Minutes – Mar 23, 2017 Meet & Confer

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Meet & Confer

District Office Conference Room

March 23, 2017 – 6:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:             S. Bannon, W. Fields,  J. St. Peter, A. Potter, R. Dohoney,
A. Hutchinson, D. Singer

Administration:                      P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                            Reporter from Berkshire Record, Steve Soule, M. Berle, K. Burdsall, B. Doren

Absent:               D. Weston, K. Piasecki, S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

Minutes of Meeting February 28, 2017 (revised)
Minutes of Meeting March 9, 2017
Memorandum dated March 22, 2017 to Stephen Bannon, Richard Dohoney & Peter Dillon from Sharon Harrison re: Budget Process

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:  – hours  50 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order @ 6:00pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. 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 law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org, once approved.

MINUTES

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated February 28, 2017
BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated March 9, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:    W. Fields                 Seconded:    J. St. Peter                Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT – None

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT– None

MEET & CONFER:

• Bannon – Typically at a Meet & Confer we go for two hours and we have some discussion. This one is limited to one hour, and we are having it tonight because I think the budget is fresh in everyone’s mind.  My thoughts are that we will have a short but good discussion about the budget process and make changes for next year.  I think it is important that we have it right away after the budget is over.  Sharon, you have something that you have come up with that we will use for discussion.  It was not sent out ahead of time, so I will give you a couple of minutes to read it.   I am willing to start the discussion either on thoughts on this year’s budget or on Sharon’s proposal.  Rich, I will let you start.
• Dohoney – I think that as a general principle, it is good. At each meeting there should be a review of some kind.  The way this breaks it out is kind of the same theme that was hit with the budget presentation this year, going school by school, which I have never been 100% sure that is the way to go about our budget; moreso because we end up saying we want to make changes to the budget and it should somehow paraded across the schools.  We have to look at the district as a whole and not keep looking at it as three little pods.  I don’t know how else to do it, so I am fine with breaking it out this way.  It goes back to this whole theme when we formed the Finance Subcommittee. The budget has to be a year-round process; not a month and a half long process.
• Potter – just for clarification, the second paragraph on page 2, I am wondering, and you alluded to it Rich, the involvement as the committee as a whole vs the regular subcommittee meeting. Do you think this is a report out to the committee as a whole?
• Harrison – The reason I put it in this structure is so that it would first go through the Finance Subcommittee, because what we find often is we will bring it to the School Committee and we (myself and the principals) work so deeply in it that we don’t see some of the pieces and questions that have come up. My thought was it would go first to the Finance Subcommittee, and we would try to iron out some of it and add the additional material in a small group.  Then that same report and the additional materials with an FAQ that goes in it in case there is additional detail added.  So let’s say … how many sections in first grade and here is what it costs and then if there are questions about that,  then they would be in the FAQ.  That would go to the School Committee prior to the next meeting so the School Committee as a whole could discuss that same thing.  My hope is that by then there would be much more information and it would be  a richer conversation for the School Committee; there would be more detail.  Then we could always have a follow-up.
• Potter – what strikes me is that there would be a conversation period. We haven’t had that sort of regular conversation.  My first thought when I read this was I now see myself adding another meeting to my schedule.  Frankly, I don’t think I would miss any of these.  S. Bannon – That’s a positive thought.  If it ain’t broke, we accept the meeting dates for the Finance Subcommittee through next year.  Then you are able and want, you can have those dates in your calendar, and you will know well ahead of time.  A. Potter – I wasn’t suggesting it was a bad thing.
• Dillon – there may be a structural opportunity to look at the rest of things that we need to take a look and maybe every other meeting as a combined committee. I think that there are times that we meet too much in separate groups and could probably do it as one combined group.  There might be a time that Buildings & Grounds is doing something, the Finance Subcommittee is doing something, so there is significant overlap.  For that month, instead of having two regular School Committee meetings, a Buildings & Grounds meeting and a Finance Subcommittee meeting, maybe we just make the topic of one of those regular School Committee meetings the intersection of all of those and then we eliminate two other meetings.  Even if we go a little longer, it is more effective.
