night, as well as Music Family Day, which was known as Kitty's Day in the past. We hope these events will continue to bring the community together to celebrate Somerset's rich musical heritage. I would like to briefly... That's okay, you don't need to talk about that. No, that's not

right. I have to take that out. Don't leave that. No. Okay. We felt it was important to come before you to explain our decision directly, answer any questions you may have, and reaffirm our commitment to the town of Somerset. Thank you for your time this evening and for your continued support of the many volunteers who dedicate themselves

to preserving Somerset's traditions. We appreciate the opportunity to share this update and look forward to continuing to serve our community in the years to come.

Do we have any questions or comments? I'd just like to thank them for their time and effort. I mean, all volunteer work is certainly a special thing to do and quite an undertaking. The parade's been a longstanding tradition and hopefully it'll return next year. I guess my one question though would be, it always seems to be within the same timeframe in the fall.

Is that just because it coincides with events like homecoming or is there other times of the year that you might find the prairie to be more beneficial potentially as you're looking at things? Laura, have you not even thought of that? That's just something I was thinking because... So traditionally it has been... Bring the prairie back to the status quo. Yeah, I agree. Traditionally, it has been held the same

weekends in October. I think we're a little bit more opening, open to change things if it makes things better, but preserving still the traditions. You know, we're looking at new things. We're working with Miss Young, potentially adding, you know, our goal is to bring in new members, but to also start including new Middle school more and stuff like that. You know people right, you

know when you talk about friends and music They're like, oh, you're that high school booster and that's not what we are So I think that we're gonna try to add maybe a middle school court to the ball get them involved a little bit more things like that, so I'm We're open for changes with while preserving the traditions that we've normally had I don't want to Change that and our other problem is

that because we were elected so late this year and the fundraising Aspect to bring the high school bands in a lot of those bands right now. They've already committed to other parades because they're competition competitions and parades because I mean like our band director already has our scheduled books from now until the end of November and So

it's just trying because we were new we just we were behind the eight ball from the beginning so yeah take this year to just reorganize get our ducks in line and like we said bring everything back that's why we're bringing back the kitty day at least so that we're not just stopping we want to keep the town involved get the community involved all the kids involved as much as possible. Yeah. Because

it takes years. You know, we lost our football game three years ago, but now that's coming back hopefully this year, and you know, this will be going this year, but hopefully next year this will be back, and we'll have restored all our great traditions here. Anybody else? Thank you. So, I just wanted to say thank you very much. I know it's a lot of work. I've been there for quite a few

years, so I know it is a lot of work, and I I'm happy to hear that you're thinking about changes. That was one of my thoughts, getting the middle school involved. So I'm very happy to hear that you're thinking about doing that to get them involved with the court. So we're looking forward to next year. One thing I did want to suggest to you is Somerset Cultural Council, their grant positions are

opening on september 1st and they close on october 15th so i would suggest that you guys take a look at that fill out the application there's the state gives the town money to to give to a different events cultural events so so when we get that application at the time If you know it's actually right online so if you uh it's on Facebook if you do cultural summits at cultural console there's

a link there that will show you where to go to fill up. Kim if I could just start. Yeah absolutely. Scott Harnett was the chair of that. He's not on anymore. Heather is now. Sorry I was gonna get to that. See Scott just he's done I think he had to use two terms because they can only do two consecutive terms so now Heather Brown is the president so if you reach out

to her not president I'm sorry chair she'll um she'll get you on but yeah there should be some stuff to qualify for okay great thank you thank you i didn't even think about it yeah i'm also on the council Absolutely. One question. You mentioned the kiddies day, the concert, and the ball. Do you know the dates of those off the top of your head? Yes. Potential kiddies day is going to be

October 17th. We're just waiting for confirmation as to the availability of the fields and stuff at the high school. The ball is... October 15th, Thursday, October 15th. And then the concert is... Thursday, October 29th. I just knew kiddies day. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is to consider an act on the approval of the 2026-2027 student handbook. And handbook, I'm sorry. Dr. Broussard, do you have anything else you want to add? So I believe everybody has copies of our draft handbook. The only things that are not complete in in our opinion anyway is the table of contents because we're obviously waiting for tonight to happen and i'm sure

if you scroll down this if you're anything like me it bothers you that things aren't formatted correctly but again we're trying to wait until um everything is done how would you like do you want me to just go through the major changes and then you can ask questions so feel free to interrupt me um at any point um the first Changes that we just added language on what's currently page eight that

While June 18th is the last day of school. There is a possibility that there could be snow as there was this year this year we kind of pivoted and made a We kind of went above and beyond, in my opinion, the call of duty in terms of people that had booked various activities for when our final exams were going on. So I think we were very lenient in what was happening at

the end of the year, but we just want people to be mindful of the fact that if snow days happen between June 18th and June 25th, school could still be going on. you know, we're not going to kind of do early finals and things like that. Finals are going to be finals moving forward. And we just kind of wanted to articulate that. Pages eight and nine, you'll see things struck through that

just to be perfectly honest, we just don't do. So we had a conversation last year about if we don't do it, why is it in the handbook? So we were just trying to clean some things up.

Under on page 17 under accidents again we struck through all of that because we don't we no longer have the insurance policies that we did the prior so we took that out search and seizure policies we just wanted to make clear we have had. issues where students have refused searches of their person and when I say searches of their person we're asking them to empty

their pockets we do have a metal detector that doesn't touch the student but we do kind of warn them to make sure that the vapes aren't hidden in various places but you know there are times when we've had students say you know I'm not I don't want this to happen or we want to wait for the parents, whatever the case may be. And we abide by that and there's language in here

on what happens if you refuse the search. You're basically admitting to some type of guilt. But the belongings can still be searched at that point regardless. So we're just putting language in here that, you know, while you may not consent to the search, your backpack, your locker is still considered school property as soon as it comes on.

We have to make sure everything's safe. That's really the whole gist of why we do these in the first place. So we're just putting the language in on that.

Can I just ask on the search, is that done by an administrator or is it specifically the metal detector or is the SRO involved in it? The SRO cannot be involved in that. That's by just administration. There have been times when two of us are out of the building at that point. We always do them in tandem, so no one ever does any of this by themselves. There's always two administrators

present. If for some reason two of the three of us are out of the building, we then call a contact coordinator because all of our contact coordinators are trained administrators, but the SRO is never involved in that. The only time an SRO would get involved in that is if we thought that there was a weapon involved, then they would be present for that. Loss of credit. We just

wanted to be clear on what happens with underclassmen. What would basically do is if an underclassman loses credit due to the attendance policy, they have the opportunity to recover that credit in the following school year as long as they follow the attendance policy that year. So they recover the credit, let's say freshman year, they go over

the absences, they lose the credit. If sophomore year they stay under the 18 absences, we reinstate the credit at that point. So we just wanted to be clear on what we're doing with that. School tardiness, I don't know a school that doesn't have issues with tardiness. I feel like every year, I revamped this a little bit to all of you, What we are going to try this year is kind of do

a tiered system. So the first eight tardies of the year, there's no penalty. You can be tardy eight times. We feel that, you know, everybody has their moment, right?

