January 27, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

January 27, 2026 - School Committee

Autoscroll:

it's great i just want to acknowledge our public works and custodial teams 36 hours straight some people work to allow us to have a two-hour delay and be open today and i just want to acknowledge many districts were not open and it was really their work that made it all happen under very difficult circumstances so i just want to acknowledge and thank all of them thank you it was a lot of snow it was a lot of stone they were out there early they were absolutely david i could feel that there would just be a delay if anything so yeah thank you okay so we are officially recording broadcasting and we have sound so that's great um anybody else have a happy share did anybody attend the mlk celebration on monday it was wonderful our students did a tremendous job rivers putting it together our medco direct teachers which i also heard again at the mlk assembly of the middle school okay so let's start with the superintendent's update all right two important topics tonight um one of our district goals this year is to adopt a new reading curriculum we are fortunate enough to have sarah sontag leading that effort um sarah of course has great expertise in this area and works so well with a broad team of people so sarah's going to come up in little context um before we start about you know why we're doing this what the goals are who she's working with come on up sarah thank you so much going on uh so i'm going to talk a little bit about um what our current curriculum is what the process has been uh where we are with the pilot um and then just we also are doing some work with the dyslexia institute this year so i'm going to just add a little bit on what we're doing there and then if you have any questions you can ask me for that so our current curriculum we have been using reading strategies taught through varied texts um so what is being taught at across grade levels um sometimes you know grade level teams they always um in the buildings will work together but oftentimes they don't really get to communicate with other buildings they don't have a lot of time to do that so we have some varied things going on in buildings um we have empowering writers we've had for three years which is um largely reading based and a lot of annotating texts um so sometimes people feel like we are have a reading program and then another reading program that um also does writing so that's one of the things that we are thinking about as we look into the program and then for foundational skills we have um in k2 had hagerty for phoenix awareness and foundations um and estrogyta lunita for phonics for our spanish version so these are our why's for a new curriculum we want to stay current with the research and reading with the science of reading we want to make sure that our students are represented in the texts um that there are voices and cultures that there are wide range of voices cultures mirrors windows all of those things we want to make sure that it's knowledge building so we feel like we've had a pretty strong understanding of the science of reading on one part that students need systematic phonics instruction but the other piece we're really building knowledge over time we haven't seen and these new curriculum's offer that which is nice some consistency across schools and grade levels so we want to make sure that people are having equitable equitable experiences and that everybody has access to a rigorous culturally responsive curriculum so these are just two different things they talk about with signs of reading like i said previously there is the word recognition and the language comprehension piece as we see on scarborough's right rope on the left we have been doing a pretty good job i think with the word recognition for our general students using foundations integrity and adding some sight words in there some students need more of that which we typically cover with intervention but the language comprehension piece has just been varied what we're teaching not that we're not teaching it but that it's varied and then there's the simple view of reading which is just another research and that's where we have word recognition and language comprehension in order to have reading comprehension you need to have both of those things so this is just looking at our literacy screener which is uh dibble which we do through amplify and the circled number at the top just says that 73 percent of our students are at benchmark or above and i'm sorry sorry is that cat through five and then we can see that there's a difference here with our students and ieps that only 48.7 percent of them are meeting benchmark and 26.3 percent of our multilingual learners
so that is some of the reason that we are looking at a newer curriculum because we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of all of our students not just some of our students so what a new curriculum offers so there's word work that's from kindergarten through fifth grade that builds on it and right now we don't have anything consistent beyond second grade so people are pulling from different places and the skills are spiraled and continue students are having an opportunity to strengthen through practice then there are units of studies that are consistent throughout the grade level helping students build knowledge so you'll see in a little bit but each of the programs that we're piloting have knowledge they have between eight and ten knowledge building units and they build over time across the grade levels one of the programs aligns more tightly with the things that you're seen and one a little bit more loosely but either way they're in units of study for four to six weeks learning about one topic and the vocabulary is centered around the same topic so they're able to really use the vocabulary that they are learning because they're staying with something for a longer period of time so why does this matter for our students they're building strong foundation and reading through clear step-by-step instruction they get continued practice strengthening those skills over time not only are students learning word work at an early age but they're also focusing on prefixes suffixes greek and latin roots morphology and vocabulary which helps with comprehension all students are having access to meaningful texts so all of the texts that are within the new curriculums are at or above grade level um in fact we're i'll tell you a little bit more when we get to the pilot process but the first week has been really challenging i think for for teachers and for some students because they don't have the background knowledge we're starting a pilot mid-year which is kind of tricky um but they're learning about pretty complex complex things so the programs are all systematic and aligned they are all have clear focus they have target lessons that are they cover phonological awareness phonemic awareness phonics fluency and comprehensions and they collect connect to previously taught lessons so every lesson that we're going to see ties to the lesson that they did previously goes over what they did before and then moves on
so we have learned over time that we need kids to practice their phonics skills and then see it in connected text so each of the programs has their own decodable texts that come with them that allow students the opportunity to practice those skills within text each program has eight to ten knowledge units where students build knowledge intentionally in a sequence text set um they are aligned around one singular topic and they have literary informational um texts all kind of bits the way that we teach writing right now is that we do informational and then we do narrative and they're sort of all woven together um in the beginning of some of the units that we're doing right now there is a lot more reading in the beginning lessons so if you for instance in a third grade class have a 90 minutes for reading and writing in the beginning of that unit you might see more reading and less writing and then towards the end there's a culminating um project where you'll see more writing so maybe there's only 10 minutes of reading and 80 minutes of writing towards the end which is something different than we've seen previously there's direct vocabulary instruction um there's vocabulary instruction in several ways so there are not only morphology and word work but also based on whatever unit of study you are um so it helps students not only engage in being able to code and to spell more with complex patterns that you see in greek and latin roots but also that things are that are content related as well so what we're really looking to shift over this has been a really huge change um is to have the students doing the majority of the work when we're doing the lessons both speaking listening and reading and writing and um i think previously in teaching sometimes there's a little bit more teacher talk and less student talk so that's something that we're looking at in both of the the students do the work um we want them to struggle through the work um because that's how they learn but then we want to put structures and supports in place for students that need it um so that they can talk to each other ask questions and deepen their learning so we started reviewing last spring on ed reports and curates selecting curriculums to further review we ended up with six curricula and we invited publishers to visit we reviewed the teacher's guides and lessons using jesse rubrics then we narrowed it down to three and then we reviewed subjects more visited schools using the program and then we narrowed it to two that we're going to pilot so sometimes a pilot will go where different teachers are piloting different things we decided not to go that way because we really wanted people to be able to experience both so that they can compare and contrast what they're doing so we are in three to five doing four weeks of one and four weeks of another so they'll do like one unit of study and one and one unit of study in another um and then we tried to finish up before amcast starts because there's really not a possibility that people the schedule is going to change it's going to get crazy so we decided to do four weeks in four weeks whereas k2 we decided to do it a little bit longer because we have a little more time and the schedule is less disrupted so we're doing six weeks in six weeks the teachers all volunteered to do the pilot um there might have been some coaxing for a few but mostly we were looking for people at every different grade level um people that are in the spanish immersion program we were looking at people that are teaching in a co-taught uh we were also uh looking for somebody that's attached to the language based program uh we have some reading specialists we have el teachers we have special ed teachers uh because we really wanted as many voices as possible and we know this is going to look different in different places so um just figuring out how it's going to work best for our students but those are the names of the people in all of the buildings that are piloting so the curriculum we chose for the two to pilot are amplified ckla um which ckla met is like a we're used to the what's the word i'm looking for platform we're used to the platform because we use it with um dibbles and