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We're going to call the meeting to order microphone. >> Okay. >> Today is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. I call this meeting of the Kushner School Committee to order. This meeting is being video and audio recorded for future cable broadcast. Please silence

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all cell phones for the duration of the meeting. Can I have a motion to open the school committee meeting? >> So move. >> Second. >> Do a roll call. >> Mr. Hush. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cordera? >> Yes. >> Mr. Ellis? >> Yes. >> Mr. Halpro? >> Yes. >> Mrs. >> Yes.

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>> Good evening everyone. This is a meeting of the finance committee with our school department. It is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. Do I have a motion to open our meeting? >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? I >> this meeting is being audio and video recorded. Uh please rise for the pledge

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of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Chairman Bush, before we get started,

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could I just ask uh you made a request last week for budget information prior to this meeting. You were provided with all of the information that you asked for in a timely manner. Is that is that accurate? >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Where do you want to start?

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>> Uh does I mean does Aldo want to start with any anything? Um sure. Um last night we did a presentation on the school department budget. Um we knew that we were looking at coming up with various scenarios. The town administrator asked us to come up with

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different scenarios but also a level funded scenario. to walk through the different portions of the budget with level funded level service and then um well we started with the superintendent's budget which is the overall budget of everything we would

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need to move forward and add some positions and add programs and whatnot. Then we developed the level funded level services. Then we come up with what we called our constraint budget which is we understand there were going to be cuts. We're going to be reduced in funds. what could we kind of live with but still get

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our work done that we need to get done. Um we would lose positions but at the same time we would try to um maintain the programs that we have because we've made great achievements in our scores and our students achievements over the past years. So we looked at where we

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could consolidate where we could increase class size and um what other positions we could take from the budget. So, um, we I don't everyone has a sheet or not, but it

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>> Okay, so there's kind of a cheat sheet there of the different scenarios that we have for the budget. >> So, do you have any extra? >> We can pass these down. >> Yeah, just pass it down. It's fine. The

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same stuff we went over last night. So, >> excuse me. Oh no. So the what was circulated to us is which budget? This is the superintendent's budget, not the two other budgets that you're talking about, right? The con the con. >> Correct. What was circulated was 20 FY

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24 25 26 and then 27 >> is the superintendent's recommendation. >> The one with the 2.4 increase, right? The 2.4 million increase. So is this does this exist for the other two budgets >> that we're going to talk about? Can you provide like line item detail for the

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other two scenarios that we would be talking about? >> Um, not line item detail, but we can tell you the areas where we're making reductions. >> Okay. No, we got some down. >> Make sure one gets over to the >> Yeah. Yeah.

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>> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> That sheet is just a highlight of last night. I would encourage people to go to the website to see the full presentation. >> So you'll see on there needs driven is our superintendent budget that reflects

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everything that we need moving forward. It's about a million nine. Although the one you have on paper is the 2.4. >> Yes, >> that's very high level. That's that we we cut out from that to get to the needs driven. We began cutting down from that budget. But since this is what we had

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already prepared for this format that >> and so you'll be able to go through when we go through the individual line items you'll be able to tell us where it was cut from. >> I can I I don't have the line item number but the areas I cut from. >> Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. >> So um the needs driven is 1.9 million.

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That would mean that we have no reductions to our budget. It means we would have three additional staff um um personnel in the in the teaching area of our budget. It also means that we continue the programs that we have and we would add a couple more have to do with

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>> a reading specialist and two behavior texts based on the needs the current needs of the students. So then from that we developed our level service budget which is again the needs driven was in a million9 more than this year and remember that includes

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transportation also and you'll see later on transportation is about $275,000 increase. Um level services for about a million5 we can maintain level services. There'll be no reductions to staff. there'll be no reductions to our

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programs and we won't be able to expand or bring the programs in that the superintendent just told you about. That's just to continue looking at that to level funded where we have no increase. Um we looked at the basically between the two. You're

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looking at 21 staff reductions and keep in mind we only have 132 staff right now. So you're looking at 21 staff reductions. There'll be major cuts in operations, maintenance, um, professional development throughout our budget. I would be, you know, putting on

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the table level funding our we use diesel fuel heating oil for our heating. Those right now I'd level fund, but if the market continues the way it is, I'd be looking for 30 35% more on that next year. I'd have to come back for supplemental because we have no control

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over that. uh in that budget also is the fact that we used solar credits this entire year. Uh my predecessor found that we had solar credits building up that weren't being used in prior years. We've been using them for a little over a year. They will expire uh by June at