Where the tire goes flat or you just, you get into school late. So the first eight times there's absolutely no penalty. At that point after the eighth tardy, if you come to school between 7:25 and 7:45, we have the opportunity now because we have an extra area in the main office which we refer to as the calming room, we've started to try to do lunch retentions

for that. So we feel like even if you're in that first 15 minute kind of time slot, rather than doing an after school or Saturday school, we will keep them for lunch detentions. That seems to be working relatively well. Students arriving after 7:45 will be issued a detention. So we just added that.

we in the past if we go down to page 25 we have had some significant issues and we've had some personnel issues with sending students to their cars for everything under the sun and what we have to do is we have to we walk the student out to the car or to make sure they're safe and you know and that's anywhere from walking them out to the student parking lot all

the way to out behind the football field and getting somebody to do that and make it it's just cumbersome because they forgot you know their t-shirt or you know a notebook or whatever we want to instill you know responsibility in students so we are not going to do that moving forward We also have created, and there's a link to this, a parent permission form for student self-dismissals. So we

are going to have a student and the parent sign about if the student is 18 and can self-dismiss themselves. Yes, it is legally. We... have to dismiss them if they say they want to go. But we the first time they do this, we're going to send a form home. And we have by principle the first time it happens, we make the phone call home anyways, the courtesy. But we're going to

get like kind of a permission slip signed by the family and the students saying I'm mom, I'm dad. I say they can go, they can self dismiss themselves. But I understand that there could be academic consequences to leaving school and missing class. So we're just kind of creating a little bit of a contract to say like everybody's in the know that this could have academic consequences to it and the permission slip

form is there. Yes. I just asked you to back up for a second. Sure.

Getting back to tardiness. Yes. You know there's a bullet in there which I'm aware of like excessive tiredness may result and the student not being able to attend school related function or social activities so like after school sports and stuff like that One more thing, so the after school sports is covered by the fact that there's an

attendance policy so it's expected that you're in school if you're not in school if you go down to the athletic expectations they have to be in school in order to do that. We're talking more about like if we get to a point where students are chronically doing this and we're chronically getting detentions and not serving detentions and

this and that, we we can call administrative hearings with families and at that point it's like, listen, if you can't come to school, you can't go to the homecoming dance. You can't go to the freshman, sophomore, semi. So we try to hold some of the fun things as an expectation of, you know, you have to do what you need to do with school in order to do that. Those are excessive situations

that I'm not going to tell you that we do that on a routine basis, but we've had issues in the past where, you know, We've had kids, if we're hitting day 100 and they've been tardy to school 60 of the 100 days. So we're just trying to, you know, and there's a huge push, as you all know, from Department of Education, you know, to get students in school. So that is, you

know, why we're trying very hard to hold to this. And, you know, I mean, when you write a handbook, you're not... you're writing the handbook and trying to take the people out of it i i really don't think that there's anybody in the main office that's unreasonable um and by unreasonable like i've had students athletes come in and like they legit had the flat tire and they're bringing me the picture of

the flat tire or the ring camera of look i really had to jump start my car like my dad had to um And we, I mean, if they have a legit reason, they have a legit reason. It's just, you've seen the data. We do have some chronically absent, chronically tardy students. So we're just trying to get them.

My concern was just like sometimes, certainly not with all children instances, sometimes I feel like tardiness may not necessarily be the fault of the 15-year-old kid. It could be certain home situations they have. for the parents on getting them to school on time and we've had conversations about that you know when you're when you're getting a 15

16 year old i mean i do think that there is some responsibility you can start to put on the student and we do talk about you know life skills like setting the alarm and yeah mom has to get up and go to work but you you have to get yourself on the bus i mean we do have buses that travel all over Somerset and Berkeley. So again, we know those situations and

we definitely, you know, we have contracts with students and we make a lot. Sometimes we feel like Monty Hall, like we're making a lot of deals, but we try to work with students and families. That's an old reference. There's probably a lot of people that have no idea what I was talking about.

But that's just something that we're trying to, we need kids here in order to learn, you need to be in school. The late bus, we started this last year because we were having some issues with students that were leaving campus and hanging out on County Street after school from 2:15 to 3:30 and then coming back and using our late bus as an Uber home. My concern with that is that we don't know where they are and

what they're doing between 215 and 330 and that's not the purpose of the late bus. The purpose of the late bus is for students who are participating in activities after school, they can get a ride home. So what we started last year. and again we're just formalizing it in the handbook, is we told our coaches, we told our advisors, and specifically our library monitors and academic support and

flex teachers that the student was to get a pass from them at the end of the activity to get on the late bus. So basically like the old school late bus pass to get on the late bus, which tells the driver, tells everybody like this person was legitimately after school. We then could collect data too on who was using the late bus, what they were after school for. But we can't have

students, you know, it's a safety issue to have people unattended just not being where they're supposed to be. So we just instituted that last year and it worked really, really well. What I'm really, really proud of and I give uh mrs andreessen and miss barboza all the credit in the world for this is our library is now what it's supposed to be which is like a hub of of activity

in the school we have kids that come here from 7 to 7 25 and and use the library for what the purpose of it is when you come in to school if you ever come between 2 15 and 3 30 this place is hopping there are kids here for academic support there are kids here for flex but there are a whole bunch of kids here that are here to take advantage of

just a place either that they can get their homework done before practice starts at 3 15 or whatever the case may be or we really encourage them to kind of use this as like the work mentality get your work done before you go home and then when you go home you know you can have your your down time so we have students taking advantage of that now and it's really nice to

see because i would say you know five six seven years ago it was it was not a place where kids necessarily i hate to say wanted to be but we're congregating after school now there's a safe place to do that and they're getting their work done so that's a good thing Page 28, you have already accepted the artificial intelligence guidelines. We just added them. I'm thinking the

handbook is four pages longer. It's a long handbook. Competency determination, when I shared this all, well, Ms. Vaccaro shared this all with you whenever she shared it with you, we made an attempt at trying to condense all of the information in the school committee policy or the Somerset Berkeley district policy. It really doesn't come out well. You

just need to see the whole thing. So it's different than when I shared it with you. We redacted all of that red language and I just attached the school committee policy. So there's no question. This is what it is and there's an attachment there. On pages 42 and 43, we just changed the graduation requirements to reflect the four years of mathematics. We also

want to reiterate the fact and we are going above the Department of Education requirements for this but we do require and I just want to be clear on that we're requiring students to pass civics and pass health the Department of Education says you have to take it we are saying that you have to pass the course not just take it because I think I think it's important to take it seriously

and hold to that expectation. Now, that does create some issues Because we don't have the sections of civics to put students back into we don't have the sections of health to repeat Students so what we've created are edge annuity courses and we've been doing that in health for a few years now But we've now added civics to that where if this student fails the course the next year

they're expected to take an edge annuity class on their own And if they struggle, bless you, with the on their own part of that, then what we do is put them in flex and we force them to come once a week to work on the ingenuity modules. But we do expect them to pass that coursework. And then the graduation requirements now reflect 117 and a half credits for everybody but the class

of 2027, 'cause they're the only class left with the three-year math requirement. Any questions on that?

