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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-08-27-SC-min LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Tuesday, August 27, 2024 Meeting Minutes AGENDA,- CALL TO ORDER AND WELCOME: 5:03 PM SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT Eileen Jay, Chairperson Deepika Sawhney, Vice-Chair Larry Freeman Kathleen Lenihan will join later in the meeting. Sara Cuthbertson did not attend the meeting. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS PRESENT Dr. Julie Hackett, Superintendent The minutes were taken by Julie Kaye, School Committee Meeting Recording Secretary. The School Committee convened at the School Committee Meeting Room at Central Office and remotely. Members of the public can view and participate in person or in the meeting webinar from their computer or tablet by clicking on the link provided with the meeting agenda. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that attendees are participating by video conference. This evening's meeting is being broadcast live and also taped by LexMedia for future on-demand viewing. All supporting materials that have been provided to members of this body are available on the Town's website unless otherwise noted. EXECUTIVE SESSION Ms.lay moved that the School Committee enter Executive Session under Exemption 3- To discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares, Ms. Sawhney seconded. Ms.lay took a roll call vote,passed 3-0. The School Committee entered Executive Session at 6:05 PM and returned to open session at 6:42 PM. Ms. Lenihan joined the meeting during the Executive Session. CONSENT AGENDA Ms. Sawhney read the following consent agenda items: • Payroll and Accounts Payable Warrant Approval a. June 14, 2024- Payroll Warrant in the amount of$5,305,342.82 JK 8/27/24-APPROVED b. June 21, 2024-AP Warrant in the amount of$2,252,187.89 c. June 28, 2024- Payroll Warrant in the amount of$11,,752,.161.84 d. June 28, 2024- Payroll Warrant in the amount of$2,861,684.08 e. July 12, 2024 - Payroll Warrant in the amount of$1,106,070.03 f. July 15, 2024 -AP Warrant in the amount of$1,701,870.57 g. July 15, 2024 - BMO Warrant in the amount of$49,724.50 h. July 26, 2024 -AP Warrant in the amount of$1,028,790.02 i. July 26, 2024 - Payroll Warrant in the amount of$1,242,022.33 j. August 9, 2024-AP Warrant in the amount of$1,420,412.42 k. August 9, 2024- Payroll Warrant in the amount of$1,,236,,413.71 I. August 23, 2024 -AP Warrant in the amount of$909,813.37 m. August 23, 2024 - BMO Warrant in the amount of$18,444.74 n. August 23, 2024- Payroll Warrant in the amount of$1,017,190.91 Ms. Lenihan the following consent agenda items: • Minutes a. May 15, 2024 b. May 21, 2024 Mr. Freeman read the following consent agenda items: • Donations a. $5,000 Donation to Help Defray the Cost of the HBCU Tour for Students from an Anonymous Donor Ms. Lenihan made a motion to approve the entire consent agenda, Mr. Freeman seconded. Passed, 4-0. Mr. Freeman asked if the School Committee could get an update on the HBCU tours. SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS AND LIAISON REPORTS Ms. Lenihan hopes everyone who had their first day of school had a good day. She thanked facilities/custodial workers who worked over the summer to get the schools ready for the new school year. Ms. Lenihan announced that there is a new COVID vaccine that has been approved by the FDA, it is available now at pharmacies. Town vaccine clinics will start in September. Mr. Freeman hopes everyone had a great first day of school, "particularly the 9th graders at LHS." Ms. Sawhney attended Convocation yesterday. She explained that she is part of a group working on a Social Media Toolkit. Ms. Jay also attended the Convocation and spoke about all of the wonderful performances. JK 8/27/24-APPROVED COMMUNITY SPEAK Sarah Carter- 5 Spencer St (in person): "I am here representing the Special Education Parent Advisory Council as the rep to the School Committee. I just wanted to comment that I love the idea of coming up with guidelines and criteria for meeting the needs of cell phone use, but for many students with disabilities, cell phone use is part of their plan or their accommodations. So I really wanted to make sure that moving forward, we make sure that we talk with both the Special Ed staff and families to make sure that everybody's needs and wants are taken into account when we think about these guidelines, thank you." Olga Guttag- 273 Emerson Rd (on Zoom): "First of all, I would like to thank Kathleen for sending the requested files about the bid process for the LHS project. Your response has really made us feel that we are being heard, at least on that aspect. I would also like to remind you that many months ago, I asked for the