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Home My WebLink About2015-06-16-SC-min-Evening LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 1 LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Tuesday, June 16, 2015 Clarke Middle School Auditorium 17 Stedman Road PRESENT: Superintendent Dr. Paul Ash, Chair Jessie Steigerwald, Vice Chair William Hurley, Alessandro Alessandrini, Judith Crocker, Margaret Coppe Student Representative Abigail Schwartz The Minutes were taken by Christine Ashness, Recording Secretary The meeting convened at 7:06pm Call to order and welcome: Chair Jessie Steigerwald called the meeting to order, and introduced committee members. Public Comments: Pamela Tames, 26 Bertwell Road: She is a parent of three school age kids, one currently part of Lextended Day, and two previously attended the program. She is also the President of Lextended Day’s Board. During her remarks at the last meeting she had some questions regarding the data provided by the school district. Tonight she has 2 questions. While Bridge hosts the Elementary Instrumental group Thursday afternoons, why can’t after school care still be provided? People would love to have a 6th site. While the district’s contract with Lextended Day provides a classroom at Bowman, why has the district refused use of the space for after school care? If these 2 issues were resolved, 90% of the families on the wait lists would have after school care for their kids. They are asking that the program be allowed to use more space in the schools. Malka Berndt, 57 Spring Street: She attended last week’s meeting. Lextended Day would be ready to expand for fall if more space was released. The assumption was they wouldn’t be ready, but Lextended day is ready, willing and able to accommodate at Bridge starting this fall. She hopes that the School Committee could look into that. If space is opened up, they will be ready to go. A giant portion of the waiting list could be helped by just one small step. Many families would appreciate it. Superintendent’s Announcements: Earlier this week Dr. Ash sent the School Committee a recommendation to hire an outside auditing financial review firm to put in place a review of our operations and controls. Given the transition from one financial officer to another, it is prudent to examine them in order to gain an understanding of all aspects. The auditor will then make recommendations for improvement. He believes they are running quite well. The purpose is that during the transition period it is important for accountability and planning/reviewing of items needing improvement. The cost would be $40,000-‐$45,000. The town agrees it would make sense. The School Committee took no action and said they would add it to a future agenda. LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 2 School Committee Member Announcements: Judith Crocker: Thank you to DiNisco and Hill companies. The teams have been doing a great job delivering their presentations. The building process is online on the school website and recorded meetings are also available on LexMedia. William Hurley: He and Kate Colburn have also been attending all of the DiNisco presentations and the Permanent Building Committee meetings. He thanked DiNisco for their work. Jessie Steigerwald: Reviewed upcoming meetings. On June 22nd there will be an Executive Session with the Selectmen and then a short meeting afterwards. There will be another meeting on July 7th at 7:00 pm and a Summit on July 14th and July 16th. Agenda: Report on 2014-‐2015 District Goals Dr. Ash explained that we heard from school principals a couple of meetings ago when they presented their School Improvement Plans. The District Goals and Schools Improvement Plans are aligned and have synergy in the education area. Goal 1: Improve Academic Performance for All Students Goal 2: Improve Social and Emotional Program Supports for All Students Goal 3: Improve Safety for All Students and Staff Goal 4: Improve the District’s Capacity to Respond to Enrollment Increases Vote on 2015-‐2016 District Goals Abby Schwartz: Students are more concerned with having the current technology work properly than having newer technology. The goals do not mention fixing what is broken and the plan to fix them. The Math and Science building’s Internet works well but there is difficulty getting into educational software in science. The Wi-‐Fi in the Main Building cuts out constantly while students are doing research on laptops. Students and teachers are not allowed to download updates to programs such as Flash, which is a problem. Added amendment to Goals: Address the policy and infrastructure required to fully take advantage of our existing technology and expand our capacity to more effectively use mobile devices. MOTION to approve the 2015-‐2016 District Improvement Goals, as amended. (Hurley, Alessandrini) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. Consent Agenda Items will be done individually not as a consent agenda. Members had some questions and comments about the number of chaperones on the different field trips, the amount of school days missed, keeping up with schoolwork, and helping students