then there's a lot of pages we didn't change uh on page 60 my reading glasses 69 uh we just added the lunch retention which i already talked about to the detentions we do expect that the we've been doing this again we're just putting it in writing that if a student's in detention they have to put their cell phone in the cell phone tree it's really nothing um On page 70, we are just again things that we've

done we just put them in writing students serving iss report to the main office when they arrive students are required to put their phones in the phone tree this is a kind of a significant change students will remain in in-school suspension until 3 30 and will need to provide their own transportation home or take the late bus so what we have been finding is students are purposefully not attending their

detentions not attending their saturday schools and saying i'll just take the in-school suspension it's easy and it's it's no it's no big deal so we're trying to make it not the option of choice um making it a little more of a significant consequence for them by extending the time if you're choosing or you get put in iss You have to stay until 3:30 instead of the regular 2:05

time. We're going to pilot that this year. I'll let you know how it works. We'll see. Page 75 is the manifestation determination language that the Department of Education said that our handbook was missing when we had our special education review. So that was mandated that we put that in.

Page 85 is just really simplistic. Texting, calling, or communicating with anyone via electronic devices other than school-issued Chromebooks. We had some issues with students who felt that they could bring their own devices instead of the school-issued Chromebooks, so we're just being clear that they can only use their Chromebooks. And then page 88, we

are changing the way that we deal with student parking. And what we are going to stop doing this year and see how it works is we're not going to give out the parking passes anymore. We are going to let it be a first come first serve. There's many reasons for this, but the main ones are coming from both parent and student feedback on this because the way that we were doing

this up until this point is seniors went first seniors got first priority but it was based on your birthday and if you had your license so you couldn't get one if your birthday was later or you got your license later than somebody else and we were running out of things and we were getting a lot of feedback from students from families saying well they got the better parking space because of the

birthday or when you guys were doing this my student can't do this my student needs so we were getting a whole bunch of that Coupled with what I was talking about before which is about attendance. So why not give preference to the student that gets here early and gets to the best parking space? And you know then if you get your license in January you have the same shot as everybody else.

I want to be clear we do not, we never did since the day we built this building, have enough spots out in that parking lot for every student to have a spot. We do though have enough parking between Luther Avenue, the spots behind the football field now. There are places to park, it's just not necessarily the perfect optimum spot. So we're gonna try this out. And again,

I really think my thing is if you come early, you get the best spot. And if we're here early, then we're here on time, we don't have issues with tardy and life is good. So that's where we're going with that. And then we just, per the advice of Officer Roberts, we added language on what we can and can't do with e-bikes. Because not that we

have a huge issue with this or a huge number of e-bikes, but there are some students that take them to school and we just want to be clear on what they can and can't do. And that is it.

I will entertain a motion to approve the 2026-2027 student and family handbook as presented. So moved. Second. Moved by Mr.

Ventura, seconded by Mr. Medeiros. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you.

next item on the agenda is to discuss an act on reappointment of Dr. Cece Resnick as school physician for the 2026-2027 school year Dr. Schmumer do you have anything that you need to no it's just a motion here Dr. Resnick has been our school physician now for the past several years doing a wonderful job I recommend her keep that position going. At this

time I entertain a motion to reappoint Dr. Steezy Resnick as school physician for the 2026-2027 school year. So moved. Second. Moved by Ms.

Andrews, seconded by Ms. Devin Turn. Do we have any in this session? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Up next, we have the July 20, 2026 Joint Retreat Follow-Up.

Also wanted to, we have an open meeting law violation self-disclosure. The artificial intelligence and school safety that was discussed. My fault, sorry. That was not on the agenda, so we just wanted to bring that here so we could put it out there. Mr.

Ventura, do you just want to share what you shared with the- Yeah, so I've been to a safety and security conference and I just learned some disturbing things about AI and cell phones and the online communities that our kids are using. So I just, I brought it up at the meeting, not thinking that it wasn't on the agenda, but just a few of the things. 72% of high school

students have used AI as a companion. 52% have done it regularly. And 44% of high school seniors say they're lonely on a daily or weekly basis.

And there's a lot more than that, but those were just the things that I wanted to point out that came up. I don't know if anybody has any comments, anything about the retreat that we wanted to discuss or not. We just move on to the next.

I just like to thank you and Miss Ashley in particular for.

um putting their retreat together i think it's um a useful time we really have the opportunity to sort of reaffirm our course direction and our mission and best practices for how we sort of carry out um business of the district of the committee and how we work with one another so i thought it was time well spent and i appreciate the effort that went into organizing it

and i think that some of the the draft norms that emerged from that conversation are not unlike the ones that the committee a few iterations ago had created. I think it's always good to revisit those and read from how we operate so, and our relationship and how we work with the superintendent and his leadership team. So thank you, I think it is time well spent. - I thought there

was some value to it, but I was a little concerned about The gentleman giving the presentation that he was bringing up some other districts and maybe some things going on over there. I didn't really think that was appropriate to be giving us just about insight and what was bordering on inside information. Um, and I just concerned me how he might talk about other. So, I wouldn't have done it if I

was an issues. Um, I would try to be a little bit more neutral, but that's, um, he's up to his. He can do what he wants to do. He was given the class. Well, we conducted ourselves so wonderfully, Mr. Gauda. What could he possibly say? But you never know what somebody says about you later. I hear you.

Okay. Anything else? The next item is the draft operating protocol. So during our time for the retreat, we all answered some questions with how we felt we should proceed.

Do business and operating protocols and we gave those to Dr. Swingover. He came up with a draft we had discussed at the retreat that we would put that over to the policy subcommittee to take a look at and then bring it to the full committee afterwards. We are in the process of scheduling a policy, a joint policy subcommittee. So we'll be looking at those. So those will be coming forward to the

full committee at a later point. Next on the agenda is our June visionaries of the month. Congratulations to all the students. And then next we have the superintendent's update. So Dr. Spoonenbaum. Okay, thank you.

