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- [00:02]
John Brucato
You're listening to ASBO International's School Business Insider. I'm your host, John Brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hi everyone and thank you again for tuning in to School Business Insider. With summer winding down, school business officials are laser focused on one thing getting their districts ready to open their doors for another school year. Today I'm joined by Howie Barber, assistant superintendent for finance and operations at old Rochester Regional and Mass. School Superintendency Union 55, located in Massachusetts. How he's been in the trenches preparing for school startup for years. From finalizing capital projects and updating safety plans to routing buses and making sure cafeterias are ready to serve on day one. In today's episode, we'll walk through a checklist of what SBO should be thinking about in these final weeks before students return. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or a first year school business official, this conversation is packed with practical advice for a smooth and successful start. Howie, my friend, welcome back on the podcast. It's so good to see you.
- [01:29]
Howie Barber
Thank you, John. You as well.
- [01:31]
John Brucato
So before we get started, I just have to kind of take a sidebar already out of the gate. You and I were scheduled to record yesterday, but I just thought the reason we had to reschedule is just so typical for the role of a school business official. Can you just, you know, indulge me for a second and tell our listeners, like, what blew up yesterday? It was so great.
- [01:50]
Howie Barber
Sure. So you know when you have a schedule that's set up and you think you have things planned for, I don't know, an hour interview to talk to John, for instance. And then all of a sudden as I close my door and I see two people come up to the window out in front of me. And first off, I don't have an assistant to the front entryway. So as people are walking up, I then have staff randomly going up there to see who's there. One of them happens to become an auditor coming in for our workers comp audit that was scheduled for today, but obviously arrived a day early yesterday, not having an HR coordinator because she just recently resigned to take a better job or a newer job as a director. So that vacancy there becomes a human resource director position that I have to absorb a little bit. And then even on top of that My payroll person who is out sick and then when she returns is going to be behind already couldn't pull up any of the workers comp documentation or anything else because the auditor came in a little early. So this is just one of those examples where then I had to, you know, put your podcast on hold and talk to you for a little bit. But keeping in mind, I did have somebody staring at me through two windows to try to get me to, to.
- [02:59]
John Brucato
Go one of those, like camar. Like with your finger.
- [03:02]
Howie Barber
Exactly. And you know, when you're, when you're in the middle of a conversation, you just kind of put both hands up to try to tell them, you know, like, hold up, give me a couple minutes, please. And then. Yeah, but that doesn't always seem to work.
- [03:10]
John Brucato
But I just, I just thought that was so perfect because I'm sure everyone listening has been in that position. And you, you know, as much as you have your calendar in control, as you would hope, things just pop up. And it really is the business office at the center of the universe in a sense where if people don't know where to go or people don't know what to do, it just kind of ends up in the business office. And that was like, so perfect. Yesterday we were trying to work through some tech issues and we got it going and all of a sudden your auditor shows up out of nowhere. So I just, I just want you to tell that little story because it's just, it's just so perfect.
- [03:42]
Howie Barber
I think it goes into where we always say we have so many hats on.
- [03:45]
John Brucato
Yeah.
- [03:45]
Howie Barber
And since, you know, most of us are, you know, we're here year round, but in the summer when we have a chance to get so much work done. But that's also when a lot of our co workers that are year round actually take vacation time as well. So it seems like even if you do have staffing and you have a strong group of individuals in your team, you know, when they start going out, you're already having to pick up other jobs. And then when it's a different situation, you just, you kind of laugh a little bit, but, you know, what are you going to do? It's just. Well, that's why your calendar can be adjusted pretty quickly.
- [04:13]
John Brucato
Exactly. So what? You and I will have a different episode on how to scramble as a school business official. But for today, we're going to talk about what it takes to really get prepared for the opening of school. So why don't we kick it off? Can you tell me, you know, what does your Summer planning calendar typically look like as you prepare for a new school year. So kids are out, summer's in full swing. What is your planning looking like for Howie Barber?
- [04:37]
Howie Barber
Sure. So there's a lot of things that are really the foundation of getting ready for the opening school, as you were pointing out. One of the biggest things, especially the last, say, two or three weeks of school when the students are here. I have a lot of meetings with my facility director and we're already trying to go through and we have usually done a design plan of all of our capital projects that have gone through, whether they were a carryover of the previous year or there's things that were just approved for us, usually in May for, for July. So we had to do things simply as far as doing PA system updates. In one of the schools, we have a roofing project that's going on. We have window seals that are taking place. We have an asphalt replacement project plan at one of our schools. So when you're going through and you see a layout of what our capital projects are, as a minimum, there's about 13 items that I have between my six schools that I'm working on. And so a lot of that's coming up with a plan strategically because we do have building, use and rental of our facilities as well.
- [05:34]
John Brucato
Right.