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which point I had to put about $200,000 $240 I think back in the budget to make up for those solar credits that have been building up and never used. So looking at the level services and the level funded, we developed a constraint driven budget. So that budget there

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shows an impact of about a million dollars over what we have this current year. We would be reducing staff by eight positions. There's um there was one administrator in that staff of the reductions. We

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would also be um cutting many of our our maintenance budgets, our operations budgets by another 240,000. That makes up the difference. So the constraint driven budget is the one that we talked um at length about last night. Um we

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have a slight reduction in students, not a lot. And as you know, you don't have them all in one classroom. So it's hard to say you've lost so many students you can reduce one classroom. It doesn't work that way across the board. With that, we're basically looking for direction

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from the town as to um what can we look at for funding? What what can we look at for an increase? I know that there is still chapter 70 dictates a foundation budget that needs to be met. I know that each year the department of ed increases

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the town portion, decreasing their portion. So, there's that increase that's calculated every year. certainly you lose students the amounts still continue to increase. So there is a minimum funding that has to come in from that. Um and I can go through if you want me to

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talk about the areas that we've we'll take reductions and continue actually something from memory. So we we received grants which is part of our funding. Title One at first we were told was cut 50% and then just last week we found out they were only cutting it

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10,000 from 131,000 to $121,000. So that wasn't too bad. The idea grant which is our special education grants that we received 314,000 this year in those grants and from what I've read so far they haven't put the number out yet but from what I've read it looks like the you know from the federal government

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down they going to level fund those. We're always hoping for an increase, but um at least we budgeted for level funding. And then our circuit breaker, the way circuit breaker works is whatever funds we expend this year for out of district placements um from our

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budget, we'll receive a portion of it back the following year. So it tracks one year behind. So we're looking at about 280,000 of FY27 that we'll have to spend for circuit breaker. So I factored all those in in our budget. Uh I factored about 75,000 more in solar

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credits. I had the solar consultant go through the current usage the current bills and forecast for next year and each month we receive some from the town site that generates the solar power. So our our savings off of our bills next

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year should be about 75,000. So I factored that all in before I come up with some bottom line numbers that you see reflected in those different scenarios that you have. some of the concerns I have. >> Mr. Chairman, if I may. >> Yes, go ahead. >> And Mr. Chairman, um, just as a a point,

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just to put some clarification out there, the board of selectman is not participating in this meeting as a joint meeting tonight because of a posting error. Um, so I apologize for that. Uh, Dave and myself are here in an informational capacity only. We will not

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deliberate. We will not offer suggestions. Um, but we are allowed per town clerk clarification to ask questions. Um, I just want to put that out there just so everybody knows why we didn't open our meeting. And as a quick aside, I would just like to introduce

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everybody in the room to our new town administrator, Mr. Adam Montaine. Um, himself and Jamie are working together to put together the overall budget. Um, and just for a point of clarification, just so everybody at home and in this

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auditorium or library knows, our revenue of this year, just so everybody knows what our total revenue is to spread out completely townwide is $960,000, 932. So 960 960 932 increase

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year-over-year. >> That's I would I would like to actually have Mr. Kelly uh expand on that and talk about the other mandated costs that we have that we're obligated to cover um right now uh that are going to add to

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you know the overall deficit. Uh thank you. Right now we are looking at an increase in cost for elections because there are so many more elections

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this year. The increase is $30,27 and that's just to put on the elections. Uh we are looking for at an increase in water which is part of the operating budget. It's not an enterprise account

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uh by the increase from New Bedford where we purchase our water of $44,533. We have been told that the assessment from Old Colony Regional Votech

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High School will go up $410,12 from last year. We are waiting on final bids because this is the fifth year of our contract

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with the trash collection and processing and our back of the envelope estimate are about $39,000 increase. That could reduce depending on when the

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final round of bids come in. And right now we are looking at an increase of 49,890 for benefits which include health insurance,

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regular liability insurance, and the pension increase for uh Bristol County Retirement Board. that does not include uh teacher retirements as you know but

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does include the other workers. Uh we haven't taken the offset reductions for the enterprise accounts off of the benefit and retirement because we have

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to do that at the end based partially on the salaries. So we have to look at each individual each individual salary in the enterprise accounts and then also look at whether

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those individuals are taking for example health insurance and then back out the offsets. Uh estimate maybe last year it was 110,000 for the offsets.

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We'll have to see this year. Uh we are still negotiating uh the final numbers on health insurance based on stop uh a stoploss

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insurance but other than for health insurance. But other than that, we're looking at right now, just quick math, 933,732 increase. And we have a revenue increase of

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960,932. That does those mandated increases do not include the town department requests which before finance staff has done any of

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their reductions and made any recommendations to the board of selectment. That includes an increase of 1,345,790. So obviously we're going to have to be telling the departments that they're not getting it

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the super majority of that. >> Well, Mr. Kelly, to that point, um, a lot of the most of the departments that have come before us before the finance committee when they've presented their their budgets, for the most part,

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they've been level funded. So, there has been nominal increases in the overall town department budgets. Um, and it had to be that way because we just don't have uh the revenue to support big increases. Um we never do

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but this year seems to be even worse. Um >> well to further >> Mr. Chairman can I so I don't envy the position of the board of selectment. I don't envy the position of the fincom. We we understand the challenges. At the same time a level funded budget for a

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school department would decimate the school system. So we as a committee can't support a level funded budget that would decimate our school system. You're talking about 21 reductions. That's like 16% of the staff. The people that will lose is our is our

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kids. And we're here to fight for our kids and that's our responsibility. >> You're you're absolutely right. And I I don't disagree with you on that. And I think this really comes down to more of a state problem >> than anything else. I mean, we're we're we're doing the same exercise every

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single year and I've been doing it for a long time and I am like tired of it. Um because we don't get enough support in our towns. These small towns, look how many communities are facing budget deficits like we are. Um I believe the town of Middleboro has got a $4 million

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budget deficit. Um a bunch of them are proposing property uh Proposition 2 and a half overrides to fund their operational budgets. I mean this is what it's coming down to in this state. I mean when is somebody going to do something at the state level to stop this insanity? I mean, it's just it's

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crazy. I mean, because it doesn't work anymore. It really doesn't. The system is broken. You know, it's just I could go on and on about some other things. Uh, you know, where's the audit, right? How much money could we find if we actually

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did an audit in the state that could actually help us right here in this room? So, we're not doing this, right? I mean, it's it's it's frustrating. >> Mr. Chairman, if I can continue just so

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we get it out there. Uh, as far as any free cash, as you know, we spent free cash in the fall. Well, we're looking at right now a snow

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and ice deficit because we're allowed to spend in deficit because of the blizzard of between 250,000 and 300,000. We are also looking at included above

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and beyond that overtime for police and uh EMS fire personnel, public safety personnel of possibly we're still con figuring it out but

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150,000. So you're looking at 500,000 that we might have to use from free cash to take care of the FY26 deficit. And you have

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approximately 300,000 in free cash left after the fall. And as you can see in the memo I circulated, there's a number of requests for departments in on the free cash that will most

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likely go unanswered. So, it's across the board >> and it's not what you can afford, it's

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what you can spend. And with the mandated costs, even if we reduce some of them, like as final bids come in or the final insurance comes in,

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you're not going to have more than 100,000 to 150,000 to split among all departments. just say something.

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>> So, I mean, I think at this point it's it's pretty clear that, you know, to Ron, Jamie, and Mike's points that really what we're looking at is a systemic issue across the entire Commonwealth. Um, you know, when I did quite a substantial amount of research

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just looking at the escalation in the number of towns that have seen massive deficits annually. Some towns are looking at I think Marblehead this year is looking at a $7.7 million deficit. There's a number of other towns that are in the sevenish million dollar deficits.

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Um, so far as of two days ago, there have been 56 municipalities that have proposed Proposition 2 and a half overrides. Um, and they're still coming in. They're still coming in. Um there's actually a pretty good graphic here that

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shows how the costs have escalated since about 2022 2023. So we're talking just a period of a few short years. And this graphic essentially just shows how many municipalities across the Commonwealth have requested Prop 2 and a half overrides and what was the total amount

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of money that was requested by all of those overrides together yearbyear. So just just for color 2023 it was near the lowest of the entire trend that's shown back to 2017. Uh there were 12 uh municipalities and

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they requested a total of $19.52 million. The next year in 2024 that number went to 34 municipalities from 12 and the number ballooned from 19.5 up to 70.34 million. 2025 it went up to 43

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municipalities and 117 million and as of the time that this particular article was written which is from Marblehead's um town newspaper there are 54 municipalities up to that point which I believe this was on the 7th that were requesting overrides and