First item is the evening school graduation. We had another wonderful ceremony taking place a week and a half ago on Friday the 7th.

We had eight students graduate that evening. All were Somerset Berkeley students at one point. Four of the eight students were students who would have graduated this past June, needed just a little bit more time to fulfill those graduation requirements, which then moves our 2026 class up to one student who has not been able to earn his or her diploma

at this point. So that even school, the community school program provides such a wonderful resource for our students who just who need that extra time in addition to those four students there were four others who withdrew from the day school over the past year to three years and have been taking their classes there we have three members who would have been members of the class of 2025 and one member

who was actually a member of the class of 2026. So congratulations to those eight students. I extend my sincere appreciation to Mr.

Judge and Mr. Aguiar, Chris Aguiar, who ran, who run the community school program now, giving kids an opportunity to earn their diplomas. We had, let's see, next, and if it's okay, I just wanted to walk through the strategic plan with you. and i apologize to our somerset members who went through this last week with me it's a long one all right so you have uh the draft plan as it

currently stands uh the working copy is in your folder so you can see uh where we are uh that this work as you know began last late fall early winter with surveys that went out to students staff member students in grades 6 through 12 family members and staff members.

We had several thousand surveys completed that was the first piece of information that went into this work. Then we had our community event in January where we gathered a lot more information from a variety of stakeholders. That was followed up by each principal led to work in their schools with their faculties. just gathering a little bit more information, taking some of the information that

we gathered through those first few rounds and trying to expand on that a little bit more. And our middle school and high school principals, well in this case Dr.

Brousford, did a lot of work with students every Wednesday. During the Blue Raider block she had another group of 20 some odd students uh who she gathered went through some of the activities that we did in january together uh and just getting more and more student information so all of that as uh you know kind of came together i did some work with the leadership team from both Somerset and Somerset Berkeley,

where we were looking at that information and just diving a little bit deeper into all of that work. So what you see here is really the culmination of all of that work to this point, and there's still some details that need to be put in, like responsibilities of which people are gonna be responsible for different actions, some of the timelines, and some of the other things. But it's getting to be, very

much toward the end of that process and I expect to formally present it to you at either hopefully at the September meeting but I want to kind of walk you through where it is right now so that you're not seeing it for the first time next month. Through those first through all of those rounds particularly the surveys and the January event these three ideas came out pretty

strong that Relational trust is a key element. So something that a lot of people think we are already very strong in and we need to maintain that, if not build upon that even more. The systemic coherence, so there's an area that we can certainly improve upon is the vertical and the horizontal alignments that we have, the Somerset district and the

Somerset Berkeley district, but elementary to middle, middle to high, and including horizontally across the elementary schools, but also trying to invite Berkeley community schools, Berkeley middle school with us whenever an opportunity presents itself. So we're trying to be stronger partners with Berkeley as well. and then future ready learning. So much of everything that came out of this is how we better

preparing students or how can we best prepare students for the life after Somerset Berkeley Regional High School. Whether it's a college career or just life in general, all about financial literacy, AI readiness, providing early college and early career pathways. So just how can we better equip students for life after they receive their diploma. As a reminder, I won't go through all of these,

but certainly the vision of our graduate rater is something that was guiding us through all of this work. Through the event that we had in January, for those of you who participated, one of the last activities was creating a headline. In 2031, how are we going to be celebrating the work that we did, that we've done in the past five years? What are we

going to be celebrating? So some of the things that came out of that is 100% graduation rate. We want more students to be earning college credits. if not earning an associate's degree when they receive their high school diploma. More students taking an advanced coursework, internships, capstones, the work-based learning, every student having a trusted adult, and at the elementary level making sure that

we have more students who are reading at or above grade level proficiency. So those are sort of the aspirational targets that we're looking at. So some of the things, you know, 75% of all students will complete an AP class, Project Lead the Way class, an early college class. 100% of all students will have that work real world experience through internships, capstones, and work-based learning, which is

a 2032 graduation requirement. We want to make sure that we're doing that at least one year in advance. We don't want our first year where we're doing that to be in 2032 and it counts for our students. We'd love to see half of all of our students earn at least 15 credits before they receive their high school diploma, whether that's through advanced placement courses, Project Lead the Way courses, or courses at

Bridgewater State, Crystal Community College, you can match that with.

all right so i'm sorry mr vinter yeah i'm just curious where are we on that now like like last year i'm just curious um the specific target uh i'd have to i'd have to get back to you um it's okay it earning we have 47 of our seniors earned some credit so there are So nearly half of all students are earning some credit,

but this is earning the equivalent of a semester. So that percentage, I don't know.

It's less than the 47%. My guess, I would just guess somewhere between 10% and 20% probably, maybe a little bit higher than that.

When you look at a strategic plan, it's a fairly standard template in terms of what the four or so main categories are. It's always about improving teaching, improving student learning, facilities improvements because we know that teachers and students will perform best if we provide them with the best resources including the facilities that they work in. And then increasing family and community engagement

because that is also a research-based factor that improves student learning. So everything really is about student learning, but those are typically the four main pillars. So pillar one here is about teaching excellence and some of the things, some, not all of the items in there. As I mentioned, it's the vertical alignment, pre-K to

12 alignment committees, identifying what are those instructional non-negotiables, a lot came out of this about not about more feedback and coaching but not just from the building administrators or content coordinators so there is a component of that which is not evaluative feedback but the bottom bullet here is also about teachers doing this work with each other

so more of the peer observations and then how can we provide teachers with meaningful professional learning experience consistently that tries to address both their individual needs but also balancing the district's needs. So looking at that really well to make sure that our teachers feel like they are receiving not just sufficient but meaningful professional development. The

second pillar is student learning and growth, looking at our multi-tier system of support.

So just how can we strengthen that system to identify the students who need the academic support and then how are we going to provide those interventions. The high school for a very long time has had a very successful SST model, student success team model. But the focus typically has been, and our middle school too, on more of the behavioral, social behavioral students or needs. The focus the last few years, we need

to do some more work, is how can we strengthen the academic interventions there as well. As Dr. Brailsford alluded to earlier, just the emphasis on reducing chronic absenteeism is our continued goal.

