All right.

Welcome to the Thursday, June 12th, 2025 meeting of the Sharon School Committee.

We'll begin by taking attendance.

I would just ask for you to say present or here when I call your name. I'll start with our Vice Chair, Dan Newman.

Present.

Julie Rowe. Present.

George Ann Lewis. Present.

Adam Shane. Present.

And I'm Avi Shemtov, and I'm present.

Next up, we'll have public comment.

Just a quick note about public comment.

We'll try to keep comments to two minutes, if possible, please.

And also, I would ask anybody who is able to come up to this podium stanchion and speak at the microphone.

If anyone's unable, please let us know and Sharon TV can turn the overall audio up so that they'll be able to record someone from where they're sitting now. Is there anyone here for public comment?

Come on up. Oh, just state name and address.

You got it. I appreciate it. Lauren Grasso, 26 Knob Hill Street.

I'm really just here to express some gratitude to Adam Shane for attending Sharon Pride.

And gratitude, along with a huge thank you to Dr. Botello and Avi, who spoke and were explicitly clear on where this district stands when it comes to supporting all students.

I felt it. I felt it. The kids felt it. Avi, the fact that your family hung out after, it was so great. It was a well-attended event. It's so important to the town. And I just really appreciate that. And if I may have, oh, yeah, look at me. I always say brevity is a spiritual practice.

I also wanted to give a shout out to Carla Hans. I really enjoyed her presentation at the last meeting.

I enjoy hearing about the MECO program.

And I just love the direction that she is steering the program.

And I am looking forward to hearing more from her and truthfully just helping any way that I can. Because the more that we can help all of students feel a part of the community, the better our community will be. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Are there any other public comments?

There are not. I will move us to correspondence, which I will read for Alan Matanko, our secretary, who can't be present here tonight.

So the school committee has received 14 pieces of correspondence between May 28, 2025 and June 11, 2025. We received the June edition of the SHS Library newsletter.

We received several invitations to year-end community events, including the CPAC Awards, Sharon Pluralism Network event, and an invitation to Sharon's Juneteenth event. Several parents wrote to express their concerns with the process for assigning parking spaces to members of the rising junior class. A Sharon High School student wrote to share concerns regarding the AC units at the high school. A family wrote to ask for an exemption to the policy regarding entrance age for a first grade student. A parent wrote to provide follow-up information on a student safety plan. We received a general thank you from members of the community who participated in the BAPS Charities Walkathon.

The town of Sharon, DEIC, provided the school committee with a statement that can be read by any member of the DEIC during the open forum of the school committee meeting. The school committee received inquiries from several SHS students who are completing civic action projects.

These students were requesting feedback and support for their ongoing projects.

The SMS library media specialist shared an article regarding the role of technology in the work of library media administrators.

The correspondence having been read, we have a review of meeting norms and guidelines.

The correspondence.

Am I looking at the right agenda? Yeah.

Nope, I pulled up, someone on my computer pulled up the DEIC's agenda here.

That's a totally different meeting.

I can share that with you.

Yeah, I think we're going to superintendent.

Yep, we're going to kick it over to superintendent Dr. Pitello for his general updates.

That was good. Thank you. SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Thank you. SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Thank you. SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Thank you. Thank you. I just have a couple things as we wind down the year. There are six days left, believe it or not, in the school year. Next Thursday will be no school for Juneteenth.

And our last day will be on Friday, which as is tradition, is a half day. We continue to participate in end of the year preparations, including enrolling and registering new students, as well as also facilitating students who are moving in their unenrollment.

Also, completing end of the year fiscal procedures so we can prepare to open FY26 July 1st. And then also very, very active in recruiting and hiring for open positions.

You know, definitely a few less in the teaching realm, though we always have some movement with people, you know, moving out of state. And also several key administrative positions to fill.

Yeah, we really enjoyed participating in the Sharon Pride Festival on June 1st and showing our support for all of our students.

Also, there is a great event on June 18th to commemorate Juneteenth.

