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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSchool Comm. 12/18/2018Approve 1-15-19 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Town Hall, 2 Park Row, Mansfield, MA 02048, Room 3ab An Open Meeting of the Mansfield School Committee was held in room 3AB of the Town Hall on Tuesday, December 18, 2018. The open meeting session was called to order by Kiera O'Neil at 7:03p.m. Members Present: Administration Present: Kiera O'Neil Teresa Murphy, Superintendent of Schools Lynn Cavicchi Michael Connolly, Assistant Superintendent (Teaching/ Learning) Linda Fernando Edward Donoghue, Assistant Superintendent (Finance/Operations) Lauren Scher Jenn Walsh Members Absent: None cn a Video Recordine: None rn� Communications: None c><r, Q. ern crs C toy m. Superintendent Report: Mr— o0 -n Teresa announced that the girls' basketball team held their annual endowment game. This yEgr's preseason game raised a significant amount of money for a MHS staff member and a MIMUTAnt who are both battling serious health issues. The double header was well attended. Parents assisted with gift baskets and by seeking out donations from local businesses. Teresa also took the time to wish everyone happy holidays. New Business: Assistance Dogs in School: Teresa provided history that three years ago, a staff member approached the superintendent to suggest a therapy dog program. At the time, the district was unable to pursue. A year and half ago, Kenneth Wright, SRO, started to research various programs. He has worked with the initial staff member and the district and is now looking into the details. The district has some work to do regarding protocols and practices but Teresa feels we are in a good position to move forward. Ken noted that there are a lot of student anxiety and home issues that are filtering into the schools. As SRO, Ken has spent a significant amount of time with counselors helping students through these situations. He has reviewed a program that is currently in use in Walpole. He has also looked into several organizations that provide these animals. Ken clarified that the difference between a therapy dog which receives low level training for approximately 8 weeks and an assistance dog which is a service dog fully trained for 18 months. These dogs are calm, trained and very good in crowds. There are 17 school districts currently using an assistance dog with great success. Superintendent's in some of the districts contacted spoke very highly of the program. Examples of districts are Walpole, Medfield, and Plymouth. We are requesting an Assistance Dog. There is no cost to the district. The organization provides the training and the dog for free. The district then is asked to consider donations to the organization once they have seen success. Districts have held very successful fundraisers for these organizations. Ken Wright would be the handler and keeper of the dog. The dog will live with him and he will absorb all costs in owning the dog. He will be the only handler of the dog at school. The district will determine practices for Page 1 of 5 Approve 1-15-19 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Town Hall, 2 Park Row, Mansfield, MA 02048, Room 3ab students with allergies. If issues arise, then the dog will be kept away from those students. For those that are scared of dogs, these assistance dogs have been known to help remove that fear from people. However, nothing will be forced. Next steps: If approved by School Committee, then Ken will contact the organization and start the interview process. He will be interviewed for our needs and the appropriate dog will be chosen. If approved there is a 6 - 12 month waiting period for the right dog to receive its training. Questions: Lauren Scher: What happens to dog if Ken has an emergency? Ken will provide a kennel/crate in his office where the dog could stay if Ken had to leave him for any reason. The dogs are trained to consider this crate their safe spot and have no issues being left. Lynn Cavicchi: Do we have any service dogs in school now? No. How do we measure success? Ken indicated the overall well being of the students but noted a couple of specific student success stories in other schools so he feels we will be able to easily document the success. A motion to approve The Mansfield Public School's ongoing process to obtain an Assistance Dog by Linda Fernando / Jenn Walsh Motion Carries 5 - 0 FY20 Budget Review and Approval: Ed reviewed the contents of the presentation. The goal for this evening is to provide a high level summary so that the school committee can vote to approve the proposed budget amount. Per town charter, we must supply this information to the town manager so that he can present the initial town budget by January 7th (the first Monday in January.) The central services budget line item is up because technology has been pulled back out of capital (FY19) and put into our budget. There are also additional legal fees due to upcoming negotiations. The facilities budget is down due to cost savings with the trash vendor, gas contract, fuel costs. In total the increase is 2.81% which is very close to the increase amount set by the town. Lynn Cavicchi noted that we need to remove the word "level services" since we are adding a position. Change will be made. Teresa Murphy spoke on the new positions: The following staff changes are included in our proposed budget: MHS Business Department Head: Currently our arrangement is a bit unusual since the Athletic Director also handles the business department. This had been proposed many years ago during tough budget times. Creating a business only department head would allow us to have someone with expertise in the business discipline. Also, as we readjust how we prepare students for careers, the business department will be an important aspect of our curriculum. Instructional Technology Coach: This staff member will work with administrators, teachers and staff to facilitate the effective and strategic integration of technology within the curriculum. The position will also focus on providing professional learning that will expand and refine the understanding of technology integration and its role in designing authentic learning experiences. This staff member will provide support to the current Director of Digital Learning. Page 2 of 5 Approve 1-15-19 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Town Hall, 2 Park Row, Mansfield, MA 02048, Room 3ab Roland Green Administrator: Our current administrator at Roland Green works 2 days per week. When the district moved to this model three years ago, the School Committee questioned the model thinking that it would be difficult to support Roland Green on a part time basis. The district now sees that we need to move to a full time model. We would like to convert the .4 FTE into a 1.0 FTE. MHS Calendar Year