central office org chart with all the CO positions identified with short descriptions for the responsibilities of each position, reporting structure, salary for each position, and the number of people at each position. This, I think, will be very useful information to have if the School Building Committee needs to think more creatively about how to find space for the central office in the context of the new high school. So I'm hoping that the org chart will be either produced or found and that you can share it, and the best way to share it would be to post it on the school department's website, but I really appreciate getting that information and welcome back to the school year, and thank you for the work you're doing." SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT Dr. Hackett reviewed her with the School Committee. The highlights from her report include: 1. Happy First Days of School! 2. Lex250 Countdown 3. The United Chinese Americans National Conference 2024 4. New Leaders Joining Our Team • Nick Hart, New K-12 Assistant Performing Arts Coordinator • Mike Horesh, New Lexington High School Dean • Julia Sacco, New Clarke Evaluation Team Supervisor 5. LHS Building Project Updates • MSBA Building Logo Contest • Stakeholder Engagement Letter 6. We All Belong SCHOOL BUILDING COMMITTEE STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT Ms. Lenihan explained theletter to Stakeholders. She summarized that five design options have been submitted to the MSBA. Three of the options are "more or less on the footprint of the original of the current high school." The other two options are an addition-renovation and a phased-in, fully new school. Ms. Lenihan explained that we need to pick one option by November 12th, there is a process to gradually narrow it down. During the next School JK 8/27/24-APPROVED Committee meeting, the School Committee will need to take a position on the field house and the pool. The next community forum is September 18th at 6:30 PM. Ms. Sawhney asked if there was a way to simplify and categorize the information that is being put out to the public, she would also like a pro and con list. NEW BUSINESS A. First Reading of Single-Use Plastic Bottle Phase-Out Policy (Select i gZ�Z24) • Ms. Lenihan explained that we can adopt or modify the Select Board's policy. • Ms. Sawhey asked, "Would the schools be able to pivot and not have any plastic water bottles?" Mr. Coelho, Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations, replied, "I've spoken with the food service director, and that is the path. We're going to no longer serve water in the single-use plastic bottles." • Ms. Jay asked, "Do you have any sense of the timing of the food services' ability to implement this?" Mr. Coelho responded that, from talking with the food service director, the timeline outlined in the original proposals states a start date of January 1, 2025. • Ms. Jay states that this policy is written for the purposes of the municipal side and may need to be rewritten for the schools. B. • Ms. Lenihan spoke about legal language. C. (for informational purposes only; no presentation) COMMUNITY SPEAK Dawn McKenna - 9 Hancock St (in person): "I wanted to listen to the conversation about the field house for a bit before I said anything. I think Deepika is right, there's a lot to understand, but I think the most important question the School Committee needs to ask themselves is, do your guiding principles apply to the field house?And if they do, why isn't the School Committee advocating that this continue through the process? I think, if so, why are we not insisting that these programs that take place in the field house be prepared for the same 75 year cycle, and what was described as the rehab for about $30 million, you're not getting any improvement. We know there's a safety hazard. That's a fact. We know that it's grossly undersized, and even Mr. Baker said in the meeting that the 18,000-square-foot gym is not going to be enough to make up for all the programming that's there. So you were asking for some facts a little bit to understand. So I just want to I don't know if you all saw the email that went out, the two emails that went out, one went out from the boosters club that talked about the history, and one went out from one of the current assistant coaches who used to be in charge of the track program at MIT, and all the deficiencies. But what I can tell you is that as a fact, if you choose to tear down the existing school and not address the field house but you want to leave the existing field house, you're going to have to build right away a separate JK 8/27/24-APPROVED facility, separate utilities, because the heating system, the electricity, and everything will have to be disconnected in order to preserve that, and that is