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that number's grown to 158 million. The fact of the matter is we know as a town what most of our fixed cost growth is going to be aside from one-time stuff like not one time but things over and above the normal operating budget. We

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can project that out 2 years, 3 years because we know what our contracts look like. We know at least that you know benefits are not going to decrease in cost, other costs are not going to go down. So we can pretty comfortably say that, you know, even if we were to level

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fund all town departments this year, which would mean because there are contractual obligations in terms of, you know, payraises, maintaining benefit levels, there have to be at some point either reductions or significant operating cost um reductions to

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essentially all department budgets. Even if we level fund the town this year, we're still going to be in the same exact place next year. and we're going to be in the same place the year after that and the year after that and the year after that because at minimum even if we'll just theoretically say that all town employees that are on

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contracts are getting anywhere between 1 and a half and 3% cost you know increases in salaries on a yearly basis plus all the other costs that come into operating a town. Where's that leave us? We're at 2.5%

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revenue collection increase year-over-year from property taxes. Well, probably about 1 and a2% in local aid, assuming they don't get pull the rug out from under us. So, maximum maximum, reasonably speaking, we're looking at about a 4% increase in revenue year-over-year. Is that a fair

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estimate? >> Right. Yeah. >> I think we can all pretty confidently say after looking at the budgets for all towns this year, even being very early in the process, we are well above 4% cost increases across the board. I mean,

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we're looking at the revenue that we're generating this year at an increase of about 960,000 being wiped out before we even look at edge budgets. >> We have 30 grand left. We can't do anything with 30 grand on a town scale. Town departments come together and ask

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for 1.3 million because that's realistically speaking what those department heads feel like they need. School department has its own needs. you know, we've presented a couple of different solutions, but what I'm getting at, and not to belabor the point,

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I don't think that this is a solvable problem in this year's budget. And if we're not going to get the level of support that we need from our elected officials up on Capitol Hill, we as a community have no choice but to take

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serious consideration into taking matters into our own hands, which ultimately comes down to increasing property taxes above and beyond the m the maximum 2.5%. Because we can see where this is going to go in 2 years, 3 years, four years, and there's no

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offramp here. The problem with that, the problem I have with that >> is that's a band-aid. That's a bandaid as well. And it falls on the backs of the working class taxpayers in this town and taxpayers who are on fixed incomes. >> With the way the economy is, there's no

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way people can afford uh additional uh property taxes right now. And then there could be another vote coming down the line that could impact their taxes as well. >> Absolutely. >> Um >> and it's like when does this end? So a town goes for a proposition to an apple

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override. It passes, right? >> It holds them over for 5 years. >> What happens in that you're doing the same exercise 5 years from now >> and hitting the taxpayers over and over again. And like you said, this is a state problem >> because local aid is not keeping up with

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the fixed cost, >> raises, you name it, all of it. Health insurance, it >> it's it doesn't keep up. Um, so where's where's all the money at the state level? That's what I'd like to know. >> The state, I believe, closed out at a $

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1.3 billion um budget surplus. >> I mean, it's just >> where's the money going? >> Doesn't change the fact we have the deck of cards. >> That's right. Exactly. >> And I and I do want to add, you know, a level funded budget, you talk about 21 reductions, that's on top of the 14 reductions that have been made over the

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last two years. So we're talking about 35 positions over three years eliminated right from a school system like that's >> So >> can you help me un the 14 help me understand the 14 please? >> There were six positions eliminated last year and there were eight positions eliminated the year before. >> There were 10 positions eliminated last

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year and you got the funding back for >> We did not get the funding back for all of them. You got the funding back for two. >> There was six a net loss of six positions. There were eight the year before. That's 14 in two years. This would be 21 more. We'd be talking about 35 positions.

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>> What were the 18 year before? Cuz I last year. Yes, I remember last year. >> Are they on that >> hand? While you're all looking, just to reinforce Jesse, >> I got

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>> reinforce Jesse's uh point. your levy, which is about 2/3 your revenue, increases somewhere around 3 to 3.25% a year.

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Your income as far as local receipts, and that's doesn't include the receipts that the school gets for the rental of the building, stuff like that. that stays with the school. But the local receipts are about

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5% increase a year lately uh because of the board of select elect doing a number of financial uh reforms that have increased that revenue.