amplify and they talk to each other um so it's been just sort of an extra button for us to click through um benchmark advanced um is the other one that we will be piloting next um ckla the spanish um version of ckla is caminos and benchmark advance the spanish um equivalent is adelante um so we are piloting two programs in three buildings and in two different languages so needless to say we are very very busy um and the teachers are doing an awesome job so this is an example of what i was talking about before of the knowledge units so benchmark they start in kindergarten talking about plants and animals having needs then they move to plants and animals grow and change plants and animals in their habitats animal adaptations observing nature and then finally cultivating natural resources so that's just an example of how that goes and then we're seeing some of this also in ckla right now where they work on nursery rhymes and fables fables and stories fairy tales and tall tales classic tales personal narratives and again personal narratives which goes for a little while today i was in a second grade classroom watching them do fairy tales i saw a student who has a reading disability who really struggles listen to his third fairy tale and be able to tell me the lesson to be learned how it was different from the other two the lessons he learned from the last two while by the way not even looking anywhere close to where he was doing and playing with rubber bands um so it was really really cool to see um how you know it's really all students are really able to access the lessons um it's definitely been different because there's more time for students to be sitting which we're not used to we are used to teaching reading sort of in more centers um where every student works at a different level um and then what we realized through the research and reading is that all of our students need to be able to access that grade level text so how we choose to get them there um whether we read aloud portions of that whether students read together whether students can read independently um that's really a big goal of ours and so there is more whole class teaching where students are sitting there and doing close reading all together so today i was in a fourth grade classroom when they were talking about tectonic plates and it's challenging um so it's interesting to hear i did hear from a fifth grade teacher who felt like after one week she's feeling a little bit better um one of the things i said to students i went in and i asked in this fourth grade class how they were feeling about it and they were like it's so hard and i was like yeah because you don't know anything about that right but like i can't wait to come back in three weeks and see how much you know about geology and see if you feel the same you know so maybe it's just that you haven't learned about this topic yet so i'll let you know next time i'm here whether that's right and the dyslexia institute so um i have been lucky enough to go to the dyslexia institute we have reading specialists we have um ronnie's doing it with us christina sonda donovan kate marita liviana smith and um christine christina maimonis uh carrie davis and christine hayes so reading specialists spanish immersion reading interventionists um and a whole host of people who are just really excited to learn more about dyslexia and how we can um do some screening so we um currently use the dibbles as our screener we are mandated by the state to send letters home to families and letting them know whether their students are at risk for um reading difficulties one of the things that we were talking about is adding some additional um testing to see if we can identify more students that way uh we had a whole conversation so we are on a working sst group we have all kinds of things happening right now um and so one of the things that ronnie and i were just talking about is you know we know that there are three big benchmarks and we know that we need to have two progress monitoring meetings in between and how can we uh you can see our little map up there
so now we're kind of deciding like when is it that we would recommend that somebody go to the student support team rather than individual teachers having more guidance on when that happens using the data to inform when we choose to do that and then talking more about intervention cycles and hopefully using our new data system to add some of those things in so we can keep better track because right now i have lots of things and ronnie have lots of things and our things need to talk to each other um so working on the communication with families so one of the things that i am curious about is currently we send letters home to students that are at risk but wouldn't it be nice if everybody got a letter home so just thinking about do we want to share that your student is at risk they have low risk they have no risk um and just making it more um of a process where everyone it's it's what am i trying to say that like everyone receives information and that it doesn't seem disjointed um so we're working on professional um learning um ronnie was working on explanation of dyslexia um to share with staff um and then hopefully at some point we'll turn that into something that is more forward facing um i'm working on so i'm doing some letters training and dyslexia training as well but i'm working on how i can share this information with teachers so next week i'm going and doing a staff meeting at clifford hill where i'm going to start talking about these things there is an enormous amount of information to share so figuring out how best to do that but that's all in the process of the plan that we are creating currently um so those are just sort of all of the pieces and we're trying to put them all together um and we'll be presenting that we have to present in march but our final will be probably closer to june having something put together we present oh are we presenting here well we can share what we can share what we do a presentation at the institute so we can then share it here right i think you're going to actually present in march so that could be included in ronnie's presentation and then you're going to come back in the spring with a formal recommendation after the pilot so you'll get it all so you're going to get these two again whether you like it or not is what i'm saying we like it um so i guess i will stop there and see if you have any questions
um i was curious on the units that were selected to pilot did we get to choose that or those ones that each of the curriculum companies sort of say this is what we recommend to pilot so they send a mid-year pilot of three units that they would recommend because it's mid-year and we've already done some things we chose units that were aligned more with where we were in writing for each grade level so if you were already done narrative then you wanted to make sure that you were going to do informational writing um and swap there so we looked at that so for instance in third grade the units that a lot of the units that they said they wanted to do were informational and they had done informational so they wanted to do narrative so we chose to do the novel study so they're doing charlotte's web whereas in fourth grade they had just finished up narrative and really wanted to do informational so we chose to do the geology unit um similar with fifth grade um i'm happy to share which units of study we're doing no so i was looking at the examples of the knowledge units so the slide is just showing us how you take one theme and matriculate it through but the pilot was a little more custom chosen given the limited time frame and wherever they were in their curriculum like trajectory for this year in each class yeah and something to think about is that these build upon each other so whenever you start a new curriculum and you start everything at once there's going to be gaps that students don't have so there's going to be things that we have to teach into so while we're going to get something that has eight to ten units we might not get through all of those ten units next year because we're going to have to teach back into some of those things especially when we're talking about like word work and morphology there are things that people are missing um but it's interesting there's like in ckla they have like ancient civilizations and they do different civilizations and different grade levels so they have some schema for understanding that but when you start something all at once then some of that is not there can i piggyback on that because i also wrote that down so both of them have kind of the the narrative or the more whimsical um lessons and the other has more informational but they each have both components they each have both okay and there is some of them now some of the programs have some choice so there are a couple of units that you can choose one or the other so they might be more science or social studies so the district can choose whether to go in in either direction um and they also some of them have a choice between like novels so this is charlotte's web but there is a different novel that you could choose so one is a more classic and one is sort of probably more diverse text and when we talk i think that maybe this question's for betsy it's probably for all of you when we talk about um this class schedule and how to fit everything in do lessons like this help us in that direction if we're learning about geology or something more science focused does it help to yeah it certainly helps them around so that when when they're in eighth grade and they're doing plate tectonics it's not going to be the first time that they've heard this and they'll have um you know some schema activated that we can reactivate to help you know build those neural pathways around you know really deeply understanding things in more ways the benchmark i think more closely aligns with the um the massachusetts state standards too so when something pops up in the standards say in science is the same year that you're reading about it in in these programs whereas in ckla you might be getting some of your information the year before you're going to study in science or social studies it's looser it's definitely connected and it doesn't cover necessarily the science and social studies standards so while they're learning about those topics so benchmark is aligned and all of those topics will be seen that you see in science and social studies and it doesn't cover all of the standards but it certainly helps build that so then it's revamping and looking at our science and seeing which things you teach to match because you want to front load the information before you get to it science but i don't know if it answers our scheduling question well it does i think it helps right we're going to support the learning in those areas for sure we still want to be doing hands-on science experiments we don't want to just be reading of course background information about science i think we saw similar sorry no good um challenge when we started bridges the first year especially with the older fourth and fifth graders because they there were gaps and we just needed to be patient with the process it really sounds like we're upping the standard which i think is great i wrote down the phrase productive struggle and i'm going to use it because