• Bannon – other thoughts? B. Fields – the Finance Subcommittee is a great instrument.  I think it allows us to deal with the detail and then pass it on to the other committee.  What I have also been thinking about since our budget has been approved and sent to the towns, is that no matter what we do in whatever format, we are still going to have to wrestle with the problem of the budget at the end.  I have tried to think my way around it, and there is no way we can avoid our responsibility which is the fiscal responsibility of handling the money.  No matter what we do and how we present it and how we work it, at the end it is always going to be what it has been historically.  For as long as I can remember being a member of this district, both on the appointed side and now on this side, in March or February 15th, we are still going to have that conundrum that Rich talked about in the last meeting.  Do we follow recommendations that the administration has?, etc. etc.   We still have to make judgements, because we are not educators, but we handle the fiscal end of it.  That is our responsibility.
• Bannon – one thing Peter said to me earlier, and I think that goes along with that, the way the budget is presented to us next year, we might see something a little different. P. Dillon – I think both in the context of reimagination and in the recent history, we present something, you ask us to make cuts and then we propose cuts then you don’t make the cuts.  If you hit your head going down into the basement five times, you have a problem.  So the next time around with the budget, I am going to work really hard with the administrative team and the teachers, everybody in the community, to be both vocal and creative.  We are not going to present a budget that we then want to tinker around with.  We are going to present a budget that is bold with reallocations and moves, decreases in some places, increases in the other and really put a stake in the ground, educationally, philosophically, financially and the reaction will be to that.  Hopefully what you will see is, say that we recommend to eliminate one position while creating another.  There will be tons of data in advance that supports the decision to eliminate the one position as well as what the impact will be and what freeing up those resources will mean in order to do something else, what the impact of that will be, how we will measure it over time, if it was a good decision or not.  Some of them will be a trade; some of them will be increases and some will be decreases.  I think that we are at a position now that based on the depth of the work that is happening in the context of reimagination and the increasing staff and faculty support around that, we are all going to be pushing in a similar direction, and we can be a little bolder.
• Potter – I think what we are looking at in Sharon’s memo is essentially enhanced deliberation that potentially could drive exactly that. The committee is already aware of and possibly driving some of the boldness.  You would hope you would have some buy-in and some confidence when you drive the stake into the group.  A stake could be knocked over pretty damn quick unless….P. Dillon – the notion of having additional funds for activities in the elementary school, that came up at the very last minute.  R. Dohoney – without a lot of thought.  P Dillon – if we can have that conversation again and not have it be at the last minute on the floor of the meeting, but if we talked about that for four months and really looked at it…what I never want to do is pit one principal against another or one school against another.  We can take our time over several months to look at those things, and I feel internally we collected a lot of information about that and we will be better able to share that information with you.  Then it doesn’t have to be a thumbs up or thumbs down at the last minute but you can play a role and help shape that starting next month all the way through the end of the process.
• Bannon – I think one of the problems is even though we didn’t use the term as much, we talked about a level program budget. I think somewhere along the line, the School Committee has become synonymous with a boring, don’t make any changes, just come out with a level program.  That was never the intention.  I didn’t mean that if this program was terrible, don’t change it because we want a level-program budget.  I meant that it was kind of a metaphor for what it would be like if you just ran everything the same.  All of a sudden it melded into running everything the same if it was good or not, and I think we now see that it is not a good idea.  I think it has to be more bold, more creative and where changes need to be made, they need to be made.  You will come to us with “these are the changes that need to be made within the context of a reasonably balanced budget”.  There may be some changes that you think need to be made in the next few years, but for now I understand that it is going to cost a million dollars and we have to figure out a way to do it; but maybe it won’t cost that.
• Fields – I think the problem is also you have alluded to that we are always concerned about how does this affect the towns that are in our district fiscally. I remember that at the first meeting of the Finance Subcommittee, that came up.  We are always dealing with that.  I would like to add in regards to what you said Steve, on November 2nd, anticipated program improvements rather than changes.  It seems to me that sometimes we get into the only change we are making is negative in regards to education.   We are always talking about if we are either going to present a level program or if we are going to cut.  It is never, “we have a level program; what can we do in some of these programs to improve them?”  That changes the frame of reference of our deliberations.