- [05:34]
Howie Barber
Especially when there's like summer basketball programs using the auditoriums and so forth. Well, we can't do a full flooring, recoil and cleanup like we normally do in our basketball courts during the course of the summer or the gymnasiums. Excuse me. We also have another project that's actually. We have a big bond that was provided to us by the state. And I mean, it's, you know, it's for us to re. Go over our athletic fields on the outside, but when you're going through the procurement and the project for, you know, going through proper contracts and maintenance thing in alignment to the, the state guidelines. You know, you're going out, you're meeting up with vendors, you're doing things such as a well installation project plan and reevaluating whether or not you have enough space to be able to absorb the one well. Or if we need to add two, in this case, we actually have three coming up with how many vendors can actually come out and bring the, the materials and supplies in the contractors. Because the seasons are coming in place as well. You know, with fall season coming up, how can I get through 1 1/2 of my athletic fields when I have all of the, you know, the softball, the field hockey, you know, the soccer teams, all play on one side. Well, that one's going to be the first one's hit. So how do you adjust? And you do scheduling, because all that contract project plans then come into scheduling calendars, like with the athletic director making sure that the game times and the site locations and then, you know, officiating crews and everything. Know that just from that facility project plan you started a month and a half ago, it's going to be impacting September, October, November during the school time. And I know that's a little bit of a different variation, but that's just the contract projects for. For what we're starting at. On the outside of the building.
- [07:13]
John Brucato
Yeah. And not for nothing, but you and I are in the northeast, so our construction season is much more condensed than our friends, maybe down south or out west. Right. So we have to plan as much as we can in such a condensed timeline that hopefully you can get everything done before students return. But, you know, oftentimes it does carry over to the following construction season.
- [07:32]
Howie Barber
No, and one other piece that you bring up with that is because of the procurement processes we have to go through with a lot of these individual contracts. Right. We're trying to see if we can expedite the procurement process because even with doing field grading and then the reseating and everything, we. We need to have that done by like the third week of October. Otherwise we're not going to have enough time for it to settle prior to the winter. Because again, like you said, our seasons here are different. So, you know, otherwise come the. The spring, you know, we're not going to really use that field anyways because it hasn't really grown much at that point or been very stable. But again, it's just. It's. It's a matter of where you are in the States as well, that you have to also try to accommodate. Right.
- [08:14]
John Brucato
So I'd like to jump through a couple of different buckets. I want to start with facilities and Capital project. We already started talking about that a little bit. We'll follow up with like transportation, food service, and then maybe audits after that if we have time. But let's go back to facilities and capital projects. You went through kind of a lot of things that you have on your plate. It's great that you and your facilities director meet prior to student being dismissed. So you really have everything kind of queued up and ready to go. Tell me a little bit more. How do you manage those capital project timelines to just make sure that everything is wrapped up before opening day?
- [08:46]
Howie Barber
Sure. So Usually based on our calendar that we work on normally, and Jean Jones is my facility director, we actually meet every morning. Usually we're together for about 15 to 20 minutes at least before the doors in essence open up. Because usually we're both here on seven. We go through, we identify what those plans are for the day, especially because of contracts with our, with our custodial staff in case there's small projects and so forth. But that's a daily basis. But over the course of the year as a whole, we try to build up a calendar. And that calendar is going to identify all of the major large capital projects that are going to go over the course of the summer. But then if there are other ones that fall into place because of the school vacation weeks or the holiday seasons, etc. Once that's designed, then we try to make sure that we're able to maintain that. So when I'm meeting with Gene, like I said, the last couple of weeks of school during June, we've then identified which buildings specifically we're going to be doing which projects on. So one of our schools, Center School, for instance, that's over in the elementary of Menopauset. We actually had a roofing project that was coming in. We knew that we had delivery of product materials. We knew that we had to have our, our day custodial maintenance manager on the site for the deliveries and so forth, depending on what days they were. But then also making sure that those parts of the buildings, because we do have summer programs as well, are basically not populated with the students and we. So moving them into the other buildings, that's kind of like one small piece of like one project. But then what we've also done is a lot of those projects can be done simultaneously because we do have the same type of project being done at our old Hammondown school, which is also a metapoisa. So trying to utilize the time because we have the vendors coming in, they're doing specific type of projects as a whole that we can kind of align the time to. And then when we're going through, usually at least once a day either here I will go into a quick site visit just to kind of see how that project is going on. So then we can look at it from a timetable. You know, we have a project plan pretty much established. So we're thinking it's going to be probably about say two weeks to do each project. Sure. How do we sustain that with again, the staffing, the school events? You know, if there is summer programming that's being done because we do have one every year. And then how, how do we make sure that we can also have potentially two or three vendors on the grounds at the same time? Because we do have, like I said right now, I think altogether we have 13 capital projects that are being done this summer that are really tying our hands quite a bit when it comes to all the extra programming that we're trying to put through.
- [11:15]
John Brucato
Do you also have a construction manager and or architect with these larger capital projects or is it you and Gene that are really hands on managing the contractors directly?
- [11:24]
Howie Barber
It's Gene and I, yeah. So.
- [11:25]
John Brucato
Wow.
- [11:26]
Howie Barber
Yeah, I like. Since Gene has, he's got a significant background, I mean 32 years of being in the Navy where he did all of those operations on the ships forever. So he was very, very regimented. So when I give him, yeah, he's, he's awesome to be able to work with and deal with. He. He tells me sometimes when I'm stepping out of my own lane, he's not quite that bad.
- [11:48]
John Brucato
You got to be kept in check every now and then.