There were some awesome school-based events that occur as we end the year, starting with the MECO Senior Banquet, where our four graduating senior MECO students who were going off to college got to celebrate with them and their families.

Last night, Sarah Godino put on a celebration for our English language learner families.

We had over 100 attendees, and we also had some high school kids facilitating and, you know, working with some of the kids there was a great event, thanks to Sarah. Eighth grade trip is going on. So Kevin O'Rourke and his team and all of our awesome eighth grade students who are participating are off to DC. And we also have tons of other end of the year events in all of our schools.

So be sure to check your newsletters if you're not aware.

Again, here's a picture of some of a couple, at least one or two of our high school students working with some of our kids. Again, over 100 attendees.

That's an awesome for an event like that at this time of the year. So we really appreciate all the families that showed up and our Sarah Godino and their high school kids who helped.

Again, congratulations to the senior class. It was an awesome graduation.

One of the great things about being in the school system and, you know, working at the high school level or working at the school level or working at the district level is being able to experience that every year. Like, you know, sometimes we only get to experience that as graduates ourselves or just our kids every once in a while. But getting it every single year to get that excitement is awesome.

So, and our kids are going off to doing such great things, whether it's careers or the military.

We'd want to keep going to West Point and then an array of awesome colleges.

And they had an awesome senior week. And the big highlight there is when they go through all the elementary and then the middle school and the ECC. And everyone's cheering them on. And that was a great thing for us to experience up at the middle school and central office as well. So, yes.

And, you know, again, events all over. We have this as an East Elementary class picture when they were walking through East Elementary.

And then another picture of the high school.

Yes, we got, many of us got to attend the Sharon Pride Festival, which was awesome.

Again, great support for LGBTQ plus community.

And, yes, we definitely want everyone to know that we support all students.

And then just we have an enrollment update.

Some of the highlights I'll just before we pull it up is we have 3,326 currently enrolled for next year. We've identified several elementary sections where we're currently no longer adding students, meaning that in those sections for right now, we'll put them into kind of enrollment into Sharon Public Schools.

And then as we follow the movement throughout the beginning of the summer, then make specific enrollment.

So we will have some kids who leave, which will open up some spots. But then we'll also want to make sure if we have some kids who are not attending their homeschool, that we can set up the busing for them so they can attend another school in the area. We currently have three families who are kind of in that SPS enrollment bucket.

And if we can put them in their homeschool, we absolutely will. That's our preference.

But we're looking at all the numbers and classes at the middle school and high school are ongoing. Their scheduling process.

Do you want me to click on this? SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Yeah. So just so you can see, there are current numbers.

So kindergarten will continue to have some more enrollment over the summer. But currently if you see cottage is at 21, east is 1716 right now, and heights is at 1920.

So we'll continue again to follow those. In grade one, you'll see cottage in that first column.

And then east at, we're currently at 19s.

And then heights at 20 or 19.

And then grade two, we have 20s at cottage, 23 at east, and 23 or 22 at heights.

And then grade three, 21 around 19, and 23, 24. Grade four, 22, 20, 22. And then grade five, right around 20s, and a little higher in heights at 23. So we'll continue to follow if you see those indicators.

So if it's in red, it's saying at that point, if we have a new enrollee, we ask the school to just enroll them in chair and public schools.

We take down their names and we'll continue to follow the numbers and strategically, if possible, put them into our homeschool.

If not, figure out transportation for them come the fall.

Are there any questions from the table on enrollment?

Adam.

Thank you. So thank you, Dr. Petella. Just a request for next time. If you could also just show like a plus or minus.

I think that would just help us understand, oh, we've actually seen a bump in this grade or a decrease in that grade or something like that. Yeah, and it will absolutely, that will even be more relevant.

Next year, we're going to do that on a monthly basis. So that will be part of at least one of the two meetings, and we can put that plus minus so you'll be able to see it all the course. Perfect.

Thank you so much. Yep.