i think it aligns really nicely with warm demander and it's also a very equalizing phrase right like everyone can have a productive struggle regardless of where they are um so i'm really and that's where the marketing occurs when you are engaged right i think that's what we want we keep saying that around this table that they want we want that to raise the bar so that's very exciting um yeah and i think um more at risk reports or equalizing the reports would be great but also once you get an at-risk report maybe more information once you get that first letter would also be great yep there's pieces right now if you have something that gets sent home like currently we're not sending something home if so say you were at risk and now you're not at risk we don't currently have like a process for that so we're just really looking at like the full process and like how to communicate the best way to communicate um one of the challenges i think too is that there's communication coming from lots of places um so that's i don't know if this is a larger issue but like just trying to figure out how to make it a better experience for families rather than getting different things that it all comes through one channel um so that's just one of the things that we're thinking about as well no and to your point i think there is chatter that happens when the letters go out because that was a newer um initiative and i know if you don't get a letter you don't know whether it hasn't arised yet or it's coming and then to your point if you get a letter and it's at risk but then if that we progress out there is that sort of anxiety so i think that ends up coming to conferences yeah i think we're really looking at laying out a structure and then sharing that structure with families so that you understand this is the assessment that we did a screener does not mean that your child has a reading disability it just shows us that we have to be watching for those students and there are other additional testing that we can do um but then thinking about you know if your child has gotten a letter two times in a row then we're going to bring them to that bring them to sst then we're going to talk about the student and see where we can go and we're going to look more closely at the um different interventions and how long was under how long the student's been in intervention um and then try to share with families when children are exited and um this is really exciting i'm very very excited to hear sort of what the reactions are to the two programs um and it's great to see so much enthusiasm to help with the pilot previewing for when you come back um i think it will be interesting for us and we will have questions about implementation learnings from bridges and from wayfinder and sort of not specific to the chosen curriculum recommendation but what are we learning about how to set implementation up for success i will say one of the questions that i think we did have as a committee around bridges is going k through five year one and so the fact that you pointed out the building blocks and how the older grades sometimes can struggle more in those early years is it something we think about phased other pros and cons to that and so i think just since we are developing this muscle um in recent years i think we'll all want to sort of hear those that connective tissue or sort of like what we're learning about these big curriculum investments and how we set them up for success yeah i think it's also important to hear from teachers and how they view that especially the teachers that are piloting and part of this process so that's something that they're noticing right that things are hard and is this something that you feel like yes it's hard but it's necessary and we want to dive in even though it's not going to be perfect or is it something that you feel like you'd like to you know you you feel like you need more time but they definitely have a a pretty good understanding of that um yeah there's lots of different components and hopefully when we come back we'll have lots of information we'll have surveys from pilot teachers and non-pilot teachers who got to see things and um we're trying to meet with some families to talk about the experience from their perspective as well um and that's different for different learning styles um so we'll have lots more information for you i had a quick question um sorry if i missed this but are we going to have some data to kind of track you know is this working i know i think you put up some dibbles data but that's only like part of the reading rope right there's a lot more that goes into it and so um how are we assessing this kind of more yeah so i mean dibbles data also has not not just the bottom it has both parts because it has oral fluency it has a comprehension piece there's like a maze component in grades two through five where students use a closed test to show whether they understand and whether they understand like a passage and can choose from three words is different than being able to read a story and answer questions about that um so one i think over time you want to see your mcast scores change um and you probably we have like another measure that we do um track my progress which also measures um comprehension differently um and that is something we'll have to measure but also that not just those screeners but more so like what are students doing in the classroom so what's nice about a program is that they have formative assessments that show whether the students are learning what they're supposed to be learning and currently we're creating a lot of our own things and so it's not necessarily the same we're not necessarily assessing the same things so with the program we are able to assess students on actually what they've been learning not just something that's a one test on one day or three minutes greater so we'll have multiple forms of information i was reading an article maybe a few weeks ago about mississippi and their success with the science of reading and it tracked improvement and just being aware of the percentage improvement and tracking that that was actually one of the big things to boost reading levels there so i'm a big fan of data anything else guys i realize you're waiting for me to move this along okay any other questions i mean i think if we could hug you we would so thank you for taking this on thank you to all of the teachers that are piloting this i know it's it's going to be a tremendous undertaking that's incredible but it's really exciting they're really excited and they're doing a good job they had a snow day a lot of work just one yeah they spent on their whole snow day doing report cards so shoveling in report cards yeah well thank you sarah david all right we are going to go from one important goal this was sarah just doing terrific work leading one of our very important academic initiatives and now we're going to talk about one of our very important operational initiatives which is addressing facilities planning um just a little bit of context as we have our team come up to the table um we have a facilities advisory group with school committee representation from kate we have community members we have municipal office administrators teachers select board representation parents with a range of backgrounds and we have been working um and we have been working um since the fall with our colleagues from hmfh architects who are here with us we meet every friday with betsy and kirsteen and the team to really plan think about how to engage the community because ultimately this is a community engagement process it's also a data gathering process and so tonight is really about sharing data um on march 4th or actually february 25th this team is going to come back to the school committee with a range of options mike parolo from who's a consultant who works on facilities planning and professional development and community engagement held two sessions around visioning and the future of our elementary schools uh which was very engaging over the new community center with a range of stakeholders and more recently um or actually during this time there's also been consult your consultants working on our take a look at our facilities in terms of what does it take to upgrade them as we upgrade them as we think about the best plan um so these folks will be back in a month but for now we have an update on the visioning as well as where we are within facilities so we'll introduce our team laurie coles principal you were president what's your title now oh principal and president of hrth yes that's good to be both our principals could be president and for the purpose of you all i'm the project director with our team with me and um james liebman also from hnfh has been working very close with us and you'll hear from mike parola who facilitated our visioning sessions very soon so i will turn it over to the team okay so this is a presentation as david said about existing conditions and educational planning we gave this um presentation yesterday to the advisory group um these are the first of four tasks that are part of our our contract and we'll talk a little bit at the end about next steps um related to the the task of existing conditions what you're going to see for each of the four schools that we studied the three elementary schools in the middle school is program deficiencies that's essentially um space deficiencies facilities deficiencies things like um classrooms without windows or uh accessibility compliance issues then there'll be a slide for base repairs that's that's a scope of work uh for a a base repair project that deals with ada and maab issues accessibility issues code issues and systems upgrades primarily and you'll see a initial conceptual cost estimate for those and then in uh site constraints so jumping in uh starting with happy hollow i'm not going to read every bullet on every slide but um looking at program deficiencies um they are the current the current school has a kindergarten classroom that's undersized um a number for undersized classrooms um one thing we see a lot um in you know buildings that we schools that we are looking at in conditions is special education space deficiencies david pointed out yesterday that there was no special education programs in massachusetts until 1973 so when these buildings were built there was no no program for that um you can see here that the gym is badly undersized um at less than half of what the msba guidelines would give which is six thousand square feet um and the cafeteria is very small at happy hollow they have to give six lunches which starting very early and running very late into the day and creates real scheduling problems um you know what is ste science technology and engineering so at elementary school we're not saying science but thank you um and then insufficient custodial and maintenance spaces and part of that um is because spaces are being used some of those spaces have been converted into teachers on that side i will mention and i probably should have started with this um none of what we're seeing is unusual um and none of what we're seeing is dangerous and when we look at um when we look at we see this these kind of deficiencies across the state and that's why the msba exists and when we look at um facilities deficiencies you know things like buildings with no sprinklers that too is something