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Date: 6/30/2021
LONGMEADOW – On June 21, the Longmeadow School Committee hosted their final meeting for the 2020-2021 year. It was also Chair Ryan Kelly’s last meeting on the committee after he decided not to run for re-election.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Kelly said. “It's only as fun as the people you’re working with so I really appreciate it, especially the insanity that we have had over the past year so I just want to say thank you to everybody.” The committee shared their gratitude to Kelly for serving on the School Committee for the last three years. Vice Chair Bronwyn Monahan presented him with a plague from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
Superintendent M. Martin O'Shea shared some words as well, stating, “Thank you Ryan for your amazing leadership over the last few years. We all appreciated the steady hand, calm leadership and great sense of humility that he brought to this job. He made it a pleasure to work through some really rough times. On behalf of the entire administrative team, we thank you as well for your great service.”
Health and Safety Updates
Though the town’s Board of Health partners were unable to attend the meeting, O'Shea shared they reported to the committee that COVID-19 trends continue to move in the right direction. As of June 21, there were two active cases in Longmeadow and the positivity rate in the town was .12 percent, which O'Shea said is exceedingly low and very encouraging.
“I think it's a testament to the commitment of this community to all the mitigation strategies and to vaccination rates,” O'Shea added. In terms of the vaccination rates, 66 percent of children ages 12-15 in Longmeadow have received one dose and 79 percent of people ages 16-19 have received a single dose of the vaccination.
After careful deliberation, the committee decided to suspend its face mask policy for the duration of the summer with the understanding that unvaccinated personnel would still be required to wear a face mask.
Motion of Approvals
The committee renewed the contract with Fresh Picks Cafe, a division of cafe services, for the 2021-2022 school year and granted authority to the superintendent to approve the necessary budget transfers between municipal budgetary lines in order to close the Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) accounts, which O'Shea mentioned is an annual authorization granted under existing committee policy.
After leaving for executive session, the committee returned and approved the Memorandums of Agreement with the Longmeadow Education Association (LEA) Units B, D, E, F and H as presented. Unit B covers the assistant principal, unit D covers clerical staff, unit E covers a variety of professional support positions, unit F covers their para educators and unit H covers their custodians. This is a one-year successor agreement for each of the units that were listed in the motion.
O'Shea stated, “Thanks to the committee for working productively with the LEA. We’re pleased that we were able to bring these to conclusion before the end of this fiscal year, so thank you all.”
The committee approved the contract amendments for the superintendent, assistant superintendent for learning, assistant superintendent for finance operations and director of pupil services as presented for FY2021 dated July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021 and for FY2022 dated July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022.
Lastly, the committee authorized an allocation of a total of $7,000 out of the FY21 budget used for contractual one-time payments to Longmeadow Public Schools administrative staff and approved an FY21 onetime payment of $400 and authorize one additional vacation day to be utilized in the FY22 school year for non-collective bargaining support staff.