- [11:50]
Howie Barber
Right. But knowing that when there is like a strategic plan with that, I know that's going to be met quite well. So it gets a lot more flexibility. But also knowing the fact of the matter that, you know, you can't just have one person always doing everything. So we were able to spread out that project plan to make sure that we can kind of get everything taken care of timely. Especially because we do have issues just like everybody else when the vendors we have coming in that have been awarded the contract and then some kind of a delay comes up and then how does one delay impact the other projects that are there? Because you know, when you're trying to do a roof, you know, you're outside. But if you're trying to do, you know, we have the Windows project that we have going on. Well, we can't have windows being done and re resealed and then a replacement plan of approximately 118 windows if there's going to be certain people in certain parts of the building because then you have other conflicts. So there's a lot of those different things. But we always try to make sure that at least the two of us have site visits in place, but then also making sure all the other administrators know because you know, they're on summer vacation or they might have people coming in. And again, a lot of it comes into being very transparent with all the other staff that are, that are in the district.
- [12:59]
John Brucato
Well, that's a great segue into my next Question. Can you tell me any strategies that you've developed over time to help communicate the progress and or delays of projects to your board community Superintendent?
- [13:11]
Howie Barber
Yeah, so we have, so I'm very fortunate with our team. We have what's called, called our tlc and so that's all of our administrators. And we meet at least once every two weeks as a whole during the course, especially come the back end of the school year when we've had, I know there's so many events that go on, but we need, need to make sure, especially in the last month of May and June, to have at least three of those meetings. Usually that's when we'll give a full overview as far as the technology updates, the facility updates, different things within the buildings as a whole. And then as we give that layout, we try to make sure that they know what the calendar cycles are going to be. And then with that same platform that comes into play when there are major things that come up, we are also on our, I guess everyone knows the technology these days. That thing called text messages. Right, Right. So usually there's, there's group emails and group text messages that goes out. Because sometimes a building may be very reliant on some space or what they have for an event going on inside the building for the students, especially over the summer programs. Because we have four summer programs that are taking place right now, but we're able to move a lot of them up here to the regional high school building.
- [14:20]
John Brucato
Yeah.
- [14:20]
Howie Barber
So because of that it opened up the ability of us doing these projects that are taking a little bit more time at the elementary schools. But it also keeps that in mind that if one administrator knows, we want to make sure that they all know. So then that way they also have a lot more of a, an ability of having, you know, peace of mind, but also being able to give some input too, because they're in the buildings day to day, you know, and they might know if there's something that has transpired that we might not have known about.
- [14:45]
John Brucato
You know, I think that's a great strategy and one that I've adopted in my own communication plan is. So for instance, if we're doing major construction work at the elementary school, I'm still letting the rest of my administrative team know because there are likely going to be unintended consequences that I'm not aware of. So it's better to over communicate in these instances because if the elementary school has to coordinate something to move pro, like maybe PD programming or something over the summer, they already like the they being the middle or high school administrators, already have an idea of what's going on. So this isn't brand new and we're starting from scratch. So I love that you've kind of adopted that too, because just keeping everybody on the same page, even if they're not directly impacted by any kind of work, really kind of protects you from having to make some last minute moves. Has that kind of been your experience? Like have keeping everybody in the loop, everyone's a little bit more at ease?
- [15:36]
Howie Barber
Yeah, I think, you know, the most important thing is that, you know, when you, you know, I always joke around about like the family environment because, you know, we spend more time here with all of us than we do actually at home. But I think when you have so many individuals and everybody has their own priorities, just like your house does. Right. But when you have your, say, your food service director or your facility director or your principals, or you have your, you know, assistant superintendent maybe of academics or for special ed, everybody has their own project that they're trying to work on getting ready for the opening of school, whether it's designing the pd, whether it's getting the building open and ready and clean for the students to start coming in. But a lot of those cases, every single thing that can take place is going to impact somebody else. You know, a capital project plan that we're looking at as far as kind of like the first conversation piece that impacts not only the principals, but then my food service director who needs to be moving new product materials in, refrigeration updates, etc. You know, those types of projects that are a capital project actually at one of my other buildings for the, for the refrigeration unit. Well, now do I have to shift other things and is that going to be impactful for not only one administrator, but every type of administrator you have within your district. Again, because it's not also always just the central office or principals, it's really everybody on that team. And again, at a blink of an eye, all of a sudden it can be doing something that's going to dramatically modify the opening day, especially the way the summers go.
- [17:03]
John Brucato
You also mentioned you do site visits. What's your approach to maybe later in the summer walkthroughs and punch lists. Like what is kind of your timeline in terms of making sure that everything's buttoned up a couple weeks before school opens?
- [17:15]
Howie Barber
Well, the funniest thing is that last year we just redid our five year strategic plan and one of the five priorities was facilities and technology. And so it was creating capital project improvement plans, it was creating visitation structures so that there's really for us. Gene, myself and I'll bring my superintendent for one of the three visits in the buildings. We go through and we assess the buildings for everything from the floors to the windows to the, the furniture placements based on safety and security for excess access, the, the PA systems and the technology platforms. And so we do that as far as a, like once every three, excuse me, three times a year we go into the buildings and we review and then we use that to build the capital list.
- [18:02]
John Brucato
Oh great.