Office Assistant: There has been a lot of pressure on the high school office staff to keep up with the demands of students, families, faculty, staff, administrators and DESE. Teresa has identified this office as being understaffed for many years. Currently there is only one office assistant working over the summer months which is quite difficult. The following staff requests are not included in our proposed budget. However, we would like to move on these positions if we can add to our budget or if we can shift positions: JJ STEAM Teacher: Currently we have a computer lab, the innovation station and a science lab at J/J along with an influx of chrome books. Teresa would like to see an experienced J/J teacher come out of a classroom for a year and replace that person with a one year position (assuming enrollment numbers do not change dramatically.) The STEAM teacher would support J/J faculty, model technology lessons; co -teach with classroom teachers and provide PD offerings. At the end of the year we will evaluate the position. Interventionists at Robinson, J/J, QMS, MHS (4 FTEs): We have discussed how we need to focus on the lowest 25% of our student population in support of our accountability reports. These interventionists would provide additional remediation services to those students in need. Discussion: Kiera O'Neil noted that this year's budget preparation, while similar to last year, is very different from years past when we would go in with a high number and then have to make cuts for the final budget. Now, we are working toward the goal set by the town and then will work to tweak the budget over the next few weeks. Lauren asked for clarification on the MHS Health Grant. What happens if that falls through? If the grant is not provided, we would be unlikely able to support the bridge program at the high school. The grants are intended to provide something "extra" not something that would be moved into the budget. Are there any STEAM grant opportunities? Teresa had not pursued this but will look into. Lauren noted that the business department head position seems like it should be a College and Career Readiness Department with a sub group of business. Teresa thought her question had merit and would review. Linda Fernando asked about the structure of the new department head position. Would that person teach any classes? Yes, the department chair will teach no more than 2 classes (or 4 semester classes.) This will provide the opportunity to add to our program offerings. Kiera O'Neil asked if the department chair is a full time position. Yes, 2 classes and the remainder of the time is spent as the chair. Is the Roland Green position a full year or school year? It will likely be a school year plus 20 days but this is still up for review. Teresa noted that we are working with DESE to determine if the leader of the Roland Green School must be a principal or if it can be a special education licensed director. We are awaiting a response. Page 3 of 5 Approve 1-15-19 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Town Hall, 2 Park Row, Mansfield, MA 02048, Room 3ab Jenn Walsh is concerned about the cost of a new tech position and asked Mike to elaborate on the role. Mike noted that the district built this area from the top down when Julia Greenstine was hired. It had been noted in the 5 year Technical Plan that we would start to populate the department with staff. With the upcoming MCAS testing, Julia will be extremely busy preparing the chromebooks, classrooms and processes for online testing. Currently each school has a part time coach which is paid through a stipend. Time is limited however, since teachers do this work after hours. Jenn questioned how this position gets prioritized over the interventionists at each school, especially if we are trying to help our lowest performing students. Teresa noted that we were finally able to put forth a 5 year technology plan and we need to try our best to support the plan that was created. The district is not minimizing the importance of the interventionists. Lynn Cavicchi asked about the grant position. The grant proposal noted that there were over 200 students last year that would benefit from the services of this new grant. She feels that if the grant is not approved we should be making sure we provide for such help in the budget. She also feels that the interventionists should be a priority as we are supporting our lowest performing students. Regarding the STEAM teacher at J/J; why are we pulling subjects out separate? Teresa noted that this person would model, coach or co -teach in the classroom. This would not be a pull out or specialist class. Is there an overlap with the J/J STEAM position and the instructional technology coach? Teresa responded that yes, both of these positions would be able to provide support to Julia. Lynn noted that the budget process is somewhat flawed. The school committee votes on a budget number without having a chance to see all the detail behind the numbers as that does not get presented until January. How can we shift the timeline to help with this? Teresa noted that this process already starts at the beginning of October and was also complicated this year by the early planning for capital and the fall town meeting. It was agreed that in the future, additional budget subcommittee meetings should be held throughout the process. This year the budget subcommittee focused on 1:1 technology. Although this was a big component of the budget, it did not leave time for other review. Kiera felt that we are voting on a starting point as needed by charter. We don't have a lot of leeway with the number as the goal was set by the town. She felt we could vote on our best estimate and then work toward refining the numbers. She also noted that for the STEAM teacher we need very concrete goals set in order to evaluate the position. Lauren sees both sides of the budget process discussion. Maybe a little more detail in December would be helpful for the initial vote. She also asked if principals could present in December rather than January. Teresa didn't think it would be possible to pull that level of detail for December. Motion to approve the Mansfield Public School's FY20 Budget Proposal Amount of $51,860,524 by Linda Fernando/Jenn Walsh Discussion: None Page 4 of 5 Approve 1-15-19 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Town Hall, 2 Park Row, Mansfield, MA 02048, Room 3ab Motion Carries 5 - 0 Citizens Comments: None New School Committee Business: None Other- Items not anticipated by the Chair 48 hours prior to this meeting: None Documents Referenced: Assistance Dogs in Schools FY20 Budget Initial Presentation Motion to adjourn: At 8:24p.m., Motion to adjourn the open meeting by Linda Fernando / Jenn Walsh Motion Carries 5 - 0 Respectfully Submitted, Diane Nugent, Secretary to the Superintendent & School Committee Page 5 of 5