Julie, did you have a question?

No, I just wanted to comment that the projection for this year was 3365, so pretty close.

Yeah, actually things have been falling, you know, pretty much, especially as we're making those strategic unfortunate cuts. You know, things have kind of panned out where we were projecting.

So some of the data that we used to try to project those things was, especially in K and 1, which tends to have the most change, really were pretty accurate, which is nice. Great.

Thank you. I think, are we going to go next to the Matt presentation?

Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: All right. So good evening.

So I'm joined with Ms. Christina Kemp, our elementary math coordinator.

And tonight's presentation, basically what it does, it outlines the rationale for updating our math curriculum and also kind of like present for the committee and the community like an estimated range of potential associated costs for the curriculum.

So I'll just hand it over to Ms. Kemp and then she'll start and then we'll switch off. Okay.

Great.

So we thought we would start with why update our elementary math curriculum at this time. And I know, although math hasn't changed much, teaching has, we're always preparing our students for an ever-changing world. And that, you know, has a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding, problem solving, real world application.

And that really requires a learning environment that's student centered and has a careful balance between inquiry based learning and explicit systematic instruction.

And that, you know, our current curriculum is, was published in 2018. So it's, it may not, may no longer reflect all the current research that is out there on how students best learn math.

It's also not been evaluated by DESE's Curate, HQIM.

And it has been evaluated on EdReports, but not on Curate.

If you go to the next slide.

It may, because it hasn't been evaluated and because it has an older copyright, it's not going to be prioritized to be evaluated, the 2018 edition.

That may result in us being ineligible for key state curriculum grants and implementation supports that prioritize the HQIM from the Curate list.

DESE really encourages districts to adopt HQIMs to ensure alignment with state standards, improve instructional quality, and increase access to high impact professional development.

Finally, our program, we have a six year contract that ends June of 2027.

So if we don't update, then we run the risk of renewing outdated materials at actually an increased cost. And we risk losing access to digital tools that may become phased out. So what we've done is we've almost keeping the pattern that we had or the format that we had for reading curriculum overview, we kind of follow our following the same process in terms of an entire project plan.

And basically what you have here, it's really more like to show the committee the trajectory for that project.

And we've really technically gotten to the first two steps.

And we're still going to have to continue.

So it's really going to be a comprehensive phased out approach from beginning this spring, which we've done two of the steps.

You know, kind of like talked about the goals, set a timeline, and we reach out to vendors, get some initial quotes so that even though it's two years out, the school committee has an idea what we're looking at as far as potential costs.

And the rest of the steps will include all types of items such as engaging the community, parents, teachers, putting together a curriculum review committee, which we've reached out to teachers already collected and people volunteered and basically piloting at some point and then hopefully finalizing a budget.

So the idea is that each step is really intentionally timed to ensure like data informed decision making and making sure that we have as many, as much input from all the constituencies as possible before we make a decision.

So it will be an issue of like qualitative feedback and quantitative data to hopefully arrive at the final choice of which program we are going to use. And then the next piece is really like what obviously the community and the school committee would be interested in terms of an estimation of the cost. So right now we basically reach out to at least four companies.

It does not mean that these are going to be the programs we're going to pilot, but all of those are basically, well, at least the first four are HQIM reviewed, vetted by DESE.

So it's highly likely that the subset of programs that we're going to pilot will be drawn from that list.

But we also need to keep an open mind if something else, you know, that we find could be part of that. So we actually went and reached out to the vendors, got actual quotes. So we, we got the year, first year costs.

And then if we were to do on a year to year, what the incremental costs, because what you have basically the first year, you get all the teacher guides that would last you for a while. And then every year for most of them, you have incremental costs.

That's basically like student books and, you know, all those kind of things that you need to replenish on a year to year basis.

And then we also ask them for like a three year contract to see what the potential cost savings are. And so, on the last column, that's where you would end up with the potential, these are the potential cost savings that would ensure if we were to go to a three year contract as opposed to a one year contract with annual, you know, replenishing of consumables.