- [18:03]
Howie Barber
On top of that we're actually making sure that number one, everything works and then two, if there are things over one year to a 10 year plan, that what we need to replace to put in place, how that's going to come into play. And again that goes into that calendar. But those site visits, usually once we go into that building, who do you think one of the other key members is to come to at least the last 15, 20 minutes of the walkthrough? The principal. Why? Because it's principal's building. But then the principal has that opportunity once we've looked at everything to say, oh you know what, by the way, these are some of the small things that I've had based on what you're talking about as potentially other issues. And then that way when we go to that next visit, we actually have that ability of now planning and making additional changes and then moving forward. Because at the end come that May and June like we started with, that's when a lot of these things that came up that maybe we weren't able to do during those holiday breaks, et cetera, they turn into a, a project over the summer. And it might not be a full capital project like you know, a 10, 20, $50,000 project, but it's, it's the building improvement piece that needs to come into play. And a lot of that is based on that scheduled calendar and the visitations and so forth that go through.
- [19:11]
John Brucato
So you really keeping a constant eye on what's going on in all your buildings. You're not saying necessarily identifying something in July and assuming it's going to be the exact same the following July throughout the year. You have those periodic checkups and you know, everyone knows things are constantly changing. So that's great to hear that you have probably one of the more up to date views on the status of your buildings. Just because you're out there on the boots, on the ground more often than maybe just checking in once or twice a year.
- [19:41]
Howie Barber
Well, the one thing too that it does help is that I know we joke around a lot about what conversations we're going to have now, but not trying to change the topic into budget, but by doing those as well, it allows me to figure out at what time during the course of the year there might be an issue. And so when we're working on the budget and here, because of the four different districts, my budgets kind of vary depending on each town. One has to start no later than October because they need their stuff earlier. Come like the back end of January by to have our approved budget before where the other ones aren't until like literally middle of March. So.
- [20:15]
John Brucato
But you're still having to work on four separate budgets, right?
- [20:18]
Howie Barber
Correct, Yep. Four separate budgets. Yep. So four different capital projects, budgets, facility operations, et cetera, and trying to identify the costs and then the. Because again, you can't buy one big bucket of materials and put it through all, you know, all six buildings because unfortunately it's four different tax ID numbers, four different districts for different operational platforms. But there's always different things you can do from a financial planning that we can talk about some other later point in time.
- [20:46]
John Brucato
We could probably do a whole episode on just what do you do to manage facilities and capital. But we must move on. So that being said, let's talk a little bit more about transportation and food service. So starting with transportation, no pun intended, always moving target. What's your system for. For routing, confirming bus readiness. Because I think one of the biggest anxiety points for parents is the start of school and their bus not showing up, their bus being late, the route is wrong. What's your system for making sure that's as smooth as possible on day one?
- [21:18]
Howie Barber
Sure. So there's a couple pieces with that as well. A lot of times, you know, you. You're looking at what your buses were last year, but your enrollment changes. Kids advance up a grade, kids graduate, new kids come in. So one of the biggest things we do is we look at what the enrollment is. A couple of times during the course of the year, I take updated bus counts just to see where they fall into play. I need that anyways, because I have to do that. I'm our state federal reporting so that they know what our riderships are and so forth anyways. But when I have the ability of taking those numbers at the end of the year, we have what's in. In our power school with our re enrollment for all of our students in which, believe it or not, this morning I was on the phone, my technology Manager and he was converting the information in our power school. And when he rolls that, I then export that.
- [22:06]
John Brucato
Okay.
- [22:06]
Howie Barber
And when I take that information, I then look to see how many students are on it now versus who were on it two months ago back in June. And then from that piece, I can reorganize the design plan of which students are still going to be on the same busing for the ridership. We did just do a new contract last year as well with the ridership, with the busing contract. So I realigned the bus structure so that it really met more efficiently towards what our costs were, especially because we had a couple buses that were almost half. Half vacant.
- [22:38]
John Brucato
Do you also run, do your drivers. Do they do test routes and coordinates, what the next year is going to look like? Because I know there's. It's kind of a perennial issue these days where there's driver shortages, there's a lot of attrition. So new drivers obviously aren't going to know these routes. Veteran drivers, maybe a little bit more. So what do you do in terms of preparing drivers to get ready for those routes?
- [23:00]
Howie Barber
Good question. Once I get that list and which is coming in today and I reorganize it, I actually have. She's employed from the. From the vendor, but Cheryl will come in and we'll meet in about a week and a half. We'll go through and we'll finish up the redesign of the bus routes and the rider ships. And then between that and the week before school, all the. All of the drivers come to the building and then we do a kind of like a mock run. So we have a ability of rerunning that to see exactly where the students and the timing is, because a lot of times, even though we might have a route designed and we might have half these students that might not normally be riders, family members, circumstances change. And then all of a sudden you do have a situation where you have a lot more individual students that might be on one bus than another one. So we have to make some adjustments come the. The opening of school as well. Sure. So this is the chance number one of us having a determined route structure for the students. The drivers then get a chance to at least run a minimum of one, if not two mach runs. And then when the first day of school does open up and we get through there, we actually, for two weeks, we does it. We do a timer to be able to identify what are the really the stop times. Because each time that we usually make a stop, you assume like, you know, 30 seconds per student to get onto the bus and then what the duration of time is going to be to kind of get through the routes. Do we have to start them up 15 minutes earlier to make sure they're at the school on time, et cetera. But then during that course of those two weeks, we see what those changes might be. And then by the third week I do a re updated post as far as what the route is because sometimes we will have more students to come in, sometimes we don't. A lot of times though too, you don't actually get a true updated roster run because when you have your fall sports to come into play for the high school, you might not have a lot of students on the buses at that time because they might be playing their soccer or their field hockey.
- [24:52]
John Brucato
It's not a fair representation of true ridership.
- [24:54]
Howie Barber
Exactly. Exactly. So in that case too, I usually try to send out a survey to all of the registered athletic members to see as well as the fine arts to see how many of them are normally riderships that are not participating at that point. And then that helps us do one more update prior to, like I said, that third week of school being in session where we then have that updated. Post up onto our school district website in our transportation folder so people know what the stops are, what the times are now so that there's, you know, within five minutes, give or take for all of the students that might be on board.
- [25:29]
John Brucato
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- [26:10]
Howie Barber
Right? That's exactly it. And you have to keep that in mind. That's why when you're doing that poll, you're almost thinking whether it's a fall sport, a winter sport, a spring sport, who's going to be on it. Because you want to make sure you don't over occupy. But then you also want to make sure you don't have a bus that's only got seven to ten kids on it. And then it's like, well geez, this bus over here, it's Taken him an hour to get off the bus rather than this one. That's only taken 25 minutes for this driver. So.
- [26:33]
John Brucato
Right. Because that first bus is packed, but the other one has like 15 kids on it. So it's like. Do you find it's challenging to kind of balance that, though? Because obviously I'm not completely familiar with your routing. But how do you balance if one bus is totally packed and the other is maybe a little less so, but maybe the routes are completely on opposite ends of town? I mean, is it challenging to kind of strike that balance between ridership?
- [26:59]
Howie Barber
Sometimes it really takes a lot of just. It's almost like doing an observation of driving with the. Driving with the bus. And I have had situations where the bus routes seem to be extremely long. So I'll hop on and I'll just take the ride to see what could actually be a little bit of the. The glitch on that bus. We did have one situation where we had one bus that actually made two stops. One stop literally picked up about 45 kids. And yeah, based on just the location and so forth. But I can't. I'm not going to split that individual stop because. Exactly. So that driver, unfortunately for that first route for the elementary schools had a much shorter route, but then we made sure that the secondary route that they ran was longer. So it kind of gave a little bit of a. A check and balance to that one individual versus two or three other drivers that were there. It also comes into play as far as for us having three separate towns. I have three separate busing contracts, so they don't overlap as far as the roadways. So in the border. So because of that, knowing, depending on, again, the venue, one of them is a very agricultural type of town. So you have a lot of roads, you know, I mean, going through the wilderness to go to one house there might be, you know, 10 miles away. And so just driving out there is going to take more time than if you go to another place where you're going up the street, you're picking up 10 kids. Right. So the timing and the rotations as well come to play. So trying to really balance it out. And I think having the experiences of a prior route or a prior year's worth of route use and seeing how that came into play. And then if there are other things that you can really see and change, you really want to make sure you take a lot of notes over the course of the year. And I know we're very fortunate that with the updates that we take when we've done this route so far just from the first starting blocks before we get the final numbers. Now you can see that we've already made changes. You know, we've already added a couple of stops. We've actually got rid of a couple because there is no more riderships or no more students waiting there like there had been in the past, so. Right again. But everything can be changed, you know, during the course of the year. But you have to be mindful if it's going to change a pickup or a drop off by 10, 20, 30 minutes. Now you have a little bit more of a community issue than, than it is the space on a bus.
- [29:11]
John Brucato
Yeah, it's, it's balancing that efficiency mindset with customer service and meeting parents where they're at. Because if you're cutting too deep and you know, maybe you're saving some money on the number of buses out on the road, but routes are extended, then it's not really worth the savings in a sense because you're upsetting your, your parents.
- [29:30]
Howie Barber
Right. Yeah. And the community, I mean when you, when all said and done, the community is almost the most important thing to keep in mind. I mean, yeah, when I say community, that is students. But when you're looking at the pickup, the drop offs, I mean getting them to school is the most important piece. And I mean, I know it's not academics, it's like it's bringing them so they can get that. But the, the collaboration and the discussion points that are really important is making sure that the families know that their students are being picked up, they're being picked up on certain times. You know, we, and I think every administrator pro is the same thing. We're not the babysitters. Like that's not where we're trying to go with it from that perspective, but being able to have a very open dialogue as far as. Okay, well, like us putting the website posting that says these are the routes, this is the stop times for each individual location, for each of the individual buses. You know, you have a five to ten minute, you know, grace period of those times.
- [30:22]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [30:22]
Howie Barber
But usually after two weeks there's no really, there's really no big glitches in those times. And again, the collaboration goes back and forth with the family and the communities.
- [30:31]
John Brucato
Yeah. Everybody kind of falls into the routine.
- [30:33]
Howie Barber
Yeah. And one, the best part about it for us financial officers is once that part is done, it always goes back to the, the front office administrators with the principals. We don't hear about it again. I'm just kidding.
- [30:45]
John Brucato
Yeah, right. So, okay, so let's talk food service.
- [30:51]
Howie Barber
Sure.
- [30:52]
John Brucato
Can you tell me how you would you confirm that your cafeterias are fully prepped for the start of school? I mean, there's a lot of staffing challenges out there. You know, vendors come and go, but, you know, we're left holding the bag. How do you prepare your cafeteria? So day one, it's as smooth as you could hope for.
- [31:13]
Howie Barber
Well, I think a couple things specifically in the past, like, couple years came into play, especially here in Massachusetts. So we are fortunate that we have our first meals for breakfast and for lunch or is paid for by the state. So that's great. New York.
- [31:26]
John Brucato
New York actually is implementing that for this upcoming school year, and that has.
- [31:30]
Howie Barber
Financially provided us a lot of additional capabilities than historically. Historically, we were almost one of the districts that were kind of running a little bit in the red every year just because we didn't have participation. But knowing where those funding stuff came in to play, number one is it allows us to really, truly take into consideration the meals per labor hour, because we look at the participation, the preparation, etc. So we have the accurate number of positions. I'm saying positions not filled, but positions listed for all the schools based on the past. I keep seeing the smile. That's all I can tell you.
- [32:06]
John Brucato
As an aside, food service is like the biggest thorn in my side right now. And we went to a new contractor because they were the lowest bidder two years ago. And it's just, it was. We went from a really. Because we contract, we went from a really solid program that our families were happy with to just not great at all. And this is the first time in my 10 years of being a school business official that I have spent this much energy trying to fix a food service program. This, this could be an episode by itself. So I don't want to detract from, from you, Howie, but I just, I'm smiling because I'm just in the thick of it right now. It's just, it's mind numbing.
- [32:41]
Howie Barber
This will show up as A News at 11.
- [32:46]
John Brucato
Official loses his mind over a food program.
- [32:50]
Howie Barber
Well, you know, as long as you're eating healthy, it doesn't make a difference. You know, let's make sure there's no candy bars or any kind of ice cream allowed. But, but I think when you're, when you're looking at those pieces of it. Well, and like, I'll refer to the meals per labor hour, and when you have the design plan that's laid out for the participation, the easiest and Best piece with that is knowing that this is where you have to make sure you can make those accommodations. Right. And then if you're able to fill the positions. And I'm very fortunate here at our districts, we've only had. In my, this is my sixth year here, I have only seen three retirements out of 26 staff. With the three retirements, they were filled almost immediately. And then only two of the positions that were like a two and a half hour part time are ones that have had turnover.
- [33:44]
John Brucato
Retention is so important with food service because the food service individuals get to know the students by name and it just makes things so much easier, especially when you have students that have allergies or food aversions. They just know it throughout the kids matriculating through it. That's amazing to hear that you've, you've had that kind of retention.
- [34:02]
Howie Barber
But I think one of the best parts too is having great relationships.
- [34:05]
John Brucato
Yeah.
- [34:06]
Howie Barber
And you know, I think sometimes you almost get favors called in to some extent. I mean, you know, I'm trying to, you know, make sure I'm eating dietarily correct. So I walk down to my calf every morning and of course one of the, one of my favorite staff members has a strawberry or yogurt with strawberries there every morning for me. And I know it's completely fat free. I doubt it, but I'm sure it's in compliance.
- [34:29]
John Brucato
Just write it on the label. I won't ask questions.
- [34:32]
Howie Barber
Exactly. There's no yo crunch or anything like that in there. But I think. But it goes back to going down as a administrator and recognizing that you're. We're all equal staff. You know, we all are doing something to perform for the students. And I think if you've come to any of the presentations that I've done at our annuals or anything else, I've always said, specifically your food service, your custodial staff, and your transportation are three of the most key parts of any school district. Yet they're almost the least amount recognized all the time. You know, one gets our kids to school, brings our, our students home. The other one cleans the buildings, make sure that the students come in along with all the staff and they have a nice area that they can work on and do all the things necessary for academics and not feel that there's hazards that are there. And then obviously the food service, you know, kids today's day and age have gone years where they don't have the ability because maybe parents are always working or maybe there's financial shortages and so forth, where the kids have come to school and they've been, you know, underfed or not having the nutrients necessary by having those free meals and those resources there for the breakfast and then for lunch with the snacks, et cetera, that makes it so that they're actually getting more positive influence at school. So those, if they're hungry, they're not learning. Yeah, exactly. And that's the key piece. And having those three parts of our teams satisfied and happy with what they work and where they work and how they work makes it so that we are just a better team from start to finish. And I think that's why that collaboration, you know, I'll bring as bad as. Again, it's, it's not a bad joke because of the food, but you know, my, my busing contractor and they're my contractors, but I'll go out there, I'll bring donuts and muffins for breakfast or occasionally I'll do like a pizza, lunch or something like that. Just so that, that way they have it. I mean, just seeing the smiles, they know that they can also come to my office and I'm not the owner of the company that I contract, but there's a lot of collaboration that's there the same.
- [36:35]
John Brucato
But to your earlier point, you're treating them like family, right? I mean, like you said earlier, we're all equals in this and we may have different titles and different jobs and responsibilities, but I love your approach. You're treating everybody as an equal and I, I'm assuming that that goes a really long way with your staff and that sure, you have an open door policy, they can speak to you and they just feel comfortable and as a part of one team.
- [36:56]
Howie Barber
Correct. Yep. And even if it's a matter of a phone call, I mean, all of my staff have my cell phone because, you know, what is there.
- [37:05]
John Brucato
Well, maybe it is awesome. I don't know, it's, it's. The gesture is great. I don't know if it gets.
- [37:10]
Howie Barber
It's reciprocal. If I. No, I was kidding. I don't call them custodian on a.
- [37:16]
John Brucato
Sunday afternoon, that picnic, I swear to.