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Your state aid yearoveryear is about 1%. Some years it goes down to half a percent. The highest I've seen it is one and a half%. So the state definitely, as Jesse said,

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is not keeping up. >> And there's 20 something plus towns in the Commonwealth >> that are getting minimum aid for education. That shows how in

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>> we inequity we all agree that more of more and more of the burden is falling to the towns and less is coming from the state. We we all agree to that. >> Um but that we're dealt with the deck of cards that's in front of us right now. >> So just I want to just make a couple observations.

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Um just to share you know we talked about Jamie talked about the budget and the town hall services. We'll just call it that right side of the house. just within the last year, we haven't filled a the part-time uh administrative assist

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assist assistant position in the board of selectmen in our inspectional services. We've got a part-time concoming towards the part-time board of health agent. Um we haven't filled a part-time clerk in the planning office. Um we

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haven't filled the business manager position in the DPW. Jamie Velasquez has picked up those added responsibilities for sewer and water. Um, so on that side of the house >> and and the town, >> but that's that's yes, it's not by it's

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not because of budget. There's those other extenduating circumstances. But on those other issues, I mean, on those other positions, we've kind of kept our foot on the brake because we don't want to fill those positions in knowing full well what our budget situation is going

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to be like. So, that's that's had an impact, you know, to the taxpayers, people who are coming into town hall and looking to get these types of services. The one thing the the board has been adamant about, though, is is preserving trash pickup, right? It could be very easy to say, "Well, we're going to do a

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trash fee, but you know what? our t our taxpayers, you know, you can say there's one thing that they deserve, right, in this, you know, on this side of the house is to have their to have their trash picked up, right? I mean, that that's a a service uh that they deserve.

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So, I, you know, we're running a skeleton crew. Um Jamie talked about some of the other reforms and where I'm leading up to is that if there's any discussion whatsoever of, you know, an override, that should always be the last

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option, right? And as a town, we should have gone through the exercise of looking at every possible reform, right? And I I think what's going to happen down the road is you're you're going to look at financial services. You're going to see municipalities having to share a

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director of finance. you're going to have, you know, that's what's going on because one, the towns don't have the money to keep up with the salaries, but there's also, I think, there's going to be a lack of people who want to do those jobs, right? And so, just forecasting

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the pressures that municipalities are going to be in. So, you know, if you're if the town is was to ever consider a successful array, you can say, "Yeah, you know, we'll put it on the ballot." Fine. But you want to put something that's going to actually pass. And I think

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having gone through a major deep dive on every possible service before you go to the taxpayer and say, you know, we've done everything possible, now we're coming to you. >> Other than doing that, I think you'll see the same result that

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the old colony vote was and probably even more so. And also to expand on that, >> I I would I would before we even go to an override, >> make cuts, make budget cuts. We had the town side is basically living within

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their means on a bare bones budget with with nominal increases. Like I said, I've we we've all seen the budgets come before us and there are not big increases at all. So it there may be some pain involved to have to make cuts,

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but we we have to live within our means. Otherwise, you're asking the taxpayers um for for a band-aid fix and then you're going to be asking them again over and over again. And it's it's just >> it's not right. >> But but I think if you um we have made

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cuts and this would be another 21. So again, 35. And I think if you go back to the there's some highlights in that one pager about the 2014 desi report that was done in terms of what position and what kind of shape the school system was in 2014 and it wasn't good and so I also

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think that our taxpayers deserve to have the best education possible for their kids and that's why a lot of residents of a Kushnet move to a Kushnet because they want to send their kids to a good school system and again we can't we have to but they also deserve to have a town

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that's not bankrupt and has >> correct. So, we should put it um to the residents to see what's important to them because I don't think a lot of them want to have their school system decimated. >> Your answer in this meeting is we're moving towards a proper >> I did not say that. So, don't put it to the res. I never said that.

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>> Then then please please clarify what you meant by putting it to the residents. >> We need to work together to figure out what's important to our residents and whether they want to accept another. >> But you just said we need to put it to the residents. So, how do we put it to the residents? Because we're talking here as a committee. >> Yeah.

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>> And your answer to what we're talking about for itself. >> What's your solution? >> What's my solution has been my solution for the past couple of years. Last year, you guys were told specifically when you asked, >> "What should we expect the next three years?"