As you know, with the high school graduation requirements, there's a lot of work that's going to be taking place over the next several years in terms of MICAP, which is the My Career and Academic Plan, which is going to include work with financial literacy, AI, digital readiness, work-based learning experiences. In addition to the

changing graduation requirements with MassCore, There's just so much work that's going on, capstone projects and/or portfolios as a culminating assessment. So there's going to be a lot of work that's taking place there as graduation requirements. We've already started a lot of that work before these proposals were introduced, but certainly that's also going to be a huge

component of what's happening here at the high school. As you know, there's Also with that, I mentioned a few times now, the early college access is built into all of this. Dr. Crossman and I were on a meeting today with the state. We are, as you know, we were invited into the early college program. We actually also just received word of grant opportunities through that, which we've submitted that application.

So hopefully we will hear from DESE soon whether or not we receive that.

But the other thing that Dr. Brelsford wanted to introduce, she and I have worked with higher ed now for several years trying to get more opportunities for our students to have these higher ed experiences and how can it happen? Can students take classes here and they can earn college credit at Bristol Community College and Best Honor? But one of the things that

Dr. Brelsford would like to try is how can we create that same model for our eighth graders? Can eighth graders somehow earn high school credit when they're still in eighth grade? Just take that early college model and make it an early high school model for our middle school students. So that's something that we're going to work on and hopefully that is something that would be introduced in probably the

second half of this five-year plan, but I'm really excited about what that could look like and the opportunities that we could present to students in both Berkeley and Somerset for eighth grade. And with special ed, that continues to be something where we're focusing our attention to make sure that we can improve outcomes for our students with disabilities. We know we have some work to do there. We are

already starting with the district brings an outside independent party in to look at our service delivery model to provide us with some recommendations on how we can improve that.

The third pillar, facilities and operations, is just essentially several different actions here to develop that facilities plan, long-term plan, so we know life cycles of different systems that we have. And I know the school committee has already started that work, but we recognize the critical importance of that too for financial stability. And one of the The

bottom half of this, I keep talking about enrollment, and we keep talking about that.

We see our numbers drop just like every other suburb around us. So what can we do to try to change that course a little bit? It's not that our students are fleeing some suburb to go to private schools where many towns are facing that. But we just have a declining student age population in both Somerset and Berkeley.

just branding ourselves and making sure that we are doing everything that we can to work with that enrollment decline. And looking at our high school schedule too to make sure that we can optimize that for our students in terms of all the things I've mentioned already as well as going down this pathway for early colleges and internships.

That will require looking at our schedule a little bit differently so we can make sure kids have the opportunities to go, you know, take classes at UMass Dartmouth, participate in an internship at a local business. The last pillar is the family and community engagement. So just how can we better look, increase parental engagement. We've talked with the STA about the importance of

The second round of parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school nights, even though the high school doesn't have a back-to-school night, but is there a way of looking at the ways of where we officially bring in families, whether it's through those events or just other events that we schedule with families, just to make this really strong attempt

to get families involved as much as we possibly can. And providing families with resources to to different materials such as this MIFA, the second bullet from the bottom. MIFA has wonderful resources, the Mass Ed Finance Authority. So can we, if we can provide some type of clearinghouse for resources like that where families can go, they want one stop shopping where they can

find helpful resources, whether it's something like that with college planning and financial literacy and other topics. and other content that might be more specific to Somerset Berkeley. And lastly, establishing an alumni network. We don't do a very good job right now of when our students are graduating, collecting their information so we can remain in

touch with them. They all have a Somerset Berkeley regional email address, but we don't have their personal email addresses. So if we want to send information out to them and remain in touch with them, we don't really have a good way of doing that right now. It seems like it's a simple thing, but we're going to need mentors for our high school students, we're going to need internships for our high school

students, and what better group to tap into than the students who graduated from the College of Berkeley. So that is the last piece of that right now. I know that I didn't include every single thing in there, I know we've been talking for a while. Are there any questions at this point, feedback that I can take back in order to present to you next month? - Any questions? - A

There's a pretty strong alumni network at one point in Coal River. Mike and I went to visit the setting. He reached out to us constantly for money.

i think it will be helpful for just even what career path they want to take if they're looking into becoming the medical engineering just knowing what where people went and you can help them guide them what type of classes you should look at what disciplines you're looking you know what schools you might want to consider what you do and don't need because a lot of times people will go and spend their

money somewhere they don't really need to spend it to. So I think that would be great and I'm glad to hear that you're continuing to strengthen this special education program. I did have a parent the other day, I was actually with Mr. Coughlin, was coaching basketball and she came to me and just talking about some of the challenges the kids, different kids are facing and I made a comment that one kid

earning an A The kid that earned the C sometimes has to work twice as hard to earn a C. So sometimes you should keep your head up a little higher, even if you didn't get as high of a mark in the class. But maybe you put twice as much work into it. And there's nothing wrong with that. So anyways, thank you for your time. Anybody else have

any questions? Just a couple of comments. Dr. Sooner, I was happy to see some of the things emerge from this. The seal of bi-literacy as a goal, and I think that, and also how world language requirements from the state, that's also going to converge. So I'm imagining that we'll have further conversations about perhaps resources that might be needed to support those efforts in terms of whether it's staffing

or additional language is being offered because right now it's not a requirement. So I look forward to that conversation. And I think the committee needs to be in full support of providing what's necessary to make sure we can meet that goal. One of my, as a Berkeley rep and parent, one of the the things I've noticed that when you talk about vertical alignment that sort of sometimes has been a little point

of frustration and it's not anyone's fault we have different districts right has been you know I've had three kids who have gone through Berkeley Middle School they come out of Berkeley Middle School they go into a freshman English class and they read many of the same pieces of literature and while as an English teacher there's nothing wrong with rereading a book um there's limited sort of time and support to do that

under the guidance of a skillful teacher and so and that's happened to all three of my kids i mean i can tell you the titles and so um i think sometimes there are some missed opportunities for greater collaboration and that obviously is a two-way street like summers that can sb can offer and berkeley also has to respond to that but i mean for a kid to read the great gatsby twice and

of mice and then twice but not read other things, sometimes it just doesn't make sense to me. And I think that's been over the years. So I appreciate the focus on vertical alignment and that's just one small example. One of the things that concerns me, and some of the things you mentioned, is we also have two communities with disparate resources and You know, we have Somerset students are getting the

opportunity to take Spanish, which is fabulous. And we should. That's great. But we're losing some of those. We lost Spanish in middle school a long time ago in Berkeley.

And so, and then you mentioned, you know, eighth grade credit for high school. So I just want to make sure that all the adults involved in the Berkeley side from the school committee and administration obviously as well as on the SB side, very mindful of the fact that all the kids end up here and you know as adults we have to figure out a way right to be able to provide those

same opportunities to those students regardless of what zip code they're in because when they come to this building you know we want them to all have that those same opportunities and so it's a struggling It's a struggle for Somerset too, I know that tax pay revenues down there as well. But as we're trying to do more, I worry about that gap right now. And I just think we need to make sure

we redouble our efforts to work on that. So I would encourage my colleagues in Berkeley to put that to the forefront as well. Very happy to see the focus on work-based learning and taking another bite at the apple with some chapter 74 programs, which I know has been-- but also focusing on things like micro-credentials and certifications.