who cannot afford to pay for the trips. They thanked the teachers for the hard work and time needed to take students on these trips. LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 3 MOTION to Approve 2015-‐2016 Clarke Middle School Grade 8 Spanish field Trip to La Guacima de Alajuela, Costa Rica, March 2-‐11, 2016 (Coppe, Crocker) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. MOTION to Approve 2015-‐2016 Clarke Middle School 8th Grade Mandarin field Trip to Shanghai, Jinhua, Beijing China, April 6-‐17, 2016 (Alessandrini, Coppe) The Motion was approved 4-‐1, with Steigerwald opposing. MOTION to Approve 2015-‐2016 Clarke Middle School 8th Grade French field Trip to Quebec City, Canada, June 8-‐10, 2016 (Hurley, Alessandrini) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. MOTION to Approve 2015-‐2016 Diamond Middle School Grade 8 Spanish Field Trip to La Guacima de Alajuela, Costa Rica, January 27, 2016 – February 5, 2016 (Crocker, Alessandrini) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. MOTION to Approve 2015-‐2016 Diamond Middle School 8th Grade French Field Trip to Quebec City, Canada, May 31, 2016 – June 3, 2016 (Steigerwald, Crocker) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. Vote to Appoint Ian Dailey as the Chief Procurement Officer for the Lexington Public Schools Dr. Ash explained that there is extensive training for this position and special certification. Ian Dailey has completed the training and is just waiting for the certificate. Steigerwald would rather wait until the certificate is received. Hurley would like to wait at least until the meeting on the 22nd. Coppe believes waiting is a bad idea, as it would hold up purchase orders. Steigerwald asked for confirmation that Ms. Dunn was planning to remain at work through the end of June. Dr. Ash confirmed that Ms. Dunn would be here and would be handling the purchase orders. The committee will wait until Monday June 22nd to vote and hopes the certification is received by that meeting. Update on Youth Coalition Planning Steigerwald and Hurley provided updates from the meeting that was held earlier on June 16th. The next steps were planning for two fall meetings. On October 7th there will be an evening meeting to hold a community wide conversation on “what goals do you have for Lexington youth that you could better accomplish by working with others.” Participants will then prioritize 1, 2, or 3 actionable goals and agree to work on these as a coalition. On October 21st there will be a daytime meeting on the priorities that were selected by the coalition in order to develop an implementation plan. Members thanked Abby Schwartz for attending one of the planning meetings, Steigerwald for coordinating the recent meetings, and the ad Hoc Committee for their report. The Selectmen are doing their goal setting on July 1st. Steigerwald reported that the School Committee sent their goals to the selectmen and highlighted which ones would be beneficial to work on together. LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 4 Funds previously allocated for Andy Beck would soon be expended ($3,500). Steigerwald asked the committee if they wished to authorize additional expenses. Hurley suggested an allocation for FY15 and also for FY16. MOTION to authorize up to an additional $1,000 to be expended for FY15, and up to $1,000 to be expended for FY16 for School in Maine Institute to pursue the coalition work. (Hurley, Crocker) The Motion was approved 5-‐0 Coppe requested that Steigerwald approach the chair of the Board of Selectmen for the higher cost funding in the future. MOTION to co-‐sponsor the October 7th and 21st meetings (Hurley, Steigerwald) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. Update on Allocation of School Space for Before-‐and After-‐School Child Care Steigerwald recognized Crocker and Coppe for an update from the last meeting. Last Friday a meeting of a small working group that included Crocker and Coppe took place. The central document to review is a vendor contract. The school system is not required to lease space. Members had questions and comments about data on where the people on the waiting list are located (which school site); if possible, having a committee to have something feasible happen by September; whether there are other staff members that can look into this considering Ms. Dunn’s departure date, and whether it could happen by September; looking to see if the Recreation Department could possibly hold before/after school care. Dr. Ash agreed that there is a real problem. He strongly believes that the schools belong to the entire community and if we could fully use these assets we would like to. The parents’ needs are genuine. The real problem is that it is June 16th and he and Mary Ellen Dunn have very few days left. He does not think it is wise to ask Ms. Dunn to focus her energies on this when she is dealing with a lot of financial work right now. He knows of no one in the district who could go through the RFP book and have the skill set to figure it out. Someone is going to eventually get up to speed but that won’t happen fast. Principals, the music director, and athletic