Here’s your recap of the Monday, August 12, Board of School Committee meeting. The agenda for the meeting is here: https://5il.co/2t7g7. Video from the meeting will be posted online by Manchester Public Television. As a reminder, we provide live updates from full board meetings at https://x.com/mansd_nh.
Monday’s meeting was the first since the end of June. With schools still on vacation, there were no students leading the Pledge of Allegiance (Vice Chair Jim O’Connell stepped in to do the honors). Additionally, there were no recognitions for this meeting.
Manchester Proud provides updates
First up on Monday’s agenda was a presentation from Manchester Proud. In addition to providing updates on its work, the group announced that longtime leader Barry Brensinger had retired from his volunteer position (he will remain with the organization as a member of its Champions Council). Newly hired co-director Debby Miller introduced herself to the board, and she will work alongside Aimee Kereage, who continues in her role as partnerships coordinator and co-director, and Lauren Boisvert, the organization’s communications director.
The trio highlighted several upcoming events, most notably CelebratED and the State of MSD in September, as well as the online resource guide, The Compass, and extensive work with the District and community partners on projects such as Community Schools and the Welcome Center. You can find slides from their presentation in the agenda packet (https://5il.co/2t7g7), and you can read more about the organization and find the compass at https://manchesterproud.org/.
Action agenda items
The action agenda included four items, all of which were approved by the board.
Moving on to the action agenda, the first item relates to shifting the funding source for curriculum items, which previously have been paid for using ESSER funds. As approved by the BOSC, this would be paid for with a combination of grant funds and the Teaching & Learning Trust. This allows the District to continue work with curriculum items but will also require that the cost be shifted to the operating budget going forward.
Next up is the lease agreement with New England College for space at the historic French Building, which will be the site of the district's new Welcome Center. The three-year agreement is the next major step forward to allow the District to open the doors of the Welcome Center. Once open, the Welcome Center will serve as a hub for families new to the district to get assistance with registration, find and access resources and generally make a smooth transition into our schools. The District offered more information on the Welcome Center during Superintendent’s Communications later in the meeting.
The third item on the action agenda is the contract for the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning and Leading, Nicole Doherty. Also on Monday, the board approved the hiring of the new Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, filling Doherty’s former role. She had been filling that role while also serving in an interim capacity as assistant superintendent for much of the last school year.
The final item on the action agenda is approval of indemnification contract language for several agreements the district has with several outside organizations. As Assistant Superintendent Doherty noted, this is a practice the District has followed in recent years when signing agreements with outside partners. You can find more info on this in the agenda packet: http://5il.co/2t7g7.
Consent agenda
With no committee meetings in the last month, there were no committee reports coming through for approval on the consent agenda. The board approved the only item on the consent agenda, the minutes from the June 24 board meeting.
Superintendent’s Communications
Since the last meeting on June 24, there has been a great deal of work taking place across the District, and that was clear in Superintendent’s Communications. Superintendent Jennifer Chmiel Gillis provided the following summary before going into more detail:
Welcome back…. July flew by with a flurry of work taking place at the district office. From educational programming and professional development to the work on the Modulars. We tackled projects related to the community schools grant, MTSS-B, and dual language immersion in addition to the work on el programming and content specific alignment and data analysis. I am keenly proud of the work related to our new welcome center, as this project will become our first introduction to families new to our community and we are eager to share what our district and our wealth of community partnerships have to offer.
In the areas of buildings and buses, we took great steps in converting transportation to an in-house model, one in which we will be seeking to stay aligned to our policies while also improving the user experience from both a student and family perspective. We continued our work on the new modulars and moved further toward realizing key priority one activities, including a new Beech Street Elementary School and additions and renovations at all of our middle schools.
We are on the move from logistics and operations to teaching and learning.
We have been busy all with the goal of gearing up for a school year that will see us shift off of stabilization and systems introductions to one in which we dig deep into our student outcome data in a manner to fully push student achievement. While our data is trending in the right direction, we are not settled and know we want to see broader and greater gains in this area.
In her introduction, Superintendent Chmiel Gillis also noted that longtime superintendent's administrative assistant Tracy Mancuso retired at the start of August. Ms. Mancuso served 10 superintendents in a 41-year career with the district. We wish her the best in retirement.
Superintendent Chmiel Gillis also noted that Karen Rogers was inadvertently omitted when the district honored retirees this spring. Mrs. Rogers was the longtime admin asst. at Beech Street School before retiring in the fall of 2023. We apologize to Mrs. Rogers and wish her well in retirement.
In addition to updates on facilities work, transportation, professional development, and athletics, District leadership walked board members through an update on hiring through the summer and work on maintaining class sizes as required in District policy. As school administrators continue to work to fill remaining openings, District administration is working to provide support and develop mitigation plans to fill in gaps.
With the board’s approval of the lease agreement for the Welcome Center, Superintendent Chmiel Gillis offered thanks to the team that has been working on the project and teased a grand opening event for the center. In addition, she said, the new center would host the State of MSD in September.
Superintendent Chmiel Gillis told the board that work on the modular buildings continues to progress, with completion on track for occupancy within two weeks. She said that the team is eager to show off the new spaces to the board and the public, but will give school staff a look first. More information is to come on open houses for the new modulars.
Finally, Superintendent Chmiel Gillis noted that the start of school is September 4, and staff will gather on September 3 for the annual opening day event. She noted that information for this school year is available on the website at https://www.mansd.org/page/school-year-information-2024-2025, and added that there is an in-person registration night on Tuesday at Jewett Street School.
Tabled item
One item remained on the table from earlier this year – creation of a new committee on athletics and the arts. The committee was originally tabled in the spring, and on Monday, the board removed it from the table and sent it back to committee for further work. The topic is expected to come back before the board in the near future.
Adjournment
After handling the tabled item, the meeting went into non-public session, and was then adjourned. The next full meeting of the Board is Monday, August 26.