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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSchool Comm. 12/05/2023Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 05, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar An Open Meeting of the Mansfield School Committee was held in person and virtually on Tuesday, December 05, 2023. The open meeting session was called to order by Chair Lynn Cavicchi at 7:01 p.m. Members Present: Administration Present: Lynn Cavicchi (Chair) Teresa Murphy, Superintendent Jenn Walsh (Vice Chair) Michael Connolly, Assistant Superintendent (Teaching/Learning) Steve Schoonveld Ed Donoghue, Assistant Superintendent (Finance/Operations) Members Absent: Vivian Webster Jenifer Sellon Note: Technical issues at the start of the meeting caused a 30 minute delay and prevented us from broadcasting over GoToWebinar. However, Mansfield Cable Access did live stream for local viewers. --i Public Speak: None C) Administrative Reports: None n C") rT1 gyp lC-)_Ti w - High School Representative Report: V' M �7 U) Andrew Fleischmann was present this evening. He reported on current activitib§l�t the ?,& Rai including the start of winter sport season. Performing arts in full gear with the annual musics s jazz ensemble, winter concert and caroling at home. The math team attended theirrfirst awi,mm MHS Leadership Academy and Student Voice Summit are well attended. Anoroval of Warrant: Goods & Salary & Goods & Salary & Goods & Services Wages Services Wages Services 24014S 2024-8 24016S 2024-9 24018S 10-3-23 10-13-23 10-17-23 10-27-23 10-31-23 General Fund 583,685.54 1,719,663.16 293,579.26 1,737,401.03 425,747.67 Medicare - 4,007.03 - 2,539.20 - Capital 129,680.00 - - - 34,420.00 Revolving 26,964.90 83,267.06 534.16 74,839.57 2,136.46 Food Service 60,316.50 32,973.11 59,411.67 37,468.89 60,546.39 Gifts 950.00 - 78.83 - 111.37 Student Activity - - - 204.45 - Granls 978.00 77,496.31 9.424.50 77,703.24 23,142.97 Prior Year 30,680.30 - 19,403.76 - 465.34 833,265.24 1,917,406.66 382,432.18 1,930,166.38 646,670.20 Page 1 of 6 Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 05, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar Motion to approve the warrant memo dated 11-9-23 by Jenn Walsh / Steve Schoonveld Motion carries 3 - 0 Approval of Minutes: Date 1st 2nd Discuss YN Vote Roll Call 11-14-23 JW I SS I N 3 - 0 Sub Committee Updates: Budget Subcommittee: Met with members of FinCom to provide them with our budget thoughts in our early planning stages. Old Business: None New Business: Consideration of Field Trips: Justin DeJoy was in attendance to discuss two high school percussion competition trips to Trumbull, CT and Cranston, RI. There is zero student cost for the RI trip. The CT trip will be approximately $50 per student. Details and finances were presented. This is consistent with competitions in prior years. Motion to approve the MHS Percussion Competition trip to Trumbull, CT by Jenn Walsh / Steve Schoonveld Motion carries 3 - 0 Motion to approve the MHS Percussion Competition trip to Cranston, RI by Jenn Walsh / Steve Schoonveld Motion carries 3 - 0 Justin also provided some information on an upcoming request which is for the MHS/QMS Color Guard to attend their own competition at Cranston, RI in the same date as percussion. There is no cost to the students. Additional approvals at the school level were required since there are students from two schools attending. The committee will vote on 12/12 once they review the written request. Presentation of Mansfield Public Schools Vision Draft: Rayna Freedman (Teacher) and Taylor Palinki (MHS student) presented the first draft of our District's Vision and Mission Statements. They spoke on behalf of a team of students, parents and staff. They briefly discussed their process and described the differences between vision, mission and core values. They noted the inconsistencies that exist today as well as the lack of knowledge of these items existing in our district today. Various resources for the working group included the MHS portrait of a graduate, the MPS current vision and mission statements, the draft DEI vision statement as well as sample vision statements from other districts. Our new draft vision and Page 2 of 6 Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 05, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar mission statements were read to the committee. The next step is to solicit feedback from a wide range of stakeholders. The working group has created a survey that will be sent out on Wednesday Following this survey, the feedback will be reviewed and then steps will be taken to move forward such as creating a tagline, discussing how to engage all stakeholders and then presenting to school committee for approval. Rollout plans will be detailed at that time. Questions/Answers: Steve Schoonveld asked how the survey will read. There will be three questions: I like; I wish; What if. How many people will be surveyed? Approximately 600 - 800 surveys will be sent out. Will the mission be consistent from school to school? Will each school use similar terms? The district vision and mission will be created first. Schools will then pull in the themes but re -work for age appropriateness. Steve noted that he liked the idea of a tagline making it easy to remember. jenn Walsh loves the work and has enjoyed watching it grow. She is looking forward to the next presentation and to see where we end up. Lynn Cavicchi noted that abstract concepts are difficult to make accessible and understandable. This is an impressive undertaking and will do much to bring the district together. Presentation of Pride Plus Survey. Health Director Christine Dooling presented. This survey has been administered every other year for approximately 10 years and was formally known as the Communities that Care Survey. Now it is known as the Parent Resource Institute for Drug Education (PRIDE) survey. Key areas of focus are substance abuse including alcohol, vaping and marijuana and student mental health including thoughts of suicide. The survey was given to grades 6, 8 and 10. Data showed variations between grades and trends over the last few years. Questions/Answers: Steve Schoonveld- How does the group will check the validity of responses? Christine noted that the responses are confidential so we cannot follow up specifically. There are other tools used in the schools including interviews with students. The survey itself is built with several questions asking the same thing in different ways which helps to weed out skewed answers. Are there tools online for parents and can this information go out in newsletters? There are helpful links on our health & wellness page. The survey results will also be posted to the website. He noted that one of the questions asks about sports participation but there are not sports at the middle school. Does this include outside organizational sports? Yes, it does. Lynn Cavicchi- Will the results will be incorporated into the health curriculum? In health we have already made changes alcohol and drug information. Our SROs have been heavily involved. The new state curriculum will help. Christine