that we see across the state um sprinklers specifically are are really about um saving buildings egress is about saving people and these buildings are one-story buildings with plenty of egress and people get out in in you know ample time and they met their requirements when they were trying to build some difficulties right i mean it's just like things have changed so continuing so happy hollow um facilities deficiencies there are two modular classrooms which you know were built to be temporary and are still there there are in yellow you see teaching spaces that were fit into uh spaces that were not intended for for teaching like uh custodial one of the reasons there's you know a lot in custodial spaces or storage spaces or um teacher work spaces and then those the sort of pink spaces are um are actually teaching spaces kind of one-on-one type teaching spaces that have been carved out of the corridors using um like office partitions you know like five six foot high fabric wrap panels um cubicle kind of so they have no acoustic privacy they really have very little they don't have a door so they have very little visual privacy um then it was the the sort of dark blue line or not dark blue line but solid light blue line the cafeteria does not have any access to natural light so not only is it small but it's um it's it has no natural light we're not sure why it's on an exterior wall but um it doesn't end so then looking at base repair and code upgrade scope first you see accessibility issues uh casework and sinks and toilet rooms that don't meet the the accessibility codes um the next category is building systems a big one in all of the elementary school is as i mentioned that there are no sprinkler systems the um mechanical systems are really um nearing or past their um their life expectancy you know maintenance does amazing things and it takes a lot of work to keep them running but they do um they do manage to keep them running uh but they need to in a project like this they would need to be replaced um electrical equipment replace uh component replacement but also bringing in new service to run those new hvac systems um the architectural and structural upgrades on the right are really um at supporting the upgrades so for what i mean by that is to put in a new mechanical system for example you have to replace the ceilings um to put in uh for a hazmat removal there's a certain amount of flooring that we've assumed 50 percent that would be required to be replaced um and then you see the cost the the sort of conceptual cost estimate at 19 million dollars we do have this caveat at the the bottom right that this does not include a lot of things it doesn't include soft costs like furniture and equipment and design fees it doesn't include phasing and swim space and escalation because we don't know when this project would happen um and there isn't really a a full project to test and to put forward for this and it doesn't include site development um so for planning purposes we are recommending that you consider this number to be doubled um for you know thinking about something like this in the future that would cover some of those unknowns of course would that increase the capacity at all so if that does not it does not increase capacity it does not um it does not really change the educational delivery it deals with facility issues um happy hollow elementary school so the the the site limitations um you can see first of all very steep uh grades on both the west and um east side of the the site those are the the white arrows the red line is the zoning envelope so um side yard and rear yard setbacks and then wetland buffers on the west side the dark line is a hundred foot no touch buffer the dashed line is a 200 foot limited work buffer so within that that 200 foot line we'd have to work with concom to determine what could be or couldn't be done but the key to this slide really is that at least with happy hollow in place and you know as an occupied site there really is not space on this site for a new a new project that does not mean that as we develop options in the next phase that we're going to bring back next month that there might not be a project somewhere else that then empties this site and the site becomes useful as a as an empty site but that's something we'll be looking at between now and when we're back so clay pit hill you're going to start to see a lot of the same things as we run through these schools and i'm going to move a little bit quicker but again you know an undersized kindergarten classroom a couple of undersized classrooms special education a lack of education special education space um an undersized gym again a cafeteria with six lunches and scheduling issues and insufficient custodial and maintenance for um modular classrooms it also has a few of the the teaching spaces that are fit in to uh spaces that were not intended for teaching and a number of spaces without natural light a number of classrooms and teaching spaces without natural light uh the solid line indicates no windows the dash line indicates um limited access to natural light because of the the way the building was added to there's you know a building just beyond and then there's um a dead-end corridor condition uh towards the the northwest of the building that's a code compliance issue um and then a non-compliant ramp the slope is greater than the code allows the accessibility again a scope this is very much similar to this the last scope we looked at the difference being um repairing repairing sorry rebuilding and repairing the ramps and the slopes to meet ada and maab and some minor plan modifications to deal with the dead end corridor beyond that it's really quite similar to what you saw before the estimate um is 25 million dollars and um every time again we would consider for planning purposes that you would double that unknowns of a you know for a future project and the things on the upgrades or repair are generally things that you would do all at once if you're going to do this level of repair and upgrade the the trick of doing it when it's occupied is when you're putting some mechanical you know you're doing some work over summer months right you know and sort of spreading that out over time um you know with the presumption that there's no place for kids to be you can't just quickly do it in nine months and that's the question of phasing but also um your limit the codes are written such that there are certain things if you do a certain amount usually to a cost um 30 30 of the existing assessed value of the property then you have to do all of it you don't have to do all of it at once but you do have to have a a project and that's in pieces so that's that 30 is specific to the accessibility code 33 happens to be the number for um sprinklers so it it there's a lot of code there's a lot of there okay looking at the site limitations clay pit hill is um a larger site a flatter site and a drier site which is all good for the potential of a um occupied construction there is room on the site for um for a new building to be built while remains and so that may be um when we come back next month that may be sort of phase one is something that happens here that allows us to to empty out other sites or another site conceivably i assume that would put existing fields out of use though during the the period of the hot topic in wayland
as is neighborhood traffic which i also anticipated okay okay so looking at loker um again similar things although loker um you know it does have the special education spaces that it needs um it has a undersized kindergarten um small no no small group teaching spaces uh an undersized gym again by by half um there's a custodial maintenance so a lot of the things we've seen before the um facilities deficiencies are two modular classrooms and when those were built the the gym was also built so it was built i believe to be a temporary structure and it feels like that and it um seems to be holding up okay but it does um um in yellow you see teaching spaces that were not built to be um not to be teaching spaces and then the blue blue line again is spaces without classrooms there aren't uh spaces without windows excuse me there aren't very many of them and one of them is the stage which is used for a non-compliant ramp and then also uh leading to the western wing there's a stair with a non-compliant wheelchair lift and so there would be some reconfiguration required there you see those items within the base repair scope um the ramp rebuilt the wheelchair the stair would need to be reared to allow for a compliant lift um and then many things are are very similar to what we've seen before um the estimate here is 20 million and again we would recommend doubling that site limitations here uh the big thing on loker is there's a lot of wetlands and a lot of different kinds of wetlands we really need to work with your local concom and with a wetland scientist to define which streams are intermittent which streams are um not and you know exactly what wetland is what kind of wetland to get the buffers you know precise this diagram um the buffers are more approximate than some of the other site plans we've seen but um even if these buffers are smaller um this site really does not lend itself to development while loker is in operations and that's middle school um there are some program deficiencies i think the the first one no small group teaching spaces is a big one the principal as we for the school the principal um talked about this the way that they're teaching um really some some a lot of breakout spaces and smaller group spaces or pull out again there's insufficient special ed space no orchestra or drama classrooms that doesn't mean that those aren't being taught um for instance dramas being taught on the stage it just creates um scheduling issues for these deficiencies the big one at the middle school is classrooms without there are a lot of classroom grade level classrooms you know full classrooms without any access to natural light you see those with a solid blue line and then the dashed blue line is classrooms with clear story access to light meaning windows up high so there's some natural light coming in but there's no visual connection no view to nature or um the pink classrooms are classrooms that the walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling um they're high they provide visual privacy but they do not provide acoustic privacy and then the yellow classroom in the sixth grade wing was not built to be a classroom um and is defined by a uh office partition like the like the ones we saw talked about earlier kind of fabric wrap panels so no acoustic privacy and no no real visual privacy
base repair scope um one thing i didn't mention on the last slide is there are ramp three ramps that do not meet the accessibility code so the scope here would include um rebuilding those three ramps as well as providing a new ramp to the band room which is on the old stage cafetorium stage and so is raised the rest of this is very similar to what you've seen previously although this building is sprinklered so there would not be a requirement for the estimate here is 30 million dollars and luckily uh what did i say 39 million dollars excuse me and um luckily this is the last time i have to say and we would recommend doubling that for planning site limitations the northwest side of the site is all slope lend itself to building there's a small wetland to the west but that's within the sloped area so it doesn't have a big impact at east but the south side of the site again an issue with fields but that would be an opportunity um for a potential uh new build location but it would have an impact on fields and it may require some reconfiguration for the subject as well help orient me where is the oh there's the baseball field main entrance is to the left to the above the building yeah main entrance to the building above to the left so the grooves of the parking solar panels or whatever those are what you're seeing there yeah okay and so what you're saying is behind where the fields are there's space got it okay so that is our existing conditions analysis to date did you do i think there's a good place for questions yeah oh my gosh i've been noticing you writing that down so shoot well partly i was doing the total if we were just repairing 206 million um so in the if for uh clay pit and the middle school where conceivably we could consider a building while occupied um are either site and this may not be a fair question but would either site be big enough in which an end state you would actually operate two schools on the site or would all of that be a build and then demolish i i think that i think that neither site lends itself well to a condition where you're leaving the existing school and operating a new school on that same site but there may be a possibility of a campus structure but all planned yes no no that yes but i'm just trying to get a sense of whether two buildings in one site would be doable or not i think two buildings and both knew we believe that two buildings on on this site would be doable you know we look at something like your middle school and the size of the gymnasium and the fact that you have an auditorium neither of which was in the theater so if you were to rebuild them new you would be doing them 100 on the town cross so would you do something on that site where you would configure and keep them keep them yeah and you know what i mean so i'll uh your you know gymnasium your field house at the high school again msba wasn't going to give you a field house we kept the field house there okay so that's i'm just trying to wonder why that happened you couldn't have a kid yeah yeah yeah we would you they don't they don't they don't support you or swimming pools just in case anyone has an idea neither for auditorium um okay thank you so i'm just trying to get a sense for how we think about well and that's that's absolutely what we will be bringing back i mean versions of what we're talking about is what we'll be bringing back for more heads there yeah yeah keep thinking about
where does the like the square footage price move like around 350 i'm just thinking of like home renovation things i mean you're not putting wainscoting and marble counters and kitchen right these are like classrooms which are boxes right not renovations mechanical electrical that's what i'm asking that's the most expensive where does where does where are the expensive parts of that square footage prices mechanical systems electrical stuff like that yeah in any building because you're absolutely right a classroom is four walls right right and that you know all the finishes and of course so the the cost of your school buildings are in things like the meps and the elevator should you get a multi-story you know all these kind of components for cost per square foot are those more expensive components new construction for for school construction in massachusetts for construction cost so again not all those soft costs um is about 800 dollars a square foot and that's not a number you would double to be making a project cost like you add about you add about 30 percent something like that yeah i imagine the materials that are used are with high durability unlike our home right like i mean it's different kinds of systems um um and then you know sustainability issues are and energy code are really driving costs as well and all of the items that you've mentioned would be in need of repair update are those estimates um or they everything was observed in the schools and that would be the cost like per vendor that's the scope that we observed okay and we put a conceptual process okay and so what's missing the size of you know escalation and schedule and all that it's not designed we've even designed a repair okay um but it's it's identifying everything that the engineers and thank you is everything captured for each building as a deficiency appropriately and i'm partly asking for our public work appropriately characterized as a must-have as opposed to a nice to have well there there in some instances you know you think about accessibility i think everyone agrees a must-have um when you think about a piece of equipment that's failing or about to at the end of a useful life at some point it's good you don't want to actually wait for those to be must-haves then you want to do them before they're a must-have um you know the things that um you know are the you will be tripped into once you start working like the sprinklers so we we you stress that in the beginning on purpose because you don't want people panning you don't want to go on for something for long and there's nothing wrong the building was designed that way it's all fine but going forward um the code is looking for for buildings to have sprinklers so so so so it's kind of there's a lot of different sort of tiers of those things and we refer to it as a base repair because again we're not getting into changing walls making spaces bigger revamping anything there's no educational programmatic improvement or changes we're talking about for that number it's just physical plants um you should say that again
yeah no i i mean i'll getting inside i asked because i don't think these are think we're good no right exactly okay right yeah these are the building's needs not the student's needs this doesn't deal with any of the things that mike is about to talk about sorry no no once you hear everything that mike says you will have ten times more questions today's code exactly okay so that right so betsy to your question there's an underlying point there that i think can be made is who what is the definition of a must-have or nice to have because the lens with which you answer that question changes like the fact that james pointed out all of the buildings don't have small group spaces sounds like a luxury but in reality it is predominantly a standard space that is in a contemporary school to support the level of instructional practice and interventions especially for special education right so even in a standard msba project there's a line item for small group space right or or msba would never pay for a school that has a cafeteria of a size you have to have six lunches right you know they just so that's that begins in my mind to be a must-have that kids aren't eating like 10 15 a.m but none of these telescopes deal with that right right so the must-haves i think expand when we start thinking about absolutely yeah so with that i'm gonna i feel like they need to hug they need to hug each other i just said yeah we serve brunch in wayland
on the weekend brunch is lovely for a seven-year-old it's a different thing um all right so with all that in mind let's talk about the educational visioning process that happened the reason that these tasks are really important and tied together is because you can really look at all the things that james um just talked about and think of it from the what can be lens and you realize how deficient certain things are beyond just you know building deficiencies so we went through this kind of in three phases and david kind of started to speak to this before we started there were two visioning sessions with a large group of stakeholders heavily educator based but also community members parents and senior citizens whatnot the third visioning session which we called a what if workshop was with a smaller leadership group of administrators director of student services a couple of other admin folks school principals and whatnot the goal was to really go from this aspiration to a real granular what could be to make start to make some decisions about how we move forward and what is really palatable to study the first two sessions i'll go back to those really focus on teaching and learning developmental needs of students within a pre-k to eight continuum the third session focused really on different scenarios that could be studied and then obviously that the what came out of those scenarios will be presented as planning options the next time that the group comes back to you i'll dig into what happened in these different sessions now so in the first session it was really about the future of learning so if the building did not stand in teachers and students way what should learning look like to be engaging and inclusive and collaborative and so through a number of active and interactive um activities these are the major buckets of outcomes that came out of that session student-centered and inclusive learning a much more hands-on collaborative engaging approach people thought that the learning environment itself needed to be much more flexible to be able to respond in real time to the different activities they need for movement and choice and different size groupings that happen um breakout spaces quiet spaces adaptable classrooms you know even having different sensory opportunities and options for kids um during the day even when they're eating real world interdisciplinary learning so looking at um you noticed in all of the schools james pointed out that the ste or science technology engineering stem steam type spaces were missing that's because it's a pretty common standards thing to have stem and art and interdisciplinary programs really connecting across disciplines and academics which also came out of that conversation and then this idea of student agency and independence especially as you go developmentally along the continuum of pre-k to eight so what's interesting is a lot of these deficiencies are similar in all your building but in reality the pre-k and k and one and two experience is drastically developmentally should be different than the create experience and the buildings are kind of universally all not providing the kids developmentally what they need so when you look at the buildings you can think of it from a programmatic and educational lens and you can say do our buildings support these things because this essentially is your educational vision to test what a future building should be in the second session we focused a lot on child development my background i probably should say for those of you who don't know me i'm not an architect i'm an educator i was a teacher for over 20 years so i come at this really from a teaching and learning standpoint and so we ask participants to really look at weak developmental research and data about who kids are pre-k to eight where are those transition points along that continuum like where the biggest changes in a kid's life as a as an academic life just as a human growth development life and you'll see some of the outcomes there on the right a lot of people felt like the big developmental clusters meaning the groups that have had the most similar kind of traits or needs or academic experiences were in the range of pre-k to two plus students three to five and then that six to eight middle school um folks felt that kindergarten grade three grade five grade seven were really those biggest transitional moments along the continuum of a kid's life as a seventh eighth grade teacher i can attest to that they were quite different um i still have many memories of that um there was a lot of strong alignment about developmental stages and grouping students and thinking about where we go in the future and using that development as a powerful tool in decision making and then people were interested in looking at models that reduce the number of overall transitions as kids matriculated pre-k to eight meaning the number of times they were transitioning to a different grade grouping in a different building throughout the district so we took all that into consideration and we also um in this session started to look at oh yeah sorry i want to get ahead of myself let me set up the next set of slides sorry um in this session we also said okay if this is what child development is and these are the traits and this is what research says what do we do with the great configuration that we have now as a district and what are the other opportunities out there so in this session we had stakeholders look at all the common grade groupings um that are in the commonwealth like the most common organizational structures and they're not just common in the commonwealth are really common nationwide we also asked participants what do you feel like is an appropriate size of a building in terms of the number of kids in a building just from a developmental standpoint like removing everything else how big because you know people love their neighborhood schools and the small school size is a big thing about about those small schools so what feels appropriate for you from an elementary point of view and from a middle school point of view so this is some of the data um it's a little hard to say so i apologize up there but on the left is uh the question asking for school size for elementary and then on the right is middle school so you can see folks felt and these are the most popular numbers there were outliers of of fewer or larger but somewhere around the realm of you know 400 500 550 would be a comfortable number for an elementary school and then for the middle school somewhere in that 600 700 750 kind of realm would be comfortable for a middle school setting and like for these we assumed the existing k5 68 configurations is that right we assume no configurations for this we just said if we were to think differently about any configurations or any number of buildings what number would feel appropriate okay because um i should say before i ask this question we showed the enrollment projections 10 years out and what those numbers would be and um how those numbers some of those numbers are slightly smaller or slightly larger or within the ballpark of these numbers
any other questions because i i feel like i'm talking a lot before i go on i mean i could be here all night so just feel free to get into the hook and ask a question okay um in that same conversation we asked folks to look at those uh different grade groupings along that bottom of the bar these are the most common grade groupings in the commonwealth so you have your current model of a standalone pre-k and then k-5 structure and a six to eight structure there's also the pre-k to five structure meaning pre-k is embedded into an elementary school whether it's in one or broken into multiple that was not part of the equation and in that moment then there's pre-k to two three to five six to eight and then the last scenario is pre-k to four and five to eight so the restructuring of the middle school model we asked folks to pick the top three that they felt were most palatable and realistic given all the developmental work and all the vision work that we had done to that point then after we asked folks to pick the top three we said as an open-ended question is there something else we're not thinking about is there something else that would be really the true driver for decision making in terms of just the idea of great groupings total and you can see what some of the the most common open responses were there was a really strong sense of no matter what we did could we have some type of campus approach meaning on a singular site kind of like i think let's see you maybe you were asking could you fit two buildings within one site potentially not that they have to necessarily even be attached to each other but to allow kind of this interesting great grouping and mixing and supporting of different programs developmentally folks were also interested in some type of configuration with pre-k to three as a model people felt pretty strongly having a configuration with seven to eight staying together and then a few outliers of talking about a separate program in space for grade eight like an eighth grade academy and the idea of keeping pre-k as its own standalone seem to keep coming up again and again
so after this is where the large group ended in the second session we also had open conversations about where do special education programs belong you know in what building should certain strands and certain programs belong in certain buildings which often happens in districts we also continued to have more of a conversation about pre-k we brought all that data to that smaller group and had that what if workshop like i said in that what if workshop i asked each group to study these options in more detail all of them even though it was pretty clear what those top three were and while the groups studied those they looked at logistically operationally procedurally what would happen with programs were the pros and the cons what would happen with staffing and um certifications because that could even you know changing grades could even have an impact on where certifications lie um it was a really interesting conversation i quite honestly didn't expect it to necessarily go in such a strong direction but ronnie's looking at me she was part of that conversation this is where it ended at the end we asked each group to present their findings and then we said which options that we all just studied together which seemed the most palatable looking at it from a developmental alignment from enrollment from equity and really from this operational feasibility not that we are saying like this is the decision but just what's most palatable as a district that we could maybe start to get behind and study further and just remind us the smaller group had educator representation any community representation no educator representation just educator thank you but the first 20 minutes of that session was all about bringing the data from the community so you can see this is the order right we asked folks to put them bring them in order so that model of pre-k to two three to five and one middle school um came up as the top it was a pretty resounding top followed by the other groupings now what's interesting about the groupings in the middle there um they kind of seem a bit similar different iterations of the same model of your current structure what's different about those if you really look at the fine print is that they change the number of buildings that remain online changes and the location of pre-k and number two you have pre-k embedded into a pre-k to five school versus number three and number four pre-k remains as a standalone and in number three you have two k to five schools and number four you have three schools k to five before we go to questions for mike the next slides really follow directly from this okay so i'm going to do a couple more slides and then kind of open up for for questions as a whole unless there's something somebody really wants to get to mike right now um i just i think maybe this is a question for betsy years ago i think the year before my oldest started oh yeah didn't we have model one but two three to five you had a kindergarten school okay and then you had two one to five buildings two one to fives that's right but it was erin what you're bringing up we had heard and i don't know the history behind it but we heard that that was studied before a long long time ago right it was right before my time three elementary school three k to fives um i think the item one was on the table and it was pretty close um in my understanding i was not part of those but that's what's been reported out to me that's i remember that okay thank you the the the this you know what if session it was interesting to how many people came into it not expecting to walk out loving that option and then getting excited about it um so so first just looking at enrollment there was a demographic study done you can see the existing enrollment um the projected enrollment that's that's um two years uh sorry 10 years out so that's a 10-year projection and then rounded and the rounded numbers are the numbers that we're using for uh the purposes of this study for elementary schools and for the middle school the number at the bottom the total elementary school enrollment 1150 is just an important number for comparing the um the options that we're going to look at on the next slide so that's just a number to remember okay so here we're looking at four options they're similar to what you saw on mics let's just look at the top part of the this chart for starters which deals with enrollment option a is essentially what you have now it's a pre-kindergarten um building or facility um for 75 students three elementary schools in this case kind of equalized in student enrollment um at 385 and then a middle school for 600 and that middle school for 600 is consistent across all four options below that you see the 1155 comparing to the 1150 so it covers the elementary school population in three schools option b is a four school option it combines pre-k into one of those three elementary schools so there's three elementary schools one of them with the pre-k and then the the six to eight and c is a three-story building three building three building option um two elementary schools one with the pre-k in it and then the middle school be that the total elementary school enrollment you know fits within the requirement those three options a b and c are all sort of the model that you know they're they're essentially k through five or pre-k through five and what's changing is the number of elementary schools and how pre-k either fits does or doesn't fit within one and then option d is more different and you know we've already touched on this this is three buildings um one pre-k to two for everyone in the district one third through fifth grade for everyone in the district and then a middle school that also you know has the 1150 then looking at the bottom half of this chart you can see um essentially what there's kind of two groupings there's the three elementary school groupings in a and b and they're pretty larger significantly larger than the option c's also in i will say um now in the version that was emailed around there was an error and you might in the d um the d numbers um so if you're looking at what was emailed it's slightly different this is what was presented last night then the 91 instead of the my version has eight okay um so um so um so again the the bigger numbers are the three schools the