Because while sort of three college credits is fabulous-- you get that through AP or dual enrollment course or something like that-- you know, there's OSHA certifications and other things too. I'm sure Mr. Videras is very familiar with some of that. So I just appreciate the scope of sort of what it means to prepare for the future, but I really think that having two feeder districts is going to require

a lot of coordination and maybe everyone's commitment to not doing business as usual because things have changed both in terms of what we're required to do and the opportunities that are now available to us if we come to it with the right frame of mind and if we resource it properly.

So I was really happy to see those, the emphasis in some of those specific areas in terms of curriculum and instruction.

looks like we're moving on to the track resourcing project all right i'm not sure if you have seen it but the work has been completed there might be some punch list items that they're still working on but their goal was to finish around now since our football practices begin this friday so they despite having a little pickup in the beginning of the project when we found an

unrelated leak in our water leak in our irrigation system that caused some extensive work to find and repair but that delayed us only by a few days and you can't even tell that that work took place now. So that was actually really perfect timing if you're going to have a problem like that emerge rather than doing all this work and then a week later, two weeks later, discovering that it's taking

place. But the work is done, it looks phenomenal, and it is ready in time for our students to come back to practices. Moving on, you have in your folder quarterly reports from the Reeds Collaborative and South Coast Educational Collaborative. I'm not sure if there are any questions regarding either of those two reports. Can I just back up and ask a question on irrigation or whatever you want to call

it? Obviously we're aware of that issue. I mean we've had problems with drainage on the front, problems with drainage on the baseball field.

We've had the issue on Luther Avenue with the sinkhole. And now this with the water here. Is there, it just seems to be a lot of problems with water around this building. Is there bigger, is there potential for bigger issues here? Is there a way to, you know, assess? if there could be any further water damage on this property with like a ground sonar or something.

Because it seems like every time there just seems to be a heck of a lot of problems with water. So I guess looking, not taking this most recent incident, but you mentioned the drainage on the fields. That was an issue that has existed in this high school probably as long as this high school, the old high school, was here. We heard that for whatever reason during

the construction process and none of us were here during that time. It wasn't done I don't think as well as it should have been done.

There was no, doesn't seem to have been the work completed to actually fix the drainage issues that everyone knew existed. That was the work that took place last summer. We continue to have sinkholes and just small holes usually around drains and around the driveways and the parking lots. We repaired one at the right end of the school year. I think that

was the first one that we repaired in several years. Does that mean that there is some underlying issue? I really don't know. We haven't considered taking some brown sonar and looking to see if there's any issues beneath the soil. This one we just happened to discover and apparently there might have been something with the material that was used when it was constructed. So not necessarily with any water issue but

the pipe that was there. I mean, I just think it's probably emotional that moving water can be a problem if it's allowed to go on over time. And I agree with you. This has been an ongoing thing probably before this high school was built. I mean when I talked to someone from the water department about Lutheran, they said that was probably like that for a

while by the amount of, you know, underground soil that was displaced by the water.

You know, just thinking that maybe we should try to be a little preventative here if, you know, if it wants, you know, does it warrant being a little more cautious here and preventative? going forward before a small problem that we're not aware of becomes a big problem. Maybe that's something that the Capitol planning. Yeah. Sub-community can take a look at and set things. So I looked at that spot on the track.

When you took the picture over, I mean, I wasn't going to get too into it, but I could see for a while when I go to a football game, there was something going on in that spot. I don't think you need, you could see there's something build up in that area. Then when you sent that map over, I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Was that a water line coming into the

building or that was straight? There's a water line that runs around the perimeter of this building that irrigates the fields. So it comes out from the back of the high school, goes to essentially where the players would stand on the sidewalk. It's coming from the water department to us, right? It's a town water line. It is. Well, it's town water that comes to the building and that's water that comes from the

building. Do we have a meter that's spinning? I mean, I'm just kind of curious.

I know this is a big building and it's not like catching a leak at your house, but still. Yeah, it wasn't a massive leak. It was something that was a slow leak over a period of time. Nothing that you're going to pick up from paying excessive water bills. It wasn't that type of leak where it was like a water main or anything. It was a slow leak over a long time that

just happened to surface at right around the same time we started this work. And it was noted there were some weeds that were growing up through an area by the track where the triple jump is, which shouldn't be taking place if there was no water. So if you're saying this issue preceded the building of the new high school? The drainage in the baseball. Okay, that's, I didn't want to make any sense

to anyone. I missed part of the conversation. No, the first thing that took place that I referenced was the drainage in the old field. Yeah, that one.

Yeah, I mean that's just part of... I hope they use something that's going to be a little more immune to temperature changes underground. I mean, I know there's better materials nowadays, but you know, as water contracts and freezes, cause damaged pipes and what you got the now with PEPS, which I know Carlton, I hate to keep referring to you today, but... it can expand and

contract if it freezes. So when that water freezes, but yeah, most likely that's what happened, right? You had a little water trapped in a line and caused some damage maybe. So I was going to invent some material that was inside where two pipes connected. So it didn't have a perfectly good seal because there was some pipe inside allowing some water to trickle out. Okay, thank you. No,

thank you. Moving back to the South Coast Collaborative, what are the reports? Yeah, I don't know if there are any questions on either of those reports. Okay. Next, we have several appointments for your information as well as a few resignations. Mostly for your informational purposes. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is public input. We have public input. If you could just come up and just state

your name just a minute. Yeah, wherever you want. It's fine. Yes. Thank you. Hi, good evening. Terry Turigny, president of Somerset Teachers Association. Just here to briefly speak on your vote from the June 30th meeting regarding the reaffirmed Mass General Law 32B, Section 9B regarding survivor benefits of spouses' independence for STA members at the 9 through 12 level. Although I understand

the general law allows the committee to determine survivors will pay the full amount for their continued health benefits, I encourage you to rescind that vote and adopt the Massachusetts General Law 32b, section 9d, 90 and a half or 90 and three quarters.

These portions of the general law allow for the committee to determine whether the town would pay 50% or additional monies toward survivor benefits. As Dr. Schoonover mentioned at that meeting, he has spoken to Somerset Town Administrator on multiple occasions regarding town employees and the town administrator feeling that town employees should the town should continue to contribute

this in the teachers case 75 which would mean that your decision is affecting survivors the survivor spouses or dependents only for staff members 9 through 12 while pre-k through eight members of pre-k through eight our survivor benefits our survivors would receive would pay only 25 percent of the continued health benefits that also would mean to the town

administrators point firefighters dependents police officers spouse dependents town office members highway department all of the town employees are receiving that benefit but your vote took that away from STA members nine through 12. I by nature and fiscally conservative.