- [37:19]
Howie Barber
God, I needed some help. No, no, but, but they know something comes up if there's a family circumstance, an emergency, because also if it's a busing situation at 5 o' clock in the morning, I really need to know.
- [37:30]
John Brucato
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:31]
Howie Barber
And so, and then that way I can make sure all the principals and the superintendents aware because then we have to do a one call out and things like that. So. But there's, there's so much collaboration. But I think again, it's one of those things that if we have the ability of working very openly with all the members of our teams, it's, it's sufficient. Excuse me, you have to be very efficient. Excuse me, with doing that. And that due diligence actually makes it so that you're the one that's going to be really, when you have that collaboration and you're working that well with the members of your team, it's going to benefit everybody. Right. You know, and the collaboration, just that that word by itself, collaboration and communication, those two Cs are really are key for making sure we can give everybody we need to, especially for these three departments as a whole.
- [38:16]
John Brucato
Yeah. So I have so many other things I want to talk to you about. And you and I could talk for hours, but I've got another hour. In the interest of time, I do want to hit one more point and that has to do with safety and emergency planning. So what, what does your annual annual review of safety and emergency plans look like and who do you involve and how do you ensure that you're as safe as you can be for the start of school?
- [38:40]
Howie Barber
So the, the best part about that is a little while ago I mentioned about the five year strategic plan.
- [38:45]
John Brucato
Yes.
- [38:46]
Howie Barber
And in that strategic plan aligned with the facilities and technology was an emergency evaluatory type of system. So that goes hand in hand with making sure that we have our building based reviews. We also have a full update. So when we did the updates for our PA systems, we also link those PA system updates to the police and fire departments. And so we have it almost on a full length one call that goes back and forth. We had also gone through and we did a full building. I'm trying to think of the best way to speak about the blueprint of our buildings. We align them to specific numbers and coatings so that each police and fire have that complete alignment back to what we use it in.
- [39:32]
John Brucato
As a school, we're adopting something very similar because we have our own nomenclature of oh, it's the back hallway. But emergency responders aren't going to know what back hallway means. Designated as like a zone 2 or zone A. And on the blueprint it's mapped out in a color in the letter so they know the threat or the emergency is in this zone, not some little ism of your school district.
- [39:55]
Howie Barber
That's exactly. And I think having that overview and the perspective that you were just referring to as well, it means that everybody is completely on the same page. And if there is ever a circumstance with an emergency, you can't be second guessing where is somebody you know. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces that comes into play.
- [40:14]
John Brucato
Right. Because you're never guaranteed that your local police department or who you're most close with is going to be the first responder. It could be a state or a county sheriff or trooper that may not be familiar with your campus. So if you can give them a blueprint and keep the zones and the nomenclature as simple as possible, that's so much easier than trying to explain where something is.
- [40:34]
Howie Barber
Yeah. When we, when we do our, our fire alarm testing and when we do our hazard evacuation type processes, we usually do that once every two months anyways. We usually have our police and fire on, on the grounds. When we go through and we do that, we make sure that the evacuations as a whole doesn't make a difference whether it's an elementary school or a secondary school. We've set it up almost as if it's a complete circumstance that it's true. You know, and obviously there's a lot of other titles for what we use for our, our forms of evacuation, but when we do those, we actually do three different sessions that is based on a true emergency evacuation and it's not relating to fire or other building based situations. It's actually based on a true emergency. I guess I try to be politically correct without going into specific terms, but I think we all know the types of situations that can develop. So when we do that, we actually try to work with it so that people are aligning the building, the PA systems, the evacuation system that we have, the siren systems, the different entrance points that we have, and making sure that everybody between the students, the teaching staff and other faculty, as well as the police and fire know. And then when we run those and we make sure that they're running efficiently, we also do timestamps and we try to make sure that we have the, the call, the one to one call to the, the emergency teams, how long does it take them to come in here? Then if there's a situation that we run as far as a mock where I'll have one of our administrators go to one point inside the building and that is the, a situation that's taking place to see how we would structure that kind of an evacuation, we go through that whole process as well. So we can do the timing of what's taking place inside the building when there is an entry point versus what's the recall as far as getting the other police, fire and hazard members actually into the program as well. When we do that, like I said, we do that a couple times a year. But on top of that, we also go through, and usually on this team is going to be at least one of the principal administrators. We usually have at least one teacher, if not two that are on a committee team. We, we then have the facility director, myself, the superintendent is included, and usually we have one other central administration administrator as well. And so what we do is we use that as a way of going through and evaluating the buildings and then that comes back into also updates that we need for. Maybe it is another capital project or maybe it is another just a function update that we need. Again, because we've had a couple of situations where we found out that speakers have not been working in the PA system, even though it was a new installed PA system. But because we did the walkthroughs, we found out, oh, wow, this wing, we had two of them that weren't working well. How does that come into play? So there's a lot of those things too, that you don't really realize the benefits and how something that might be so small that you don't really realize when you're actually having the capabilities of doing a single or maybe two or three times a year, mock runs, how impactful that could be. And that does go back to our strategic plan, because we had that as specific benchmarks that we wanted to make sure we were implementing. And by the time we got through year one, because we're now in our year two of our strategic, almost everything for facilities and operations is already implemented. And so because again, the safety, security and the operational piece for any school building, that's got to be the key piece. I mean, again, academics is very important, but of course can't handle the building for the kids to come in, then we're already putting ourselves in some, a restriction that's, that's going to prevent the kids from learning a lot worse than, than not having a textbook.