smaller number three elementary schools the smaller numbers are the two elementary schools the differences between them um between between let's say option a and option b has to do with um some redundancy in spaces that would be required for the elementary school if it were to be standalone whereas if it was combined it could share spaces with the elementary school and the differences between c and d really have to do with um the specifics of the in d there are a couple of redundant special education spaces that wouldn't be two of them in the um and i just i want to clarify one thing that i should have said earlier the numbers at the bottom the gross the total is well the whole bottom half of the chart you've probably already seen this is just the elementary schools it takes the middle school out and the reason for that is one it's going to be consistent across all four options but also there's there's a lot of work coming in terms of defining some potential renovation options or new options and so there's more variation that's going to happen in the middle school than we think is going to be seen and uh so a couple of things that i think are important to note the gross square footage numbers include some of these additional spaces that are missing from the buildings that would match the educational vision the idea of small group space and more space to collaborate and break out the other important thing to note that was actually brought up last night and i appreciated that the enrollment numbers the size like in option d for example the pre-k to two building is 650 students which yes is a little bit above the class size number of people said would be like that ideal spot but it doesn't mean that a building like that which is very common especially in massachusetts where you can break that building even into two so it's you know a pre-kk house and a one two house so it feels and matches the schools you have but it just happens to be supporting a larger number to maximize the efficiency of you know providing not to mention a cafeteria that matches the population and a gym that matches the population
can i ask a question it seems like option d was the most popular among the second group that you worked with if you were to build like physically build the buildings for the p the pre-k through two and then the three to five age students they're going to look a lot different so if we should ever need to shift or change that how does that work well what's interesting is pre-k and k classrooms have associated bathrooms typically so that is a pretty standard thing some of the features may be slightly different but i think that in general the classrooms themselves would be from grades one to grades five would be similar in size and function and layout that you probably yes if you want to make the three five in the future okay then the rooms will not be kindergarten with toilets in the three to five building okay and i was thinking more of like the maybe the larger learning spaces or the open spaces or the play spaces things like that yeah yeah i think we would be you know again you're talking anywhere from first grade on that you would want some of these small groups and other for a shared activity spaces okay curious with this configuration if you think about the existing spaces and you think about build versus design like and renovate with design not just repair um does the grade level groupings of like pk through two and then a three to five create optionality or similarity of use that gives the existing square footage of those buildings even if they're redesigned like more flexibility like is it easier to service 600 pre-k because or are we just limited in size like i think i'm going almost like a square footage per student and whether or not you get more yield if you're all pre-k through two in a building because the existing population in our three elementary schools is 60 percent less than these estimated enrollments in these two configurations so at some level we'll have to hit the tension of like these configurations and these enrollment numbers with we have some existing infrastructure to work with and some potential new infrastructure to build and like and so i'm just trying to think through how we begin to imagine that as opposed to three brand new schools so just when you have the larger the number of sections in elementary school sometimes you need fewer classrooms but that's what i'm trying to get at that's what you're getting at so because of the economies of scale you sometimes need fewer classrooms if you have you know 200 kids in a grade versus like six grades 40s you know 49 where you need three classrooms it eliminates that so sometimes in i've dealt with it before that's why larger you maybe need a less maybe one less classroom or two in a grade depending on numbers and beyond the educational you know there's so much other efficiencies you are you have a kitchen that's serving 600 kids not three in the same kitchen you know what i mean so there's and there's a lot of costs in the kitchen if you have a multi-story building which chances are on your sites we're going to go up with our suggestions because you only have so much land in town that doesn't that doesn't go up itself um you know you you have an elevator and so you have an elevator which serves six hundred kids not three hundred kids and so it just keeps compounding in terms of that efficiency and honestly that's really one of the drivers behind the msba approach they they don't want to spend money in efficiency right so they think like that of how do you you know look at a district or look at this particular you know grade grouping or whatever and make it as efficient as possible i mean we've seen it with our other clients where they've gone in with their one their one building that's got serves you know two hundred and something kids for three grades and everything now you need to look at all of them i mean they literally said we're not entertaining just this one thing you need to combine all your not combine them but combine the assessment and come back to us with you know because it's just it's just too low for them um and it's powerful that you're taking this step to study at this level of to really be like well you know what this great grouping actually has merit educationally and organizationally operationally is actually stronger let's study that now and come up with options now because if you did enter just so often msba projects are okay we're submitting for a six-day school but we're also going to consider just moving grade five to alleviate or crowding it's kind of just band-aiding the issue and not now you're bringing a group that may not developmentally be appropriate into a building because of so you're kind of not kind of you're doing it actually in a really powerful effective way i will say i think that parts of the middle school are really the the primary um opportunity for for renovation the elementary schools are are less likely to provide the right space and the capacity to build up and the good question we got last night was what is the worst building and we kind of i wrote that down what's the worst building all three elements i mean it was kind of you know i mean there's it's like you couldn't pick one as being worse it was the right answer all three yeah it was all three sorry yeah and that's because they were kind of they were built around the same time they were as you saw as you saw they have around the same time it would get modulars around the same time i mean they really moved together i mean it wayland is interesting to me in the land question because you know we're answering the birds you should have land right and but you you really don't and what you do have for beautiful lovely woodsy hilly land it's really not appropriate or wet for for building and so you really to be efficient you you need to be able to go up um the one story sort of sprawling you don't have the land for that that we can see and we've been trying to look you know look under the rocks and see if we can find any other land that's possible and um and that itself also provides efficiency i mean you want you want to build efficiently and you want to have land for play and land for field you know what i mean and so it's trying to do a little bit of all within the footprints that you have available to you and so one of the challenges of again the buildings are really wonderful in the first place but if you really desperately wanted to keep one of those buildings and renovate and add on to it now we just took over your fields and everything else i mean we're just we're just growing it and and so there's not there's not there's problems of inefficiency as in so many levels i mean um when you do a building on two floors or on three floors now you have that same foundation that you build that's covering that you know so that's being roof it's covering that so i mean again it just has layers of efficiency for costs you know in the future um less envelope that means less any air language that means less you know windows to replace i mean they're just it kind of goes on and on so i i do i do worry that as a town when you're so used to your one stories that it might be a challenge in that hurdle so again we'll look at it we're really good at looking at the options and showing you what one story would do and be like i can't even park a car on the site i mean you know but we'll we'll show you all that just so that people can sort of really appreciate you know they're comfortable well yeah yeah what's possible curious about the pre-k number the 75 because that feels at this point aspirational knowing that we have 40 at the moment and i'm not sure that we're at the past we're not there all day exactly so as they say like if we build it they will come because we don't have it's not like a town universal so what what i thought i understood and tell me if i'm wrong was that there's capacity for 75 there now um and that it's just not not yeah full there's capacity for five classrooms yeah exactly so so we so for an include because it's an inclusive preschool but the and the class makeup has to be um basically we have uh 50 for students on ieps and 50 for students not on ieps so each class can have um 15 kids that's how many uh you're allowed so we seven seats there for students on ieps and eight are for students not on ieps basically she can't imagine 75 students um yeah i know yeah you can fit that's how much you can fit so that's kind of the number we're going at because we want to make sure we have enough room for hopefully we'll grow and we'll have a wait list for the general but we also need to make sure we have enough room for um students on ieps okay so it means building five classrooms kate is really weird even if those classrooms are not used by okay because there's a big difference between 40 right so there are five now are they you're you're at 40 students are they not all used they are all used um currently we could have combined um but we have this we didn't but it really fluctuates i also think one of the big issues with preschool is the hours and base so there's only 20 spots of base so that makes it really challenging and i think if pre-k was part of the elementary school and base was part of it your enrollment's going to grow because people will be more interested in being being able to um have that full day