So I understand your vote. I understand why you may have chosen to vote that. However, I want to reiterate what Mr.

Pasternak said at that meeting, which was what is the human cost of your decision staff and the nine through 12 level dedicate free hours of their personal time, taking time away from their own families to give back to the students and families in this community. And then if they pass and their families, their surviving family members need something back, this is something

that you can give to them. Now this vote takes that away from them. It is in their time of need that they would need something. removing that from them while giving it to pre-k through eight staff seems unfair and unjust. I urge you to reconsider your previous vote and instead adopt any and all parts of mass general law 32 B sections 90, 90 and a half or 90 and three quarters. I just had one

question on the proposals that you were making.

uh for 2031 the additional year of math is that also for kids with ed plans the four years of math it is it is okay and i have one statement to make in that a suggestion is that you couldn't i couldn't compliment you enough on what services schools do for the top 75 but we had a long way to go for the bottom 25 and

I think you're certainly working in that direction, but I hope we continue to realize that. I have a suggestion. I don't know if you have the statistic. I was a little shocked at how many of my grandchildren's friends are in single-parent households. And why do I say that? Well, I don't expect that in a suburban community. I was a little shocked.

So I think if you had that statistic, you know, how many of our students, what percent live in a two-parent household? If you had that statistic, it may help you for grants. You know, I probably wrote over a half a million dollars worth of grants on that type of stuff, even including handicapped school buses and things like that to ship some of those kids to other schools.

It doesn't hurt. If you don't have the statistic, just might be something in the future that could help you. How many students, what percent, live in a two-parent household? And if it's as low as I think, it may make more money available because we certainly could use, it's funny, the teachers that were replaced, you know, were adjustment counselors and guidance counselors and what have you. And we certainly could

use a lot more of those. And I know one of my grandchildren, there was a teacher in junior high school, Leah Pino, if it wasn't for her, I mean, she helped him 24 hours a day. He would not have got out of high school. I mean, he would not have got out of junior high. Susan's gonna find that person this year for them. You know, that's a teacher. I

hug our children and say, "You're our Mother's Teacher of the Year."

I mean, that's a teacher, and we need more of that. But it's just a suggestion because what do all the old people do? They bitch about your budget because you're more than, you know, two and a half percent. And I'm at every freaking activity there is. I'm, you know, I don't sit in the house. And so I'm explaining to them if they understood the percentage, it's much harder to teach. a

kid with a one parent in at the home uh than it is a two kid with two parents you know they're much more structured they do their homework more and things of that nature and so i think it also shows the public how difficult it is to your teachers so you know you need more specialists to help those teachers uh get the job done which may justify your budget more to

them. So just suggestions. I don't want to be the one who's just bitching and not offering suggestions because I do my share of bitching. But I just wanted to voice my opinion on that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the next item on our agenda, which is financial statements for June and July. I don't know if you have anything. I hope I have any questions.

I think I want to add on the business and finance director. Agreed. That's my comment. So thank you for, I'm sure you had to put in a few extra hours on that. I have to thank the people in the business office who have been picking up the work. Particularly, I'd say Ms. Phillips has done an outstanding job.

She and Ms. Watson and Ms. Pavo have really contributed a lot.

Any questions? No. I'd like to go on to the next one though. Next we have discussed an act on prepayment of special ed. tuitions. Can we hold off on that? Can we hold off? We want to hold off on it? After all that I saw that I was excited too. We're going to move that to September? Yes.

Okay. Yeah. I was all excited about it. I wanted to do that tonight too.

And then next is discuss and act on sound system upgrades. I know this is an issue that has come up with being able to hear us sometimes. In this, I mean, the library is made to not predict. So I know we have this on here just to have some discussion. Yeah, absolutely. I saw Mr. Austin's article and I think it was in the middle school and Mr. Schoonover made a point. They

had it set up for, is there a better room in here for this? Because if there is, maybe we just need to move the meeting to call it a day.

There are some spaces, but I don't... This media center, unlike the middle schools where the Somerset School Committee meets, has some more space. There is in the auditorium, which is one of the things we're considering for Somerset, the Somerset Middle School, is using a stage where we have microphones readily accessible to us and a great sound system. The frequency with which or at which

this pack is used by students, I think having meetings there would interfere with the student activities quite a bit. So I don't think that would be the solution here.

And I don't know, the only other space that we would have here is the business learning center, but to get to that one is not very easy. So I think for this committee staying here and trying to work in this space as best as possible is what we should be doing. That's my suggestion. Is there any reason we couldn't use the middle school? There isn't. I was trying to save money,

honestly. I would hate to see us spend money on something we don't need to at the moment. Just an idea. I'm not saying you have to. It's a good idea. Just tossing it out there. I know I had spoken to Ms. Ashley, Mrs.

Ashley, because she is the tech director at Taunton. And I know she had mentioned some microphones that they're using there. I'm wondering if maybe we can get an idea cost-wise, and then we can bring it to the committee so we can take a look. I'm wondering if just maybe reconfiguring how we sit might be helpful so we're more facing. So maybe, I don't know, maybe that's the first step is to kind

of try to just reconfigure us so we're facing the audience so that way maybe they can hear us. I mean, we all try to speak loudly, but you know, sometimes you don't, you're not thinking that's not the first thing you're thinking of is make sure that you're, you know, speaking loud enough. So maybe that's an idea that we might think about. just reconfiguring. And I'm hoping it's a little bit better this

evening. I would assume it is. But the air handlers are not up right now.

