School Committee Meeting, 02 November 2016

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IMG_0794School Committee MeetingSix present, Mr. Descoteaux absentAlong with the prior meeting’s minutes, the minutes of the Special School Committee Meeting held on October 27, 2016 were approved. The October 27 meeting topic was Superintendent Khelfaoui’s evaluation.Permissions to Enter$51,060 in expenses approved. See detail in the Meeting Packet.Public ParticipationOtse Omeyeni, Lowell High School Senior Class President, spoke in favor of Agenda Item 2016/437, a proposal that would include a non-voting student representative in the School Committee.  After this presentation, the School Committee decided to take this item (Number 11 on the Agenda) out of order in order to facilitate discussion.The Committee members were generally in support of this agenda item; however, because of several corrections necessary to the proposal as worded (clarification that student representatives would not participate in Executive Sessions, for example), it has been referred to the Lowell High School Subcommittee for clarification.MotionsTwo motions were presented; both by Mr. Gignac

  • 2016/432 (R. Gignac): Requests the Superintendent write a formal letter of thanks to members of the Lowell Fire Department for their generosity in providing winter coats for Lowell Public Schools students under their Coats for Ann Program.
  • 2016/433 (R. Gignac): Request that Lowell Public Schools participate in the Massachusetts Youth Summit on Opiate Awareness taking place at the Tsongas Center.

Subcommittee ReportThe Finance Subcommittee met on October 26, 2016 to develop a policy for “permission to enter”  and a policy for budget transfer.  The details for these policies are found in the Meeting Packet on p 33-34Reports of the SuperintendentThere were five items under Reports of the Superintendent, including 2016/437 which was taken out of order during Public Participation.

  • 2016/434, Community Service Learning See page 36-37 of the Meeting Packet for details submitted by each school.
  • 2016/437: LHS Representative Proposal. Taken out of order under Public Participation.
  • 2016/435: School Site Councils. See pages 45-49 of the Meeting Packet for each school’s Council make-up and schedule of meetings. A suggestion was made that in the future, whether the member is part of the faculty or a parent of a student would be helpful.
  • 2016/436 LHS Atheltic Rule 53 Waiver Request.  Mr. DeProfrio spoke about the value of including students from the middle school in programs such as hockey not only help to build an individual sports program, but to enable students who might not have financial means o afford the expense of early instruction in a sport to more fully participate.
  • 2016/438 MASS EEC Fiscal and Program Compliance Review. Reports starts on p 54 of the Meeting Packet.

Convention and Conference Requests (3) were all approved.Meeting Packet can be found here.