• Bannon – as distasteful as it is, we still have to look at all three towns and what the impact is on them, but we also have to balance that out with the education that we are providing. Peter and I were talking before the meeting yesterday.  Great Barrington’s Finance Committee recommended our budget to the town meeting but even the two people, one finance, one selectboard member who voted NO but said educationally it is a terrific district.  That is what we want to hear.  We don’t want to sacrifice education for the sake of having a level-funded budget.  We have never done that because we know that is unrealistic, and it would really hurt the education for this district.
• Dohoney – it is not just impact on the towns or the bottom line, it is our fiduciary duty to make sure every dollar is going to its best use. I feel the inertia of the level-funded budget, this was a great way to spend dollar “A” ten years ago, and now it is still pretty good so nobody wants to change it, but every dime that you’re spending in the best manner, you are stealing from other programs in my mind.  We always have to be sure it is allocated appropriately.  I am not as concerned as the size of the bill that goes to the town, but I am concerning about money that is not being used best if it compromises some other program or some other use.
• Bannon – I think the difference in this year’s budget was, I am not thrilled with what’s happened to Great Barrington especially, but we haven’t sacrificed education and that is important. There are explanations that drove the increase. P. Dillon – that might have been the difference.  In previous budgets there wasn’t that much support from the select board or the finance committee, and there was also the other noise going on.  Some people will always vote yes, some who could have gone either way, voted yes.  S. Bannon – frustration around the local contribution happens but also understanding that Great Barrington’s growth is a positive.  There is at least some explanation for it.  I think that when we start to sacrifice education, we all have to look inward.  I think there is a balance act we have to keep.  B. Fields – that is why I would enter into discussions about how we look at the budget by saying let’s look at the budget as a positive in regards what can we do to improve than just be the status quo or always looking at cutting.  If we changed our frame of reference a little more toward that end then maybe we will get out of the kind of rut that we are in where the last three years have been level- funded programming.
• Dillon – another thing I think about and it happened a little bit this year, the uncertainty on the people who are potentially on the chopping block as it happens. At the end of the day, it is really important we put the needs of students first.  I think by having the conversation publically earlier, it could in some ways string out the pain, but it will also be more transparent.  Every year somebody is on the line and they and their colleagues rally and come out.  Spreading it out over the year I think will make it a little better.  S. Bannon – putting our schedule out there, it allows for union reps, other members of the public who what to be here to listen to the conversation, not necessarily be part of it, but listen to it, it gives them a chance to do that.  We did have some people this year that came to the Finance Subcommittee meetings.   We are talking about improvement educationally.  If one position has outlived its usefulness, we might need that position somewhere else.
• St. Peter – is there any way to get these numbers sooner? We need to find out what the budget numbers are and the impacts on the towns.  We usually have one or two meetings to take in the feedback.  S. Harrison – the intent with this is to at least have a handle on the expenditure budget.  The answer to your question is not really because the governor has until the fourth Wednesday of January to come out with a budget, so that is when we know what the revenue is going to be.  That is where the real issue is.  I can come pretty close to projecting, but I don’t have any idea from year to year what that will be.  That is where the issue is and that is why we never know what the assessment will be, because we don’t know what the state is going to do.
• Dillon – there are a number of variables that we do know. We will know the enrollment split for the assessment in mid-October.  It changes a little bit each year.  If we knew that Great Barrington went from 72, then we would know that is going to have a significant impact.  If people moved into Stockbridge and a bunch of Great Barrington kids graduated, then we would know that it would be a shift.  If that 2% increase that went to Great Barrington this year went the other way, then the total impact on the Great Barrington budget would have been different.
• Harrison – the biggest unknown is….I have come pretty close in the past, but the biggest issue is we don’t absolutely know the minimum local contribution until the governor’s budget comes out because DESE can’t plug it into the foundation budget until they know what the governor is proposing for spending.  In addition to enrollment, that can skew it either way.  That is where the big issue is.  We can get a handle on the expenses, but the impact to the town is really at the last minute.  I don’t expect the last four weeks to changes much.  I think what is going to happen is there will be the ability to have a more detailed discussion because I really want to dig down to those questions about having art classes, etc., that would come up for the high school.  So not an actual discussion but theoretical discussions about programs.  P. Dillon – so February was about reacting to the numbers, but we already had a sense of where we were going programmatically, but it is still a hard conversation.