And usually as soon as those kick on, that's what really drowns out the dialogue that takes place. So we're fortunate this evening, but we know that next month that won't be the case. Yeah, exactly. So maybe, I don't know if anybody else had any other ideas about what we might be able to do other than... I mean, I kind of agree with Kim. I mean, for the most part, we have our

meetings here, the problem here and across the table, because we're. Projecting this way, but on the other hand. In the past, when I was on the half committee, and I'm sitting. You know, in the public input area, you can. You know, it's a little more noticeable sometimes harder to hear. But I think if we maybe did more like a U-shaped table here, because I was trying to think like Mr. Crawford what

we could do without spending money. You know, maybe if we just had a more U-shaped table here and then the majority of the people are speaking to the crowd, the people in attendance, I think it may address the issue. The only issue I see with that is if you have a presentation. If we're facing them, then we're not Watch able to see, I mean, a lot of times it's in our, you

have to go on anyway, watch the presentation. That's the only other issue that I would see that if we're sitting with our back to the screen. We wouldn't be able to see, I mean, I think we can try it for 1. You know, September and see if that works and then I would still think we should. perhaps get some pricing on what it would cost if we will go just so we're

not then in september that didn't work unless in october you know i'd rather be ahead of it and at least have the information for us to look at we went seven percent laptops too tonight that helps till we can have it yeah yeah i don't know if anybody else has any questions thoughts that we haven't addressed sounds like we have a plan Next, we have policies for first readings. Only thing I want to

pull out is the special ed transportation, Ms. Ashton and Mr. Dark. They had asked if we could see if we could waive the second meeting of that because they would like to have that live for the side school. So that's the only one that I would pull out. So you want to do that separately? Yeah. If no one has any objection to that. All right, so,

I don't know if anybody has any questions about the remaining policies. A lot of these are just kind of rewrites, little revisions from MASD. The only one we did take out was the unscheduled early dismissal because there was really nothing in there about the high school students. It was all about Sunset Elementary and middle school. So that one was removed. Ms. Andrews, am I missing anything else on those slides? I

just know that the first policy on timeouts of fusion of physical restraints modified per MESC, per DESE regulation. So yeah, it was not really, that's not optional. Right. So, I don't know if we have no questions. I will take these all together and I will entertain motion to accept the first reading of policies. 1 through 10, excluding number 3. Yeah, actually, I wonder if we could

amend it. Could we also include the policy 1. Yeah, and we essentially a requirement by that. Yeah. And take that with number 3. Does anybody else have any issues with that? No. Okay. So you want to do a 1st and 2nd reading again? 1 and 3. Just so they can start this group. So how about we just do that one first? How about you just do one and three first and second

reading and then you want to retract and then maybe it's a little easier for you. Yeah. So I'm going to entertain a motion to approve the timeout seclusion and physical strength of students JKAA and special education transportation EEAB for policy for first and second reading as revised. So second. All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? All right. And then moving on for policies for first reading, just going to say number two, and then four through 10. So I entertain a motion to accept the first reading for the policies two and then four through 10.

So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Moving on. All right. Next is Berkeley in Somerset. Do you have any update for us from Berkeley? We have not met since our last meeting. So we have not had such a moment. Other than the elementary school building is progressing nicely. Awesome. Good to hear. Who's going to update with the Somerset? We spoke about North Elementary schematic design. We also had an agenda

item about to discuss South School and we had a fairly good turnout for the meeting. We decided that we're not going to close South School for next year. But it's just something we need to start talking about because of declining enrollment. And actually most of the rest of the meeting was pretty much exactly the same as this meeting. That's good to hear. Thank you. Topics not anticipated with chair for 8 hours

in advance of the meeting at Hartman. Action items for future meetings. I do have something, if you don't mind, to suggest. My phone was going off quite a bit Sunday. I usually run by here. I ran the other way. But everybody had to tell me all the different people that decided to use the front of the building.

track and they were bringing all these things to my attention. I've seen them over the years running everybody. I think everybody at this point knows I run everywhere in town and I run by everything. I just so happen to not run by here someday. So, you know, the soccer leagues and all these things that they've bring their mini nets to play. I do think This needs to be equitable and fair for

everybody if we're going to be closing off one area for one group and then we're going to be letting a soccer group go in the front of the field and people play golf in the front of the field. I do think we need to have a real conversation about this, whether we need to talk to somebody else to get additional security in here um but i have seen the guy with the

clip too and i am concerned i'm not a good golfer i can see the ball going the wrong way i'm sure the people that there are good golfers and they don't have that problem but um who's liable even for some of these things like if a golf ball left our property and hit a car in county street who's liable i don't know i brian murphy's not the insurance agent anymore i can't

even phone um so i don't know but i do think we need to have a conversation on it any other items for future meetings other than the ones that we've pushed and used the boss well i'd like to readdress what mr you brought up tonight but again i've asked for that before and i'd like to see it on the next meeting i think we were waiting for some information before we did

so so we'll have that for next anything else next on the agenda is consider approval of minutes of the prior meetings It's okay with everybody.

I'm going to lump the open sessions together. I had some comments on a couple of the different open sessions. So I assume you take them. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So June 16th, 2026 open session.

Did you have something on that, Mr. Passamore? No, no, thank you. So we're all set with that.

June 23rd. Yep. So we had one where you talked about the director of teaching and learning.

I had some concerns about the renaming of that position for the reason I had emailed you on that. I don't want to get into it here, but you told me in the email that we actually didn't vote on that. So I kind of dropped it. And now I see in here that we did vote on it. And I think we had so many meetings right in a row, I thought I was

confused on what we voted on. Maybe when you said that no action was taken, we didn't vote. So, I mean, If you would have told me that we did vote and I had a better answer, I would have had some more things to say, but I'd like to table this to the next meeting. You can do that. So can I make a motion to table this June 23rd meeting to the next meeting? Do we have a

second? Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? No.

June 30th. Do you have any updates on those?

Yep.

So this was the vote on the discussed and anticipated vote to reaffirm the provisions of Mass General Law. I think there were some mistakes in the way it was written and I also don't think it's complete and accurate to the conversation that was had by the committee. I think more details, this should be reviewed for more detail and put into the minutes. So I'd like to table this to the next meeting as well. I would

ask that you share with us what you are. Okay, so- You do it, but you don't- We have something like 90, 50% contribution, 93, 50% contribution. I mean, that was just not accurate. One was 75%. I suggested at that meeting of taking a vote for either Making a 75% contribution or a 50% contribution. None of that's noted in these minutes. At the

time, I was thinking maybe a 50% contribution, cuz I thought that's what Berkeley did, but I wasn't sure. And that's what they actually do do, but I don't see why we would even go that route, quite honestly. But that has nothing to do with these minutes. But I just think, minutes are a record of what occurred in the meeting and i don't think these are fair

and accurate so i would like to have these this um and it's stable as well second second all those in favor all right again this is uh this past night i would just ask if you could just put it in writing just about everything sure please well we can repeat them for amendment that is and then the final moment on this is of july 28th did you

have anything to add all right so hearing none for the remainder i'm going to entertain a motion to accept the following minutes open session minutes as presented which will be june 16 2026 and july 28th joint open session motion second all those in favor all right then i will consider approval of and release as redacted the executive session minutes of

June 16th, 2026 executive minutes as presented and release them with rejections and to approve and release the June 30th, 2026 executive session minutes as presented. - Moved.

- Second. - Moved by Mr. Medeiros, seconded by Mr. Ventura. All those in favor? - Aye. - Any opposed? All right, and at this time, at the end of our agenda, I will make a motion at 7:47 to adjourn.

Thank you.