David Potter arrived at 5:08pm.  (Since he's not a voting member of the committee, I was unable to record his arrival properly in Board-On-Track.)

Brent:  Need to make sure the work we do is in line with the long-term needs of the school.  Technology, safety, classrooms, etc.  What can we do now that won't get in the way of future planning? And how do those changes positively impact students?

We need to be able to provide adequate instructional space to all students.  We are currently short, especially in the arts and under our current master schedule.  Dance space, for example, has been a challenge this year.  In the Main Stage Theater, getting classes and lunch out of there so the space can be utilized differently is important.

School is looking at ways to make changes to the master schedule to allow for greater scheduling flexibility and to have more time in the day for teachers to collaborate with peers and/or students.  Space is needed for this to happen.  

The proposal for the 3rd floor meeting room space is to deal with that.

John presents a rough plan of the space in the 3rd floor converted to meeting rooms.  Questions still need to be answered RE actual construction - walls to ceiling or just partitions?  

Brent explains that it would provide effective space with minimal cost, relative to other potential construction options.

Disadvantages to the space:

• Not good for instructional space.  Classrooms aren't fully accessible without significant inconvenience.

Proposal to build counseling suite on 2nd floor.  Counselling has significant issues with their offices around privacy and useful space. Removing the rooms to make a 16x29 space for A.S. classroom.  Room 214-224 re-construction would give same number of classrooms and offices that we currently have, but more appropriately size and with improved confidentiality.

Next step is to meet with architect to see whether or not this can move forward as we think, which will require Finance Committee involvement.

Music Dept. move - need to accommodate larger groups in Orchestra and Chorus, for example.  It's a large scale move that we're not ready for this summer, but could see implementing in a year.  Concerns in the past were raised by the middle school team.  The 3rd proposed plan for this summer is to redo 5 classrooms, incl. tech and new furniture, each year. By updating MS classrooms in the Annex this year and then updating new classrooms after the music department move for the other 78 teachers might be an acceptable compromise for their sacrifice. We would also gain by having the 9th grade teachers able to collaborate more with the 8th grade teachers.

Some discussion about how the walls could be arranged in 201, 202, 203, 205, 207 to best accommodate 1 MTH, 2 ELA and 1 A.S. teacher ideally.

Austin asked about whether or not this was something that was already decided and whether or not the displaced teachers were aware of this planning.  Austin offers to begin discussions with the team.

John addresses the time (5:45) and asks for a motion to ask FinComm to look into this more seriously.

Jenn asks about where the talk of getting lunch out of the theater currently stands.  Brent:  a cafeteria would be a multi-million dollar project that would be many years in the making. However, once we are past COVID, we don't need to keep students all in one room for lunch.  No decisions on what that will look like yet.

Mindi asks where all the stuff that's currently in the storage will be going? John and Brent explain that there will still be storage in the 3rd floor, but condensed.