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Committee flags discrepancies in school-options matrix, asks staff to remove misplaced 'NEARIE' entry
Summary
Committee members identified inconsistencies between versions of the school-options matrices — including conflicting entries on whether modules are temporary or permanent and an erroneous 'NEARIE deferred maintenance only' line in Option B1 — and asked Kelly to remove the misplaced entry and reconcile differences before public dissemination.
Committee members reviewed redlined edits to a school-options matrix and highlighted multiple discrepancies between the committee’s matrix and a v4 educational matrix submitted by the schools. Tim Fling, committee member, said the differences "explain adding a large renovation to the buildings" in one version while another version assumes "there's no renovation to be done," and he flagged the mismatches for correction.
The committee discussed specific content issues: omission of adjacency notes regarding a landfill and required well maintenance in the Neary options; wetlands adjacency for some sites (noting the distinction between being on wetlands vs. adjacent); and an educational-considerations cell that reads "modular temporary made permanent" while the option appears intended as a permanent addition. "There's a discrepancy between what information is being represented, and really option b2," Fling said, noting the educational considerations should align with the intended option.
A procedural dispute arose about document ownership. Some members said the slide deck with school letterhead was an official school-committee document; others said the matrix is a committee working document and can be edited by the committee. To resolve the immediate issue, the committee agreed to ask Kelly to remove the line "NEARIE deferred maintenance only" from Option B1, which members said appears to have been copied into the committee document in error. "I think asking Kelly just to remove NEARIE deferred maintenance only from the option b1 since it's unrelated and seems to be a clerical error," Fling said, and members agreed to request that correction.
Tim said he would email Kelly to ask for the change and convert the redline review text to final (black) for the documents the committee will publish. The committee noted some items could not be resolved fully during the meeting in the absence of school-department staff but agreed to include caveats where necessary and to reconcile remaining discrepancies before public release or any joint meeting with the select board.
Ending: The committee directed staff to correct apparent copy errors in the public-facing matrix, reconcile mismatched educational-consideration text across versions, and to add caveats where a full technical explanation cannot be provided before the next public posting.