So, in terms of, for the sake of simplicity, the next is just a summary.

So you have the range, right? So you have a range from like $89,000 to $159,000 for the first year.

That's what, that's the upper and lower and upper limits.

And then for three year contracts, you have about $200,000 to $305,000, again, lower and upper limits.

Now, these are two days costs and based on our back and forth with the vendors, you know, we should plan for average inflationary pressures through the 5% increase when we get to the 2027 numbers.

So, for, in terms of the planning, oh, go ahead, sir.

My turn?

Yes.

As, as Dr. Joselyn said, these are sample vendor quotes.

I can't stress that enough. We have an outstanding team of educators who are volunteered to be part of the curriculum review committee.

They represent every elementary building, every grade level, EL teachers, math specialists, special education, and elementary leadership.

And they will be carefully reviewing multiple programs and working collaboratively and thoughtfully together to determine, you know, what, what might be piloted.

So, there are potential programs not on the list that may be piloted, potential programs that are on the list that may not be piloted.

So, just wanted to state that again.

The final costs will vary depending on how, what our staffing, shipping, what we determine as our professional development needs, ultimately, which program is, is the results of the pilot program.

And also, these don't, these are 2025 costs.

They don't include inflation. Although we asked them for some information around that. Nobody wants to put together a quote with inflation included.

So, for budget planning for FY27 and FY27, we anticipated needing funds only to support the piloting of up to three programs.

We did get quotes for pilots.

Two of the programs said they would be complementary.

One, one was requesting funds for professional development and another was combo of professional development and some materials.

So, that was, those are the ranges that we got. And the training would include, the, I'm sorry, the costs for piloting would include training, purchasing materials, and limited professional development.

The following year, FY28, we'll be selecting our final math program by January of 2027, based on pilot results and stakeholder feedback.

And the final program costs will then be included in the FY28 budget proposal.

So, part of what we've, we're always doing is looking, constantly looking at potential grants, potential additional alternate services.

And, ultimately, every period of time. First year, working and faculty are the only ones working in our ministry projects that happen to be a parent, disproportionately due to the lowest Uses. How does that happen? Thement record, engulfed the principle, a multi-state decision, is devastating specifically we're thinking of on that diet, if it depends on what health insurance area, whether it's working or not. We just want to follow up on that diet as well. That is pretty much not a member of our doctorate Alleza,鉄es and turbas眼 lung, that's just fine. How does it actually house come here? Hey okay, that's very simple. sad bit.

So, I'm just wondering, what I want to plug in my policy. What I want to do is, please hold it around. How does it start, please feel like, kän 왔 mod JAMES? three to five, and we're waiting for these, for the results.

Obviously, there's no guarantee we're going to get those grants because they are competitive grants. And the way the state has structured those grants is, from an equity standpoint, they provide, in essence, a little bit of an advantage of poor districts and also districts that are considered chronically underperforming.

So, districts like us that don't have as many low-income students or is not considered chronically underperforming, you don't get any points, whereas others may get like up to 200, 300, 400 points when you're coming from behind. That being said, I think we've done a good job preparing the proposal and outlining some of the really good things that we're doing here. So, we definitely do have a fair game chance, but it's not a guarantee at all. So, prison two, if granted, we could get up to $121,000.

Again, don't get stuck on those numbers.

This, but we want it to be fully transparent, it's what we might get, but just don't go to sleep and dreaming about those numbers because there may not be nearly that much or nothing at all if we don't get it. And then prison three would be about up to $52,000 for potentially if we get the grant for both, both grants, we get $173,000.

That if we get that money, then there's a potential that the district could then use those funds to, you know, to fund further or future curriculum implementation, including our math curriculum implementation.

Just one element of that, like, creative grant application process is like being willing to open our doors to other districts to come in and see these high quality materials that the state wants to use so that we would, you know, allow other schools to come in and see our classrooms once we're implementing, which was really beneficial when we were selecting ourselves.