that's that's one of the biggest problems is we don't have enough capacity for base being a standalone um and that would hopefully be alleviated by being part of the bigger building um so i do think enrollment would grow maybe that would be easier to step as well right yeah um and by having the pre-k you know we have a nurse who's here we have an slp we have you know a playground i'm well it's still a playground but um you can really combine some of those come back to our efficiencies efficiency and multiple floors you probably saw that yes yeah they're only bigger ones yeah right no problem they go outside twice a day so they're they're and they're fine are there any neighboring districts or what districts have an option d layout around us that we even know my district um has actually pre-k k and one two three four five the district that is identical to us in size that has option d is holliston i would have loved to have been a fly in the wall on meeting three because it feels like it really diverged from meeting two and what we've yeah it feels very different so i think aligning with that certainly weston has schools where all the kids are the same school not not quite that model but is similar in terms of i think south borough has just trying to get a visual yeah representation although it was interesting side 24 i think it was 24 um the the two models that were most that folks were most interested in was kind of a tie between the current model and that pk2 three to five six to eight which surprised surprised me then that came from the i mean part of that came from the conversation there was one one person in particular who was talking about pre-k standalone and some of this is a result of that you also had to i'm sorry i was gonna say if you add the first two though that's a much higher thing because it's kind of the first two are very similar well yeah you had to pick three so like i only liked two of them but i had to pick three so like i only liked two of them but i had to pick two well i'm just i'm not going to pick the fourth one that's the worst option right it's not but i can see how that could get tricky and also that i'm going to call myself out that that big number i was the one who said but we said that we wanted schools that are around 400 students and this is not 400 students so i'm just predicting on that is there a guide post that we should be looking at in terms of like square footage per student in terms of what we have today and what we might have on your options or is that not informative um kind of where we have but we are using msba's guidelines okay and we have to do that and i would say that the the special education is always different that's just across the board and that that is okay um msba just sort of has placeholders there and i've never seen that rejected so so that is very you know we've done these unique special education programs support the schools um based in whalen we have more music spaces of different kinds again specific to whalen and um and you know i think the only other thing we did was in a way to sort of couch um classroom size
we added two two classrooms two general classrooms to the quantity that msba said and it kind of paralleled what was happening today and we i mean this is over the days obviously someday you're going to actually do anything actually have to defend and decide and you know commit to um whatever those numbers are but but by large everything else is paralleling what the state would would be putting forth and we're doing this primarily so that we end up with a total square footage that we can then use as a footprint that we can then test options so it's you know the fact that it's not dialed in more than laurie is describing that it there's a little bit of flexibility still in it is fine because we just need an approximate you know is it is it 70 000 square feet or is it 90 000 very strongly about my neighborhood schools i mean i know it's probably a common sentiment but you know the ability for my kids to ride their bike to school or walk to school i mean i don't want to lose sight of um the non-educational aspect that goes with having a neighborhood school and independence and also community like you know my kid just walks around the corner to so-and-so's out at school um you know i think that would get kind of lost in a more decentralized centralized approach and i agree with that christina and then we also we both of us also have students that have left their neighborhood schools to go to special programming at another school so that that's tricky too right like how do you put that in the neighborhood schools or keep the kids together so they're with their cohort i i don't know and i my brain starts to go to the logistics and i know this is not your job um but just if you're here long enough you start to hear these things like the bus routes how are kids how are we going to stagger that so we can bus kids all through town um families are less likely to have their kids in one school at a time you know you're i'm going to have three kids they'll be in three different schools pretty much the majority of their career um these are things like i start to think of i think we all celebrate the year we have all three kids in one school for one minute and it's like the whole town rejoices and then it's you know three separate schools again or whatever it is um but these are things that the logistics that i start to think through how does that impact school start times this town has gone through some of those things before so they might bubble back up just saying one more slide if there's no more questions so we'll be talking about options as i've mentioned the next steps are really to develop those options that will include citing you know where where where can we put schools where we land massing we've kind of alluded to that we're talking about number of floors um phasing what what project can we do first that opens up the options for future projects maybe creates land or and then some initial cost numbers we'll we'll there is another round of cost estimates that will not be ready for a month from now but just some sort of comparative this one is more expensive than another then we'll be getting public input we've got another advisory group meeting on february 25th then we come to you and then there'll be this public forum on march 4th this is an iterative process after that public input we'll be going back and revising those options and we'll be bringing that back to the public as well and that any other thoughts or questions anything for mike one question um and when you presented the four different options there were the option a and b seemed to have maybe like 10 more capacity room i know that we're only looking at projections like 10 years down the line right well maybe the square footage option a and b are 20 or 10 higher than c and d in square footage in square footage yeah and that has to do with um it's this question of efficiency so you're building three gyms and you're building three cafeterias um within the elementary school so it's that's okay so it's not that they can hold more students in the school it's just duplicating space that's a question for you because i think it's not for the age this is great thank you very much um in terms of getting the word out for march 4th and like where that public forum will be and how we want to do that do we have thoughts on that yeah we're going to uh have something in the town newsletter actually that's going going to go out on february 2nd we're going to communicate as well from our own communication maybe reach out to our friends at the whalen post so you know we hope to get a good number of people there we had a and also some of the same group that we had for our visioning sessions that was a nice representation of the community as well because it's important to let people know where we went back and forth i know at a meeting a while ago about where we were going to do that did we land on a yes and we were shooting i've got to check on the community center i know mike really likes that i love that community center we're going to talk about that we have to find the right room at the high school the lecture hall is possible but the the community center room is quite uh good we're going to it may be we're going to use a lecture hall for our visioning sessions on a different project but um i think on this one it would be nice to shoot for the community center where we work we're going to catch it before it gets posted yes yes yes yes time uh we haven't selected it oh okay i was afraid i my calendar was not up to date yes no we haven't selected time i think we're shooting for like let people get their dinner and then it's 30 or seven uh time in terms of public outreach i it's worth saying um the visioning those two initial public visioning sessions were very well attended david broke records in terms of getting getting community there um which was really exciting great just putting it on apple slices healthy snacks if david's there there will be anybody wants me to pick them up some chick-fil-a or something on the way from everybody different meeting standing desks only no chairs thank you all very much really good discussion thanks for good questions thank you very much thank you very much thank you okay let him say goodbye then we'll move the consent agenda to do it okay um diane i don't know we need to approve the december 3rd and december 17th minutes i think that's something we want to just be sure to go over now i'm calling that out thank you thank you thanks thanks a lot i'm gonna change i would make to this so that i was absent for the road yet you were not kate
then on december 5th kate was present for the whole meeting sorry december 3rd yep is it is there a formatting issue because i was absent there's a pdf version that could be it yeah there's a pdf version of maybe online oh is it just a copy and paste issue it's at the end these are discussed the november 19th minutes that are in the corresponding document that's it what are you looking at the november 19th minutes are listed as corresponding documents but i don't see where we took any action on what are you looking at though we're not i'm in the december 3rd four that's the one i missed am i just missing it yeah diane that's the only question is on the corresponding documents it lists the november 19th minutes or 2025 but i don't see any reference that those minutes were in this meeting okay and i just am trying to see if there were uh i mean it looks like we approved the october 8th minutes and those are not listed so that might need to be adjusted i think that's probably what it is i don't have any changes on 12 17th and also when you are any questions on the science trip science um trip or anything maybe the last year was very positive okay i would entertain a motion i move to approve the consent agenda with the with the edit 2 12 3 but i am not absent and the reference to the corresponding documents to the november 19th minutes and the corresponding documents do i have a second i'll second right betsy yes kate yes christina yes aaron yes aaron gibbons absent just one christine christine yes any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair i move to adjourn second all of it can we do all in favor do we need to go around all in favor all right have a good good night everybody you