director all need to be involved. If this conversation happened a few months ago we could have tried to figure something out. Coppe and Crocker will continue to work on this issue. Crocker recognized Debra Harvey as she has been working on these contracts. She has been great. Pamela Tames 26 Bertwell Road: This is not a new issue. This is a crisis now because there hasn’t been action until now. They’ve been talking for a long time. A formal letter was sent to the School Committees in March and a heads up was given. Because there has been media coverage it is now a bigger issue. Yes there are many complexities and issues but the Bridge suggestion would solve 90 percent of their parents’ issues. This can be simplified and partially addressed before the next school year. LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 5 It will be put on the July 7th agenda. Capital Update Update from Permanent Building Committee (“PBC”) Hurley and Crocker provided an update. The PBC have met once, and will meet again tomorrow to go over evaluation criteria. They are trying to think of evaluation criteria to quantify the pros and cons of the many proposals and will try to have a weighted scoring component to assist in making these hard decisions. Update on Superintendent School Assignment and Capacity Advisory Committee Steigerwald asked the committee for clarification on whether they wished to have only elementary parent representatives, or also middle school representatives as a middle school parent expressed willingness to serve if needed. Members agreed to only have elementary parents. Alessandrini is concerned about what the function of this committee is. Dr. Ash explained that after the summit you are able change your mind about whether you want to add middle school representatives. The 2 functions of committee are to advise on the amount of space needed and redistricting. After the summit you can revisit if middle school parents need to be there. Presentation from DiNisco Design Team Members had some questions and comments. DiNisco will be back for the summit meetings. Superintendent Transition Hurley and Steigerwald spoke about having transition days for the new superintendent. They met Dr. Czajkowski and she identified at least 2 dates she can be available. They would like to allocate funds to authorize up to 4 days. The rate is based on salary divided by number of days. It would be $980.77 per day. Dr. Ash supported the recommendation and said it would be helpful. MOTION to approve the allocation of up to $4,000 for up to 4 days at a per diem rate for Dr. Czajkowski to perform duties related to her transition into the Lexington Public Schools and to authorize the chair to sign a Memorandum of Agreement to that effect (Hurley, Alessandrini) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. Superintendent Evaluation Update Steigerwald said the committee would review a draft at next Monday’s meeting. If she gets all of the individual evaluations she will try to email a draft to members by 5:00pm Thursday. She asked members to watch for the document and said it will be on the agenda Monday. Munroe Center for the Arts Appointment Update LSC Meeting Minutes 6/16/2015 6 Steigerwald shared that Thomas Griffiths had served on the Munroe Center for the Arts for the School Committee but notified her that he has been appointed as a regular member on their board. The School Committee has been asked to recommend someone. Steigerwald has asked for more information about when the meetings take place. It will be helpful if members will keep this in mind and start thinking about whether they would like to serve or if they can think of someone who would be a good match. Review and Approve in Form the Following Policies: BDFA – Site-‐Based School Councils BDFA-‐E-‐3 – Conduct of Site-‐Based School Council Business CCA – Organizational Chart CE – School Committee Administrative Councils, Cabinets and Committees DGA – Authorized Signatures DJ – Purchasing DJA – Purchasing Authority DO – Scholarship and Award Funds GCCD – Domestic Violence Leave Policy JCAA – Redistricting JIC – Student Discipline JII – Student Complaints and Grievances JK – Student Conduct JQ-‐A – Financial Assistance JQ-‐R – Demand for Payments MOTION to approve in form, the above Policies from sections B, C, D, G, J, as amended (Hurley, Coppe) The Motion was approved 5-‐0. MOTION to approve in form, Policy JFAB, as amended, (Hurley, Coppe) The Motion was approved 4-‐1 with Alessandrini opposing. Hurley left at 11:04pm MOTION to adjourn (Alessandrini, Coppe) The Motion was approved 4-‐0. The meeting was adjourned at 11:05pm. Meeting Materials: Agenda; LPS Report on the 2014-‐2015 District Improvement Plan; 2015-‐ 2016 District Improvement Plan; Memo from Joyce Emmett; DiNisco presentation; Policies B, C, D, G, I, J; Clarke Field Trip Request for Costa Rica; Clarke Field Trip Request for China; Clarke Field Trip Request for Washington DC; Clarke Field Trip Request for Quebec; Diamond Field Trip Request for Costa Rica; Diamond Field Trip Request for Quebec; Meeting notes for allocation of space for before/after school care Voted by the School Committee July 7, 2015