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>> You were told to be level funded, >> correct? >> And you said it was going to be hard, but okay, now that we know that, we can do that. And this year you're coming back for a million dollar ask just to try and and putting it through as these big cuts just to try and you know save our our students that are out there. The

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town doesn't even have a million dollars. Yeah, I I if I may, I think that that's that's one critical not to say misunderstanding on the finance committee's standpoint, but I think it's a general misunderstanding within the town population and the populations in

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many towns. Essentially, when you run what amounts to a service exclusive entity, service exclusive meaning there's no product being made, there's no roads being paved, there's no, you know, mail being delivered, there's no trash being picked

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up, but what the schools are providing is literally nothing but a service. There's no product that's associated with that aside from test scores and kids graduating, you know, all that's obviously very important. But when you don't have many ways to reduce the

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overall budget aside from addressing it through professional salaries because that makes up I mean the vast majority of the school budget and most of the other costs are not anything that we have any control over. We can't control transportation cost increases, fuel cost

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increases, all that other stuff. When we talk about level funded, that means by definition cuts. And it could be cuts to administrators. It could be cuts to teaching staff. There really aren't many, if any, ways to reduce the overall

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budget of the school system without >> cutting salaries, which means losing positions. >> If I can ask one question, I'm looking at the reductions, and so this is helpful. What reductions are here that just because it wasn't working? What I mean by that is that Spanish Spanish

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wasn't working, right? So, we cut that teacher. So, I think it would be really helpful for me to understand what were the reductions that were just because it wasn't working, right? I know >> like I know some like the math in eighth grade used to have there were two math teachers that had 10 kids in a classroom, >> right? So, I know one of them got cut,

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>> right? >> I know that to be a fact because my daughter was in the eighth grade. >> She had those teachers. Okay. So, are there any instances like that where we've got a teacher with 10 kids that could we could combine and not impact that, right? Like >> because I know that was for two years. Yeah. >> We there were math teachers with 10 kids

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in the class. >> Yeah. I think when we looked at overall class size estimates looking at looking through some of these models, which I don't believe are on the slides there. For the most part, we were looking at class sizes of between 21 and I think

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the max was what 24.8 students to teacher. I so from where I'm sitting at just sorry if I can finish. So when I'm sitting here that was two years ago when my daughter was in the class and it was two years ago when we were like hey guys we need to cut we need to cut we need to cut and it was like we can't cut we

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can't cut. My daughter's in a classroom with 10 kids. >> Mhm. That's the kind of stuff and and brand new teacher. You got to understand where I'm coming from here. When I sit here and I'm like, >> but there's also on the needs driven budget three positions that have been identified as a result of needs that we

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are not pursuing adding because we can't. So needs change and positions come and go, but we're not satisfying those needs either. >> Yeah. Well, that's why I'm asking. I think it would be helpful if we're going to sit here and say, "Hey, we cut eight two years ago. We cut six last year." We need to identify what is a true cut

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versus a cut because it wasn't necessary. Like to me that's that's a distinction that we need to kind of >> like what planned exits are, you know, teachers that you know are retiring or what have you. Like is that an appropriate question? Yeah. I'm just curious

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>> and I know we've talked about this too. I think we had this conversation. Um I taught in Houston for 20 years. We were laying off 50 teachers last year. We offered an early retirement incentive program. We ended up cutting two teachers at the end. We had at this district 54 teachers making over $90,000

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a year out of our 83. I might be wrong. I mean, I love longevity. It's very important to have veteran teachers. I But we are in a crisis. >> Like I feel like we need to I I don't know what who needs to look into it or what needs to be done. I don't know the full backstory of how it happened. I

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don't know the ins and outs of it. I just know that instead of 50 cuts, we made two because people took an incentive and they left. I left. See you. I was gone. >> Is that feasible? >> Couldn't get out of there fast enough. >> I don't know if that's feasible at this time. Right. At this time. I mean, right

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now the process talked about it last year, >> but we did bring it up last year, >> you know. >> I mean, I know not. No, I know that well above my pay. >> We also we also brought out giving people potentially the chance to opt out of the health insurance with an incentive. And I know that's complicated

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and there was work that had to be done to see if that was viable. But we've tried to find ways whether even though they're not going to solve a $1.9 million gap, but these are ways that maybe we save a position. Maybe we save two or three positions. >> I just think every rock needs to be

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turned before we do this. 21 positions. I like I can't even I'm I'm going to pull my kid out of the system and tell them that's what we're doing. We've already made the decision if this happens, kids are going to be pulling out of the system. We're going to put our kids in private school. I have three kids. We're going to leave the whole district, move out of town. That's

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what's going to happen. >> Nobody wants that. Mr. Chair, >> I think everybody can agree. Nobody wants that. But we got to try and find a solution. >> That's right. But I'm just saying every stone needs to be turned over. It's not like make the cuts and that's it. >> Like, let's explore that. I don't know if we need to do that. Jamie, I was told that we were told that it was not

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possible for that to happen when I asked about that this year. >> What >> the early retirement incentive? Is that something that can't be looked into or I mean I asked about it and I got the answer that it's not fair or so I don't know >> the

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if you're if the incentive involves the changing of the retirement formula any of the aspects of it adding years >> adding age etc

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Then that involves the state, >> right? No, I'm not talking about changing service in years. Like if you add up to if you have your 80% and you're ready to go, maybe you still have five more years. Maybe you offer an incentive for them to go.