Yeah.

And to add to what Dr. Patel was saying, we already started doing that for our pilots for CKLA has been so successful that we've already begun our pilot, CKLA pilot teachers have already hosted at least, I think, two other districts who came to observe the implementation of the pilot and also get insight from us in terms of the process that we followed.

So that also is a plus in terms of we have made ourselves available as resource to other districts.

And if we get that grant, then we'll continue with that process.

I think it's also helpful to let the community know that we are constantly monitoring for state grants.

We're not just, we don't just sit and relying only on our operating budget.

We're constantly looking. I know for me, I receive, I'm part of a mailing list, and I thank Ms. Whittemore and Dr. Botello.

We get those list of grants, and we're constantly looking to see is there any one of them that we could be eligible for. So just today we receive a grant that we applied for back in February, you know, and then we have. So that's a constant thing that we're doing to make sure that we maximize every opportunity to add to the funding source that we, the community has, you know, has allocated to us as well.

Yeah, our principals and coordinators are really active in that regard too. They're always, they're usually finding things that we just found, but it's still great that we're all looking for together and trying to maximize those opportunities.

Can I just add there that just so the committee is aware, I've asked administration to in the future going forward and administration has agreed to at once a month present current enrollment encumbered expenses and how that's changed in the last month and then also an update on all grants and where we stand at that point so that we as a community can see the grants we're applying for and also when they're received just so folks are super aware of what's being applied for, whether or not we're missing things, which I'm confident that we're not, and also, you know, that those dollars are coming in. Also, at some point the school committee could, could agenda and consider a revolving account that would take in these grants and store, and store these funds for purchases like this. So these are things the school committee will have to take up and have discussion about, but I do want people to know that that's what's being discussed. Thank you.

Are there any questions from the table on this presentation?

Dan.

Thank you. I'm very encouraged that potentially within a couple of years we could have two new really high quality curricula both in reading and writing and in math at the elementary schools.

I had children in two of the different pilot programs for the CKLA reading curriculum, and I think the piloting might have seemed a little odd to some families at first, but I think the results of that pilot spoke for themselves, and I just had a question that having just gone through that, what I consider a successful reading pilot and selection, are you following basically the same process now to repeat that success?

Was there anything that you learned from doing that, that we're doing differently this time? No, we're pretty much going to be following, you know, pretty much the same playbook that we've followed, and I mean obviously math is slightly different than reading, but we, I think the process that we followed for CKLA, I mean for the reading, was pretty successful and that's the goal.

And the, basically the process really, you want to make sure that you communicate as you over communicate to parents.

You obtain as much feedback as possible from, or 360 feedback from kids, teachers, parents.

You go and visit other districts who are, who have used those programs to get a sense of their experience with it. You're able to actually observe for yourself, get some feedback.

Going into schools in terms of principals, administrators, senior leaders, to look at those pilots being implemented.

So look, basically we've, I think the playbook works, which is as much as possible, going to replicate it in other kind of field. Great. And will it follow the same pilot plan where all the students who are participating are going to be using high quality curriculum, but then halfway through the year, when there's a selection, they would all convert over to the new curriculum?

Is that, is that how it worked with CKLA and is that what you're doing this time too? So for CKLA, once we got to the point of decision, some of them, the ones who were piloting other programs, had a chance to switch over to CKLA. But the ones who were continuing the legacy programs continue.

And then getting training and then the goal is everyone would be going into the new program in September.

So that's a goal. That being said, out of really deference and respect for the team was going to come and piloting, I don't want to make all, you know, we have a huge amount of intellectual capital in the district, so we don't want to say, okay, this is the way it's going to be. Obviously, we have a playbook that we're going to encourage them to follow. But if any math teacher in the district has some amazing idea of how to tweak that implementation process, we're definitely going to have to basically adopt it. So I don't want to say this is, we're going to do it, you know, like replicate the CKLA process step by step.

This is going to be our playbook. But we also know that we have a lot of intelligent teachers who are going to be part of that process. So we need to be open to kind of like receive their additional feedback and incorporate that into almost like a continuous improvement process that hopefully the math one would be even better than the reading pilot.

Great.

Thank you. Just real quick, I did want to clarify.

The revolving account I mentioned would have to be passed at town meeting. It would still start at the school committee. But I don't want anyone's takeaway to be that I think the school committee can pass that on their own. Go ahead, Georgiane.

Thanks.

So as part of the CKLA like reflection and looking to the math, when we're vetting these curriculum, are we factoring in, are we communicating with special ed staff to get information on how the curriculum's scaffolding, differentiated?

Is it working for all of our kids? Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? Sure.

So one of the key requirements of even the committee is that we wanted to make sure that we have representation from every constituency.

So which is why, you know, the number of people are like almost 11 or 12. And the reason for that is we wanted to make sure we get grade level teachers, K1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We wanted to make sure we had EL teachers involved.

We wanted to make sure that we had special ed teachers, both inclusion and program special ed. So they're going to be part of the vetting of those programs.

And we also have criteria that we use to make sure, for example, that any program that we use, just like we did for reading, has embedded differentiation pieces in there for EL students, for special ed students, has some kind of like, so for example, intervention, so like CKLA has an intervention tool that we're also going to be purchasing.

So that's going to be the same kind of like criteria to make sure. And that's really one of the main reasons we wanted to make sure that we consider upgrading our math program and our reading program to make sure that our subgroups, the students in our subgroups, who, you know, they're doing, they're not doing as well as their gen ed students to make sure that we find a way to accelerate their growth and their progress.

So at the core, even from the, from the get-go, you're going to have special ed teachers in those committees.

And then part of the, almost like the rubric for evaluating those programs is going to be, how do they meet the needs of our special ed students?

How do they meet the needs of our EL students?

How do they allow teachers to make, to differentiate without, you know, spending hours and hours and hours of planning and creating new materials?

So that's definitely going to be part of the process. Perfect.

Thank you so much. Adam.

Thank you. I see this is a great presentation.

I'm also super supportive.

One question I have about the curriculum itself is, and you mentioned differentiation, which I am a huge, huge believer in. And so much is changing so quickly right now, kind of in the general AI space.

But would be super interested as you're vetting these, even to, to come back and like give the committee an update in terms of how that differentiation is working and which of these are more kind of future looking, in terms of being able to support kind of capabilities that may be present in the next couple of years, which may substantially accelerate and enable differentiation across students.

So I would just love to learn more about that as you do your research.

The other question I have is, so I know if, right, if we're looking at like the costs, there's kind of the first year cost and then it seems like kind of annual subscription fees effectively.

Yeah.

How much of those are in the current curriculum?

Like, are we currently also paying, you know, I'm trying to think like the recurring costs of like, set, looks like 50 to, or it actually looks like it's $90,000 now. Is that, is that right? So we're paying, built into the operating budget already, we have kind of $90,000 of the, like of funding to support the recurring fees.

Am I understanding that correctly?

Currently we have a six year contract that we paid in ahead of time. So we don't have an annual cost for the math expressions, student materials.

We don't have an annual cost in the, and the operating budget for math expression.

Okay. So I think.

But currently, but that ends 2027. That is correct.

Yeah.

And, and the way those things are structured is, so they have a program, the program has teacher guides and then consumables.

So these are things that get kids my writing.

So the teacher guides, hopefully everyone take good care of them. They can last a while.

For the consumables, you're probably going to have to like every year, you would have to spend some money to replenish those consumables.

The difference is if you do like a one year cost, so that's first year, you'll get your teacher guides, you know, $10 for it, and then $5 for your consumables, that's $15, right?

And for the three year, then you would probably just buy. It's just you pay for the three years, and then you'll get your teacher guide, and then you'll get your consumables for those. So it's like one big block of money.

But there's always a cost associated for most of these programs with the consumables that kids will end up using.

Okay.

It sounds like we should, as we get into the fall, kind of dig a little deeper into current versus future costs in terms of how, just how the costs are structured.

Yeah.

Upfront versus year by year, you know, where, which budgets we expect them to be paid out of effectively.

And I know when we were talking about the ELA curriculum and how that was ultimately funded, one of the questions was, should this be considered a capital expense?

Because that's kind of the one area where we can start to plan in advance for large-scale purchases.

Or maybe, to Avi's point, like maybe we should have a revolving fund that is allowing us to, for the town to kind of fund this on a regular basis until the point where we need to make a large expense for, you know, whether it's one year or three years or whatever that time commitment is. But I think we'll need to dig into that. And I think from a calendar perspective, I know you had up kind of beginning of November to kind of get some of that quote information.

Depending on when capital is meeting, and they usually meet in the fall around like November, December-ish area, our timeframe, it would be great if we could go into those meetings with those numbers so that at capital we could also discuss is this an appropriate place to fund?

How do we want to think about kind of where this curriculum is funded from? Yeah.

Yeah, that's, hopefully that's part of our goal that at least initially we have like a timeline of kind of like early November, November 1st through the 15th to get essentially the full price for all three that are being validated, even though we don't know what we're going to purchase.

Yeah.

But the goal is that you know, okay, yep, we have a range of making out of 100,000, 300,000, and by the time we find out exactly what we're going to use, then you can then go, at least you have a placeholder, right, for like the highest amount essentially.

But by the time you need to actually, a number for the actual budget, we should be all set, we should know by that point, or we will know by that point, which one we're going to use, and then you'll just take the actual number and put it in there. And then hopefully by that point too, it'll be, you know, almost 2026, so we'll get a much more realistic number for what the true costs will be when we're ready to actually pay them in the fall, in the spring of 2027.

So, perfect.

So, we should be in good shape. Thank you. All right.

Before we move on, I have a couple, I have a comment and a couple questions.

First of all, I just comment, I think it was a phenomenal presentation, Dr. Dajon, Ms. Kemp, incredibly thorough. I'm really appreciative of the timeline of where we are, and already having these conversations now.

I'm appreciative of the explanation as to why we would look at this, so both the educational and explaining to us why this matters, and then also giving us a lot of time here to understand the costs.

That's actually really helpful information also that the district paid for the previous curriculum up front. I know my colleague and I disagree on what we heard about capital, but that sounded more like a capital purchase to me, at least philosophically.

Adam, I think that probably what would be more appropriate, I think we should separate out capital outlays meetings from the decision makers that should have this conversation.

I think it would be appropriate to, in the fall, get a tri board meeting to talk about philosophically how these curriculums should be paid for, because I know last year Dan Lewenberg made the point at a finance committee meeting or a tri board that this was something that could be funded essentially by rollover year over year putting together, and we can in fact do that with the revolving accountants.

So, you know, these are all good conversations that I think should be had across the three boards.

The only real question I had for both of you was the piloting costs.

I saw that two of them are free, and then two of them have, depending on who's paying for it, little costs. You could call it small costs, you could call it big costs, but somewhere in the 10,000-ish range to pilot the program.

And so for me, I'm more concerned with that at this moment because we'll start talking budget, even over the summer, to start preparing, and those are numbers that will be in the next budget we vote. So do you, I guess, is the cost of the piloting a factor in your decision around piloting, or is, I mean, up front, I don't want it to be. I think we need to separate those two things, but I'm just looking at that cost, I guess, give us an idea of how we're going to pay for that.

Where is it going to come from? So our goal is hopefully to get the numbers as, the firm numbers as soon as possible, as soon as we know which program we're going to pilot. But I do have to say the cost of the pilot, and I know it's the awesome cost, cannot, like, be determinative in terms of which program that we... I support that. I support that they can. I see you're shaking your head. I think we all support that. At the end, we will continue to negotiate.