would also like to share some of the findings with our high school students. How do we get this survey on parents' radar? Can we send out in a newsletter? There is a lot of data so it is better suited for our webpage. There will be a link on our home page. Christine reminded the committee that we get very little turnout when we hold health related presentations to parents. We are exploring ways to get more family engagement. Page 3 of 6 Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 05, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar Based on the responses for grade 6, are there any concerns that we are not teaching enough at the J/J level? Christine noted that we slowly start to roll out decision -making skills at the elementary level. We are not happy with the grade 6 results but results are similar to that at state level. We don't believe we need to change messaging at J/J. Teresa noted that during QMS curriculum nights, we held the "Hidden in Plain Sight" demonstration where a model of a teen's bedroom is setup for tours. It demonstrates where teens tend to hide things. Our QMS administrators encouraged parents to swing by. Approximately 30 parents viewed the room and found it very informative. We hope to piggyback health related information on nights when parents are in the building for other events such as conferences. How effective is our relationship with McClean Hospital? Christine noted that our findings are not any different than anywhere. However, we are all concerned about the increase in mental health concerns in our youth. One positive note is that students tend to be able to verbalize their feelings more than in the past and that is helpful. We are very happy with our partnership with McClean. Presentation of -Special Education IEP Improvement Plan: Director of Special Education Jim Leonard presented along with his two assistant Special Education Directors Tim Tichacek and Jessica Davis. DESE has embarked on a brand new IEP format and process. Jim noted that this is a significant improvement to the way schools have been managing IEPs in the past. The idea is to emphasize what a student can do rather than highlight all of the student's weaknesses. There is a brand-new form which is much easier for parents to understand. The old form was very clinical in nature, very long and difficult to understand for the average student or parent. This concept was first introduced last year and many districts dove right in and started on board this fall. Mansfield chose to wait until 2024 to migrate to the new process. This has allowed us ample opportunity to learn the new process, build a timeline, make sure ASPEN (our student information system) is up and ready with the modifications and to plan lessons and office hours for staff. We are very optimistic about our rollout as well as the impact to our students and families. As student IEPs are up for renewal, the IEPs will be converted to the new format. Questions/Answers: Steve Schoonveld- How does this improve the process for parents? Jim noted that the process is very much improved. The current form is 20 years old and is not reflective of how we operate today. Forms will be much easier to understand. The approach will be to engage all staff, students and parents. Jim is very excited about this opportunity. He noted that DESE has provided a lot of guidance and tools to help us migrate. Jenn Walsh - Do you think these improvements will trickle down to the 504 process? Jim is not sure. They are two very distinct processes today and the changes are geared to the IEP. However, we may learn some processes that we can eventually carry over to the 504 processes. Lynn Cavicchi- She is glad that we have made the choice to wait a year. Districts that jumped right in are having a very difficult time. We are also lucky that we use the ASPEN student information system. They Page 4 of 6 Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 05, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar have embraced the change and have worked hard to modify their system to adapt. That isn't true of all software systems used by other districts. How do we intend to roll out to parents? Jim noted we are rolling out information a little at a time. Then we will present to the SEPAC parents, group and start having office hours for anyone interested in coming in for information. We will target various groups and then individual parents. An important concept is that parents with the old IEP would often walls in confused or intimidated by the amount of detailed complicated information on the IEP. Now parents will be empowered by the fact that they can understand the document provided to them. It will make parents much more comfortable at the meeting. Additionally, the document lends itself to a nice agenda for the meeting. Presentation of FY25 School Budget: Assistant Superintendent Ed Donoghue presented. He refreshed the committee on the annual process of building a budget with our administrators and fine tuning it as best as possible. The initial budget is presented to School Committee for a vote prior to sending to the town manager. In January, we will present the details behind the numbers showing details at the cost center level. From there, the school and town will work cooperatively to reduce the budgets as needed for final approval at town meeting. The budget as presented represents a level service budget meaning the school will provide the same level of service to our students. The FY25 budget is $61,548,680 which is an increase of $4,065,686 or 7% over the FY24 budget. Ed reviewed the consolidates spreadsheet which compares the FY23, FY24 and FY25 budgets at a high cost center level. Of note, schools did not need any textbooks in FY24 but do need to purchase in several departments for next year representing an increase. Our central services budget has increased due to the increased assessment placed on us by Bristol Aggie. Our facilities budget has increased mostly due to rising costs of supplies and contracted services. Overall, we face other increases due to the loss of COVID relief grants. While the grants have gone away, the need for our students has not. At the next meeting, December 12th, the committee will vote on this budget. There were a few requests for modifications to the slides. Some of these will be made for December 12th while others will be incorporated in the January 9th presentation. School Committee Business: Upcoming meeting dates were reviewed. Other- Items not anticipated by the Chair 48 hours Drior to this meetine: Documents Referenced: MHS percussion field trips PRIDE Survey presentation Vision Statement presentation IEP Improvement Project presentation FY25 Budget presentation Minutes Warrant Page 5 of 6 Approved 01-09-24 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December OS, 2023 In Person & Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar Motion to adjourn: At 9:06 p.m., Lynn Cavicchi asked for a motion to adjourn. Motion made by by Steve Schoonveld / jenn Walsh. Motion carries 3 - 0 Respectfully Submitted, Diane Nugent, Administrative Assistant to Superintendent & School Committee Page 6 of 6