not in the current $30 million price tag of the renovation only. What is also a fact is that in the 1960s all the same conversations were taking place about the field house. This is unique. Nobody has it. It's too expensive. Do we need this kind of space? What are we going to do with it? Well, I can tell you that in the 1960s, the then equivalent school building committee courageously authorized twice the space that was supposed to be, and everybody said, nobody's going to pay for it, nobody's going to want to do it. Well, the vote was 174 to one at town meeting. The debt exclusion equivalent was overwhelmingly passed, all with the same arguments. There's a couple more things I have to say, but I know that she just said there's a time." Olga Guttag- 273 Emerson Rd (on Zoom): "I'm a former School Committee member. In the report on the new high school project, nowhere in the proposed School Building Committee schedule did I hear any time allotment for developing of Plan B, which would be of lower cost. My real concern is that if you only go out with a project of$600 or $625 million plus whatever the committee comes up with for a debt exclusion in November `25, if that exclusion fails, you will lose the MSBA reimbursement. You will lose multiple years, and you would have wasted about $25 million in architectural and design fees. Please, please, please, as a School Committee, it is your responsibility to direct the School Building Committee to come up with Plan B and have a plan B available before they submit it to MSBA. If they have to slow down the process of submitting to MSBA, I was told that it could take up to a year, but I know that our representatives will help us to actually make it happen sooner. But you're taking a tremendous risk. You're going to make them do tremendous damage to Lexington as a community, and I think it is being very, very irresponsible. So please listen. Thank you." Dawn McKenna - 9 Hancock St (in person): "I guess one of the things that I want the School Committee to understand is having participated in so many of these projects over the years, I'm particularly frustrated that we have allowed the MSBA process to handcuff us in certain ways, not in every way. In some ways, they've made improvements. And I'm really appreciative of Julie, really, you know, working on getting her voice in and taking, you know, lead to do things. But what I know is that there has been a mismatch up until the most recent meeting, when finally there were people from the athletic department there. But you now have as part of the School Building Committee, a liaison from Recreation. You don't have such an equivalent from the athletic department who supervises and knows what's going on in that building every single day, and I think you're all scrambling to try and get information and catch up with this issue really quickly when you have to make a decision by the middle of November, and everybody needs to have an opportunity to hear a full presentation, which nobody has yet, about everything we know about that building in the way that we've had a year or so to have that conversation about everything else. And I guess my two final points do not take too long, is number one is lots of ways to financially support the facility to help lower the costs. But never before have I watched us so handcuffed by what it is that we're going to financially afford rather than first figuring out what it is that we need. So that I urge you as a school committee to demand that we talk about what we need for the next 75 years. And my last point is that my understanding from all the meetings that I've attended about all of this, which I continue to do, is that in order for us to maintain our options through the next phase of this, the Preferred JK 8/27/24-APPROVED Schematic Report has to include a brand new 72,000 square foot field house. And I'm not saying that that may or may not be the ultimate decision that's made, but if you eliminate it, you can't bring it back. If you put it in, you can cut it back, you can work it through schematic design. So I would hope that at least until everybody has really had an opportunity to hear and understand the importance of this, we keep it in the schematic, preferred schematic report, and the architects have said that in every iteration that they've done, they have a way to show the full 72,000 square foot building in the project. We think there are better ways for them to do it. Other people have suggested other, better ways to do it, but at least there's enough. Thank you." POSSIBLE ACTION ITEMS Items added: • Update on H BCUs • Student SC Reps • Electrification of Buses • Cadence of the year timeline ADJOURNMENT Ms. Lenihan made a motion to adjourn at 8:08 PM, Mr. Freeman seconded, passed 4-0. JK 8/27/24-APPROVED