• Bannon – insurance in another one. You seem to know that a little earlier in the year this time but that isn’t until January.  S. Harrison – right, that is not voted on until January.  We typically have a better idea…I expect next year we will have an even better idea because we may add a high deductible plan but we are not talking about a whole shift.  In the past we have tended to talk in December if we are looking at 5% or 14% so we usually have an idea on that.  Also key is having the contract settled.  When those things are known even with the insurance it works out but it is really the impact that is the challenge.  My other goal would be to have a spot on the website, even though you will get all of the information and all the programmatic information after, in different school committee packets.  One of my goals is to have a spot under School Committee on the website that is Finance so that in that finance section, this year’s budget would go in and then every time we have one of these discussions and presentations, that would go in that section.  Everything would be in one place and possibly generate more questions.
• Hutchinson – as the new kid on the block, I think it is great. I had no idea what was going on.  Everything was just thrown at us but that was how it has always been.  S. Bannon – It takes probably two to three years to get the budget process.  B. Fields – I am still learning.  What we were doing at the beginning, I loved the idea because of what had happened before.  I think the subcommittee would have to look at the historical aspect.  When I came on to the committee, I heard “we nick picked and we overrode the administration on this and this, we added this at the last minute”.  I think we got away from that but again as I said earlier, the nature of this body is such that it will happen because we are charged with the dollar.  That is our power.  That is our authority.  We are obligated to do that.  We are not going to be able hit or obscure decisions.  It is going to come down to a moment that we are going to have to individually say yes or no.  What I see on this and what I see with the subcommittee is all of the members will have a better context to say yes or no and to discuss whether a position is added to or if something is taken away.  With this it seems to me that it gives us a broader context to look at those decisions.
• Bannon – it is interesting because for many years, the most we want any one town to increase is 3 ½% so come to us with a budget. In many ways, that didn’t work any better.  B. Fields – that is not educationally sound because what is happening is you are going against the philosophy of education that says you have to move ahead.  Reimagining is a perfect example of that, and it is positive.  Setting a number means that we are now captive to that number and it says to hell or high water this might be good but we need to stick to that number.  S. Bannon – in theory it would work that way.  There is a conflict because we are usually trying to lower the assessment and we do that by making an educational decision even when the superintendent makes a recommendation.  A. Potter – it also ignores the political realities as well, national and state, political realities the push like social services in schools into property tax.  Essentially we are social service providers as well as being an educational institution and that is the push.  Lower the income tax then make local jurisdictions deal with it.  Then they look good.  They can say we lowered the income tax then they make us look bad.  It pushes it onto the property tax.
• Harrison – this process was much better than when we did six budget variations. S.  Bannon – there has been all kinds of variation during my 18 years here, and I don’t think any of them were perfect.  One of the big changes now is that things increase so much.  Bussing all of a sudden is up 17%.  The dramatic shifts that add to the budget and you could argue that it doesn’t have any impact on education.  We are not improving education by paying the 15% on the insurance.  It is a tough road.  Am I hearing that Sharon’s proposal will refine this for the first Finance Subcommittee?  We will set that date probably through Rich, and the Finance Subcommittee will come up with a date and we will announce it.  It will be sometime in April.  P. Dillon – then the logical progression will be for us to be a little bolder and present our budget in the context of the reimagination.
• Bannon – I don’t want to ignore the administrators at all. Do you have any comments on what you heard tonight?  B. Doren – I think the conversation is great.  I really appreciate the focus throughout the year.  I am encouraged by this conversation.  We had talked last year out of annoyance and frustration about the timeline, and we talked about these programmatic overviews.  They were very informative.  One of things that we talked about is it’s great that we look at the three schools, we do the facilities, technologies, library and SPED but I think also part of it, and this gets away from the school by school conversation, we had talked about doing more vertical, ie what does literacy look like, what does math look like.  I would love a conversation about how we could do that.  I like the idea of pushing the budget conversation and how you have structured it with pieces of conversation all the way through.  I am wondering if we could alter the more traditional way we have done it by program thinking at the schools.  It is an opportunity now.  At the high school we have a new principal coming one.  We have a lot of work we want to do K-8 and we would love to do K-12.  If we had that conversation through schools, we could start thinking programmatically.  That is in addition to rather than instead of.