- [44:23]
John Brucato
Yeah, there's no shortage of strategies to address when it comes to safety and security. I mean, it's my, my, my thought is like, it's too bad that this is the world we live in, that we have to worry about those kinds of things. But it's, it's good that we have these protocols in place to prepare for the worst, hope for the best. So before I let you go, Howie, I can't sign off without asking you, how's ASBO International's director or board of directors treating you. I saw you were at Idaho ASBO recently. So how's it been going? How are you liking your board seat so far?
- [44:55]
Howie Barber
You know, being in my first year, I'll be honest with you, there's more professional courtesies that go along with being in this position. I think having conversations with more of the executive directors for each of the states, I think goes a long way, at least in my mind. I think you know as much as. You know as much as it is having conversations with yourself and the other school business administrators when it comes to our annuals. I think when you have the ability of going to a different site and you get to see exactly what they're doing in their state outside of coming into asbo. Right. And getting a little bit more of a. Of an idea of the communication platforms, the interactions of the boards. When I, when I had gone to Idaho, just the, the members that are there on the board alone, let alone the membership, I. It's been a month and a half since and I'm still getting texts back and forth the members of, of that state. Yeah, that's actually pretty. A fantastic opportunity to make sure that it's again asked if I would come back next year.
- [46:02]
John Brucato
That's amazing.
- [46:03]
Howie Barber
I said, you really want me to? And they said yes. So I evidently, and I promise I wasn't buying them a lot of beverages or things like that.
- [46:10]
John Brucato
Come on now. I know your charm. Everybody wants to hang out with, but.
- [46:15]
Howie Barber
I think when you have a chance to be on the board, even as a board of director or just on any of the subcommittees, there is such a benefit to you from a professional perspective. And I think as much as we look to have some kind of an influence on those that are around us, like I always say about, like my family here in the district, I think when you're able to expand the group of individuals that you get to work hand in hand in, whether it's, you know, speaking to individuals from another state, just in general conversations, or whether it's visiting states or whether it's looking forward already to the, to the ACE conference and knowing that, okay, well, you know, I'm going to be bumping into a couple people like Glenn, okay. From Wisconsin. I know she's going to be coming down. I already have in my mind specific topics of conversations that is just going to be a great opportunity of getting back together. But then when you're able to use that and bring that somewhere else and you know, this year, I can't recall the second which states I'LL be visiting this year, but I think Arkansas is one of them. So, you know, not having a knowledge yet as far as what their board and that their state really does as a whole on an individual level. But that gives me such a. It really influences you to try to really think outside the box. And when you're going there, you're listening, you're not. You're not saying anything. You're just taking it all in, just to go in, to see, wow, this is some great stuff that they're doing. In every state that you go to, there is so much positivity that they have because that's why they're in those positions. That's why they're having these meetings. Yeah. So I think, going back to your original question, I think being on the board is a great thing for anybody, and I know that it's really been able to, I think, already in one year, make me even a better administrator in my own district, just because of the things that I get to see and I get to hear the experiences that you get to learn about, and then on top of it, then you get to bring them back, and then you get to see how you can really make those change to be, again, a different modification to what you already have in place. But everything changes, you know, so you can tweak it a little bit. I'm sure that if you came with me to one of the other states that I have on my. My checklist on top of the ones that I'm already assigned to, then, you know, you'll. You'll see how fantastic these. These traveling opportunities can be.
- [48:35]
John Brucato
Maybe I'll tag along with you one of these trips. You know, just keep. Keep me in the loop.
- [48:38]
Howie Barber
Well, I got to make sure I come down to New York this year, and I just happened to miss the. The conference. Two months.
- [48:44]
John Brucato
Yeah, Siobhan was there. It was great. It was so nice to see her. And, you know, like you said, just being able to invite your colleagues from out of state to your home turf is just. There's a. There's a sense of pride there because you, you know, you're in it every day and, you know, you have your conferences, but it's really rewarding to have your colleagues come in and just see how your state does things and you put your little touch on what is, I'm assuming, is very similar in terms of content and things like that. But every state is unique and the people are different. It's just. It's a. It's a great time.
- [49:13]
Howie Barber
Well, like, you said in the very beginning, you know, we have different seasons up here when we can actually do stuff like the, the athletic fields and so forth versus down south or out, out west. But I think when you look at just the, the whole venue of, you know, of accounting and finance and technology and, you know, budgetary and state funds and non state funds, it's just, it's amazing to be able to hear because it then opens up some windows of what you could possibly do in your own state. Yeah. From, you know, from researching some more of those financial capabilities. So. But, but it's always a pleasure to talk about this stuff with you.
- [49:46]
John Brucato
Yeah, you too, Howie. Thank you so much. I mean, I'm glad we were able to coordinate our schedules and I'm sorry about the tech issues yesterday, but it's always a pleasure to bring you on School Business Insider. I know this won't be the last time, but thank you for sharing your knowledge and the best of luck opening of school this year.
- [50:03]
Howie Barber
Well, John, it's a pleasure as well and same with you. Hopefully you get right through and just a couple months. We'll be seeing each other in October.
- [50:12]
John Brucato
Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on School business.