Like, there's a chance that that is the cost they typically charge, and if we say, well, we're not going to pilot your materials, then they might just cut it in half or change their minds. So we'll continue to do that up to the very last minute to see, because there's a major incentive for them to have us pilot, so. Right, because of the major purchase effort.

Okay, yeah, financially that's my answer. We've had success in the past with some negotiating pilots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect.

Excellent.

All right, then if there are no more questions from the table, thank you guys for the presentation. Thank you. And we'll move to the decision items.

All right.

I would entertain a motion to, hold on, which minutes do we have? All of them. Okay.

Let me just double check that I took them. Okay.

I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes for May 7th, 2025. So moved.

Second.

Dan.

Yes.

George Ann. Julie.

Yes.

Adam.

Yes.

I'm a yes. Motion carries.

4-0 with one abstention.

I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes from May 12th, 2025. So moved.

Second.

Dan.

Yes.

George Ann. Abstain.

Julie.

Yes.

Adam.

Yes.

And I'm a yes. Motion carries.

4-0 with one abstention.

I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes from May 28th, 2025. So moved.

Second.

Dan.

Yes.

George Ann. Yes.

Julie.

Yes.

Adam.

Yes.

And I'm a yes. Motion carries.

5-0.

And before I entertain a motion to approve the new food service fee for 2025, I do just want to clarify two quick things. One, it's a little vague. A motion to approve the new food service fees makes it sound broader than it is.

The fee we're being asked to vote tonight is changes to the second lunch and second breakfast.

And also I do just want to state that I had a meeting with, as part of the planning process for an agenda with our food service director, our assistant superintendent of finance and our superintendent where I saw the logic behind it and understood it. I know George Ann was very helpful.

We put some questions to administration that I felt also helped to clarify it. I do before just entertaining that motion want to ask if there are any questions from the table or if there's anything anybody needs to say. Um.

George Ann. So thank you for providing me with all that information.

It was helpful just to have a broad overview of the food program.

Um, I don't understand why we're doing this. I know you put the, uh, the document in there where we got cited. For food costs, but it doesn't say anything about second lunches.

It was all revolved around staff. So I still didn't get my original question answered, which is what, what is this about? Why, how, why are we here? Um, part of what they, um, they indicated in our last audit was that, um, that they look for, for sustainability.

They look for a certain amount of revenue to be coming from non program, um, food expenses.

So program is our core, you know, uh, lunch program are, um, that right now is being provided, um, for free.

Um, the non program include second breakfast, second lunches, a la carte items, stacks and things like that. Um, so they, um, strongly recommended in order to be in compliance for the next time we're audited to increase, uh, some of the prices on those as well as, uh, increase the number of a la carte items. So we've definitely done, uh, increase the number of, uh, a la carte items. And then also our food service director recommended, uh, increasing the price of the second, um, breakfast and lunch. Um, to be honest. I don't see that in the document. That's where I'm, I guess I'm confused. The document that's in our, uh, uh, this was, this, this is based upon the last, um, audit that we had of our food services from, from the state.

But why isn't it in this document?

Uh, I got that's where I'm getting lost. So we put the document in here. I'm just calling it up. Thank you. So, um, this is, thank you. Appreciate you. Yeah.

Um, so I don't see that, that piece of information in here. That, that's why I'm, I know it's a little thing, but I'm getting stuck on it because, um, I have a little issue with fees right now. So I want to make sure that I'm clear on why we're doing this. We were not out of compliance last time, but in, I think, um, we're not out of compliance.

But in, I think in the conversations we had about them, they had concerns about us maintaining compliance because of this, uh, lack of the, the, what they see as being the sustainable balance between the core program and, um, these non-program costs.

Um, so they, they indicated in that, in those, uh, in the, the meeting when they sat with us.

So I guess it's not in the written form, but it was in conversations.

So I, I just want to join with George Ann here and saying, for me, the, the fundamental, I, I follow the logic and I understood what, what the district's stance is, what I, but I disagree.