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>> You you don't backfill those positions. You hire a new teacher out of school. I hate to say it, but like longevity to me is so important. We're paying longevity, too. We're paying these teachers longevity. I I hate to say it like I value these teachers so much but >> well I mean to be fair you took the

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offer in East >> it was offered to you took it along with a bunch of other people I'd presume another number but >> but I guess the question becomes who's eligible have we cut everything that you possibly can like if you look at the if you look at the stats if you look at the desi stats okay on a per student spend

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right broken up by category you guys are nodding so you know where I'm going with this I'm assuming >> no I'm just confirming Yeah, right. Our admin costs per pupil are much higher than our surrounding communities, right? Like is there any think per student spend

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>> is up in that7 is almost last in the state in that top. >> No, it's not the per student. It's broken. It's per student cost broken up into the different categories. That's what I mean by that. Okay. Yeah. No, I'm not disagreeing what you're saying. I know what you're saying >> because our teachers are at the bottom,

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>> but admin for spend is at the is at the is at the higher end, right? So, >> what does that tell me just from analyzing? What does that tell me? There's is there something we can do on the admin side that could help cut help bridge some of this? >> I mean, that's what we don't have a lot of admin. We have a very low number of

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admin. And so, and what I can tell you is this eight this potential eight cuts that's on a constraint driven budget, we don't we're not happy or comfortable with this. This is what after scrubbing to your points to every possible

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scenario that we could maybe live with. This is the scenario that we can live with. That's eight more cuts on top of the 14 in the past. >> And I think what would be helpful, Grant, is if we saw that because when I saw this $2.4 4 million increase. I was like, I don't know what I'm looking at because it's really hard to compare when

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you're doing a comparison and I'm looking at a number that's not accurate, right? Like I know this is not going to work. I know this is not even what's going to be contemplated. So this to me wasn't quite as helpful as if we had gotten a budget that was something that you were going to be presenting so we can see exactly where the increases are.

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That would have been more helpful for me, you know, and I did. I looked at this. I tried looking at it, but you know, I didn't have much time. But I looked at I was like I'm not going to spend my time looking at this because guess what today's day is? It's tax day. So I was a little bit busy working on

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tax returns. So when I saw this I wasn't going to spend the time. It's not helpful. Does that you know? So that's why I'm saying I think it would have been more helpful for me and I think for the rest of us if we had seen something that was your constraint driven or that was uh one of the other ones but not

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something that shows a $2.4 million increase. to that point, we asked for the line item budget so we could go through it. And we were given a budget on Friday afternoon, right, of with a $2.45 million increase. And on Tuesday,

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you're voting on a $1 million increase. So, and with three options, one, 1.5, and 1.9, I don't understand why we were provided on Friday a budget that wasn't even going to be presented. The one you received on Friday is the

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superintendent's original recommended budget. >> Presenting >> but didn't get down to 1 million until just a few days ago meeting with the school committee on our budget meetings and bring on Friday it was 2.4 and then on Tuesday it's now one.

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>> Well, on Friday it was 2.4 because that's what our original budget that we proposed was. And as we've been working on that, we haven't decided on any cuts until just the other day. And still, they're not really decided on. We're saying after looking at all of our different line items. We looked at eight

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FTEEs and within our operations and maintenance, another 240 or so thousands that could come out. I can't cut heating oil. I can't cut electricity to the budgets. That's where we brought it down to where the request was, what is the

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bare minimum we can we can bring it down to. Was it was >> wait so when will we be provided a line item of the constraint driven with the $1 million increases? >> I can probably do that tomorrow or Friday. Um but I don't want to identify

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individual teachers. Let's put it that way. >> No, I don't think we're asking for that. I think and and certainly you didn't identify individuals in this $2.4 million budget. um that we received. But what I think, Mr. Chair, if I may, what