• Dillon – maybe we do a baseline check-in so people have a sense of the numbers in each place and then look at math K-12. Then you will have the numbers for all three schools; you look at the numbers again along with curriculum and how kids are grouped.  I think we need the school by school thing to have a context to understand it, and then the more that we can do K-12 the better.  The are some things that don’t happen K-12.  The high school has a robust athletic program.  There are activities going on at the elementary school and the middle school but it’s not what the high school athletic program is, so some of those could be the same and some not.
• Berle – I think to Rich’s point, we could say what happens after school. Not that we want it to look the same, but it could be a category item.  A. Potter – also needs fit into that too.  B. Doren – I think that the way we put this together we could measure process through the years.  I did this at a district I worked at in Michigan.  We did a five-year curriculum cycle.  Your 1st year is literacy, your 2nd is math, your 3rd is social studies, your 4th is science, your 5th is all specials and elective-type courses.  So in addition to all the annual budget conversations, this was incorporated so that we are not always stuck in March.  P. Dillon – maybe we do it in a little bit of an expedited way so that it is not five years until we come back to science or math again, but we do half of them this year and half next year.  When you get in a situation where you want to dramatically improve something and we are not talking about it for four years, and the context and the opportunity is lost.
• Fields – Since Jason, Steve and I are here from Building & Grounds, hanging above all of this is a 50 year-old high school building that has not really had any capital improvements. What we have done is maintained.  We have maintained it very well, but overhanging the budget is this idea that we have to do something with that building.  I have been on three years and all I have seen is routine maintenance.  I saw 14 new doors put in.  We have seen some new security measures put in, but I think all of us would agree that it needs to be looked at too.  That is another conversation.  I have minutes from two years ago where we spent two and a half hours discussing the high school building.  I think that has to be somewhere in here too because as a committee we have to say enough is enough.  We have to move on the high school whether it is doing two things at the same time; looking at the state and then moving forward on a building that needs some form of renovation.
• Bannon – there is also the interesting discussion of when is the right time to do that and I don’t want to put it off further than we already have. The Berkshire County Educational Task Force has other discussions going on about who is going to be in our district  We all know that I don’t have a lot of optimism but you can’t rule out that we could add a town or two to our district and if we vote to renovate most times the capital costs won’t get included in the new town.  It will be interesting.  It is a balancing act.
• Dillon – one of the single most important things we can do is, maybe at our next meeting, talk about how we can get the word out in Stockbridge about the Regional Agreement. We have a bunch of time between now and the town meeting.  There is a lot of stuff going on in Stockbridge.  On the surface some people don’t love the idea.  When I take the time to sit and explain it to somebody and they get context for it, often they come around.  There are a lot of conversations that have to happen between now and that town meeting.  It is May 15th at 6:30pm.  S. Bannon – so we have less than two months.  P. Dillon – I may just get a handful of people together, some thought leaders in Stockbridge and reach out to folks.  B. Fields – publically I think it is important for people to know in Stockbridge that this is not the Chip Elitzer proposal.  I have heard some people say that it is and this is not.  It has actually nothing Chip voted for.  He actually said at the town meeting in Great Barrington that this is a tiny step forward.  People in Stockbridge should know that this does not have the Chip Elitzer label on it.  P. Dillon – the thing that happened in West Stockbridge that is important was that people realized that there are checks and balances in this process so what people are voting for is an agreement that has a particular assessment formula but that doesn’t lock them into a project.  If a project comes down the road and there is another opportunity to vote and decided if the project merits support.  B. Field – I think all of this is really well done.  Thank you Sharon.  It gives us some really good context as we approach next March 1st.  I like that we see things in a bigger picture.  I also like what Ben said about starting to look at things K-12, but knowing that needs of a 7th grader are very different than the needs of a junior and senior in high school; being aware of that but still seeing things that are in common.

PERSONNEL REPORT:

BUSINESS OPERATION-None

EDUCATION NEWS- None

OLD BUSINESS- None

NEW BUSINESS:

• Public Comment – none
• Written Communication – none

Motion to Adjourn:  A. Potter                          Seconded:  B. Fields                        Approved:  Unanimous

Meeting Adjourned at 6:50pm

The next meeting is scheduled for April 13, 2017 – Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School Library

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary