===PAGE 1=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 MEETING MINUTES SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, January 22, 2025 6:30 p.m. LMS room D132 - Hybrid School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair - present Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair - present Carol Archambault, Secretary - present Peter Beardmore, Member – present Laura Brzozoski, Member - present Recording Secretary Courtney Fuller Guests: Tim Santry – LMHS Principal, Dr. Deborah Bookis – Director of Teaching & Learning In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadc ast live over the Lunenburg Public Access channel, on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page. (http://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be uploaded to the Lunenburg Access YouTube after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order by Brian Lehtinen at 6:34 2. Pledge of Allegiance 3. Public Comment Peter Beardmore I was unable to attend last Friday’s meeting due to a professional commitment, and I have a fair understanding of the path we are on. Last Friday’s meeting was just posted today and I was unable to listen to i t, but I think that if we are going to appoint a screening committee, which I think we should, we need to be able to communicate with the screening committee. Ideally in advance of their work what our hopes and dreams are from a new superintendent. I can tell you they very closely align to those four goals that I communicated almost three years ago. I do have some thoughts in terms of core competencies of a prospective candidate and what we should lean into. In terms of who we should be selecting, or what the qualifications and talents are of the person I hope to select. I would hope to communicate that with the members of the selection committee in advance of them going down the process of screening resumes. I promised myself on the way in I would not be melodramatic about this, but, suffice to say this does come from a position of frustration. I know we tell our students to be prepared for class, I am very unprepared for tonight’s meeting. I checked th e folder yesterday at 3 p.m. and there was one document in it. I checked again today between work and going to a track meet and coming here, that document had been replaced and there were 10 more additional documents, plus two versions of the agenda. One of those documents was 39 pages long, I believe and heavily edited. I take this job pretty seriously and I don’t feel like I am able to give it my all, if I am not given the proper time to prepare. We had discussed this in a workshop and I believe the ask was 48 hours, and that is by far the exception to the rule. This is just not sustainable for me, particularly as we go in to the busy season. This is not directed at anyone in particular, I know what we have today represents a lot of wor k product and I am appreciative of that, but also have a full-time job, that I do a lot of work product for and I am expected to turn it in and give my superiors and team proper time, so I would appreciate it. Ms. Brzozoski I was going to talk more during the search committee part of things, about goals and coming up with what we we’re looking or from the committee and proposing a workshop, where we could all sit around at a table and collaboratively come up with what we were looking for. If we could have a discussion on that during the search committee part of the agenda that would be great. 4. Chair’s Report I would like to congratulate Jennifer Warren Dyment, who was selected as the Town Manager, by the select board. Recently Representative Scarsdale reached out, that UMASS Memorial was going to be taking over for Nashoba Lunenburg Public Schools Dr. Kate Burnham, Superintendent of Schools ===PAGE 2=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 Hospital, so that was good news. Ms. Archambault relayed today the information of the governor’s budget was put out today, so we will talk about that in the budget numbers. 5. Student Representative’s Report None 6. Review & Approve Minutes a. Regular Session 12/18/24 Mr. Sculimbrene makes a motion to approve minutes, Ms. Archambault seconds the motion, all approve with Mr. Beardmore abstaining 7. Review & Approve Line Item Transfers, Warrants, & Donations a. Warrants 1/7/25 to 1/15/25 $364,142.06 8. Superintendent’s Report I wanted to give some information relative to an item on the agenda a little bit later, the committee had asked me to explore alternatives for locations for Central Office. I did reach out to a realtor in town, currently there are no properties that would be adequate for our needs. We did reach out to get some information relative to leasing portable offices or trailers in order to provide enough space, we will be looking at three trailers and an approximate cost would be somewhere between $110,000 and $150,000 a year. The 911 phone upgrades we encountered a delay, the completion of the project was supposed to occur yesterday, however, the turnover of the system in each building requires participation of Verizon, these turnovers have to be scheduled with them for each building. The appointments for these turnovers have to be 10 days apart, so it’s going to be another couple weeks before we are fully turned over. A final update on the PowerSchool breach went out today, we are in the process of sending individual notices with recommended actions to take to anyone that we identified as potentially compromised through the breach, and those will be out by the end of the week. Reminders: February 5 School Committee Meeting 6:30 Town Hall February 26 School Committee Meeting 6:30 LMHS February 17 All Schools and Offices closed for Presidents Day February 18-21 Schools closed for Winter Vacation 9. Presentation None 10. New Business Action a. Preschool Tuition Increase There is a request for a 4% increase to tuition in FY26. Mr. Beardmore makes a motion to approve the increase, Ms. Archambault seconds the motion, all approve. Discussion b. Health & PE Curriculum Frameworks and PE Credits Mr. Santry and Dr. Bookis share a presentation explaining the requirements we need to provide to students with physical, mental, and social health. The presentation reviewed the updated principles, new goals and how to achieve them. We are looking at the program we currently provide and comparing it with the new framework and how it aligns and how we will adjust the program. The new program tends to focus on lifelong skills. c. LHS Program of Studies Mr. Santry shared the proposed programs for FY26 with necessary changes that best meet the needs of our students. A copy has been provided to the committee. The biggest change this year is the removal of MCAS as a graduation requirement. Competency determination is described as “Require students to demonstrate mastery of the common core skills competency and knowledge in 10th grade level of English, Math, and Science. d. Budget Calendar From the chair of the Finance Committee we will be presenting our budget on March 6 th, this is one week ahead of our expectations and 2 weeks ahead of the norm. e. FY 26 Proposed Budget Ms. Archambault had mentioned the governors proposed budget came out and the Lunenburg FY26 local aid distribution for Chapter 70 funding is proposed at $9,191,185, the unrestricted general government aid $1,330,762. This does include the fifth year of Student Opportunity Act implantation. The inflation is 1.93% in all categories. There is a $75 per pupil minimum increase included which is different from last year, I believe it was $104 per pupil. Dr. Burnham shares a presentation on the FY26 budget. This presentation is more for context and a reality check. The revenues we have been able to rely on in recent years are dwindling, grant money is gone, and our revolving accounts are tapped out. We have built a lot into our budget for this year, this is the result of those issues. The presentation will be posted online. ===PAGE 3=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 f. School Choice The committee discusses the advantages and disadvantages of opening school choice seats for the elementary level versus only the high school level. Ultimately the committee decides to table this topic until after the budget is approved, in order to discuss proposed class sizes. 11. Old Business Discussion a. Recommendations on Competency Determinations This was discussed earlier under the Program of Studies part of the agenda b. Search Committee An email has gone out to parents and staff regarding the search for members to apply to be on this committee. It has been posted on the School Committee’s Facebook Page, and also the community page. The library said they would post it as well, I have reached out to the senior center and the Ledger, the Ledger has a $50 fee to advertise, committee agrees it is fine to pay that $50 to have this advertised. This is also posted in the superintendent search folder to the applicants both internal and also the external applicants. So far I think we have had 6 people submit a letter for the 10 spots plus Brian and Carol. A reminder that we will start with internal candidates, we currently have up to 6 that are qualified, we will go through that process and if th ere weren’t any that we felt fit the position, we will open up an external search. Ms. Brzozoski recommends if we do not hire an internal candidate, we reach out to MASC and engage with them for services for a superintendent search, this does have a fee of $11,500, but this does open the candidate pool up nationwide. A future meeting for February 29 is planned to further the discussion and vote on committee members and a workshop c. District Offices Dr Burnham shares they did explore other options, however what we are seeing with the upcoming budget, I think we need to stay closer to a free option of moving into space at Turkey Hill. The town would like to know definitively when we will be moving out, my thoughts are its going to take a bit of time and it will be over the summer, throughout the month of July. With the plans of the future to move to the Ritter Building, I did drop some handwritten notes based on feedback and some discussion, the concern is that there may not be enough square footage at that building. The architects are continuing to work on plans and constantly adjusting based on feedback and discussions. 12. Reports Mr. Beardmore reports the Capital Planning Committee will be hosting a meeting for next Wednesday, we will be reviewing an early look at the Interim Town Manager’s recommendations for the Capital Plan and some of his thinking around funding for the capital plan. We will be discussing the issue relating to the generator a nd the issue with the dollar value on that generator will be discussed. I think another item likely to be discussed is the need for a definitive plan for the track and field facility, this is getting to a point it needs to be dealt with. We are not going to have this information available and ready for a warrant article as an offset the interim Town Manager his looking at a solution to do a separate article funded by free cash to move forward with design and bid ready documents. We have Athletic Advisory meetings for next Tuesday and the following Monday, Dr. Gilson, Mr. Bigelow and myself will be having an open meeting for parents to listen to the proposal for the increase in athletic fees and have the change to provide us with feedback. They are being notified via the SportsYou app, which is the primary means of communications for athletes and parents. We will also be submitting information to the superintendent and Mr. Santry to have the information included in newsletters. Ms. Brzozoski reports LEAF met and we talked about getting our 501C3 status. We met with a tech person who is going to answer some of our questions and consult with us about grant cycle. Ms. Archambault reports FinCom will meet on February 13 th Mr. Sculimbrene PTO met on the 6th, they talked about the movie fundraiser, they had a projection of 400 tickets, and they sold 378 of them and made $478 there were a couple of no shows due to a conflict with basketball. They also have their special someone dance on February 1. The next event they are also talking about is requests for funds with people in school administration, they had some good things to say about the process. They are putting out applications for people to join the PTO. Also working on coordinating a game with the Worcester Railers as we have some of our students singing the National Anthem, so maybe a Lunenburg Night. One last committee update, I spoke with Mike Kushmerek last week, he is introducing the bus inspection bill that I had written and talked to his Legislative Assistant about, basically what it would is, it would compel bus companies, in order to complete inspections to show that they have made competitive bids in multiple places over a 5 year period, so the hope is that we can strongly encourage them to take part in capitalism as a way to drive down prices. Mr. Lehtinen reports him and Carol met with the Sick Bank Committee, we had two requests, one was unanimously approved for 30 days and one was unanimously denied for lack of supporting data, we also hav e an additional meeting this Friday which we expect to be that additional data we requested. The Lunenburg Municipal Building Design Committee met tonight at 5:30, they did have an updated design from the architect, and it definitely ===PAGE 4=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 had a lot of good improvements. The architects are definitely listening to and taking the feedback to make adjustments. It would be great if more public came out to the meetings and gave feedback, overall it is going well. 13. Public Comment Mr. Sculimbrene I wasn’t here when you announced your retirement (Dr. Burnham) last time. I just want to say that I have learned a lot listening to you give presentations here and talking to you during the budget process and on policy subcommittee. You deserve a break, but I am sad to see you go. 14. Topics for Future Discussion 15. Adjournment Ms. Brzozoski makes a motion to adjourn at 9:39, Ms. Archambault seconds the motion all approve via roll call vote Respectfully Submitted Courtney Fuller