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I think would be helpful is I watched your meeting last night. I think some of us did and you presented some slides. Do you have those available to put up tonight that we can refer to? >> We have the packets if that would be helpful >> because I I have a few pictures on my phone, but I don't know if if others do

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because I have some >> I think the whole presentation's available. We have printed copies of it, too. >> Can we go back to the the early retirement? have I do have some >> I never finished my thought. So, um are we going to go back to the early retirement? Like are we going to look

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into that or is that just off the >> be finished? Yeah. >> The town side uh it doesn't make sense to >> I just need to hear why. But, uh, if the school department wants to do an early

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retirement incentive out of their budget and have pay folks to retire early, that would have to come from that side of the ledger, so to speak. So, I think last

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year the response was if we offered it to the school, we would have to offer it to all of the other bargaining units. Is that not the town's position? >> We don't have We might I don't think we have anybody that's at 80%.

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>> I don't think we have anybody close. We have an awful lot of people who are uh in their first or second year and a number of them are part-time. Yeah. I would just say I think it's a good idea, but it's got I think it's

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going to be driven by the school committee, right? When the school department put together a package of what that would look like and then presented to the finance committee and to the board of selectmen and whatever. But I think if the board of selectman said, "Hey, we want you to

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>> tell you to do it." That's I think it's out. I don't know who did it. I don't know who was responsible for. >> It's going to originate from >> school committee. We did take respectfully. We did >> inquire about it last year and we were

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told that it wouldn't be entertained >> by who? >> Mr. Chair, I'll just add one more thing. Um, in your packet you have what the state average per pupil is paid and it's a

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23,000 about 23,165 per pupil. But Cushnet is 16,82. Cushion ranks six from the lowest in the whole state as far as cost per each. >> Our question is admin cost,

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>> right? I know. Well, >> okay. How do you rank for schools that don't have high schools though with your per pupil? >> Make a pun. >> How how how do you rank? You said you're six from the bottom, >> but what about among school districts like a Kushnet that don't have a high

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school because it does cost more money cost of tuition are in that in that. >> Correct. But it's it's not what it costs to run a high school. So I'm just curious as to if you compare that yourself to other districts that don't have

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>> the point I'm making is that you can say well you know we we can glean everything I think in this budget has been cleaned up uh in the last couple of years. uh you may want to find maybe a $50,000

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deduction here and $10,000 here, but you're not going to meet the problem at all. Okay, just just face it. Let's I think that was just raised uh 20 minutes ago, that issue. What the issue really is that we need,

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you know, we shouldn't be proud that we're sixth lowest in the whole state. And then and then you know and it's it's it's a it's a fight every day with this administration to maintain the quality of you know as far as test scores and

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everything else. Uh but that that that only can be maintained with a lower cost that we're doing with with with with pupils that that that that sooner or later that number as far as our testing is is going to start receding and that leaves families and students in this

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town with less competitive edge to go out and and earn a living and have a happy life. So that that's a bottom line. The issue is and then the charge is to the finance committee. finance committee is just to basically sit around. I've been on the finance committee, been chair of I don't know

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how many years. So, so I I I know the routine. It it's not about well, we got to cut here, we got to cut here, we got to cut here. Also, one of your charges is look at what revenue enhancement this town needs in order to operate. And

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that's basically your charge. It's not the school committee's uh responsibility to say, "Well, maybe you should have a trash fee or whatever have you." No, that's your charge. And and what we presented a an adequate budget and here

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you are. One of your charges is basically how can we find funds for the town to saying it's our responsibility to find the $2 million that the school committee wants that the school committee is looking for for the school. You may want to look at options as far

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as how you can have revenue in order to balance your budget. >> Mr. Can we just start off back? >> Let's back up. >> It's unrealistic to begin with. >> I mean, that's everybody knows in this in sitting in this room knows that

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there's no way we could afford a $2.4 million increase in the school department. And uh the finance committee, we're the fiscal watchdog. So our job is to provide oversight to all the different budgets. It's not

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our job to find revenue for the town. >> So well who is >> you've got your got your other planning committed. We don't have a route six running through us is impossible. >> Who's responsible for for balancing the budget?

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>> Mr. Excuse me. Just to clarify, it is the board of selectman's charge to deliver a balanced budget to town meeting. >> Thank you. >> With that being said, we utilize all aspects of every board and commission in

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this town to do what we find is possible and the best needs of the overall town. Completely not disagreeing. I think everybody in this room understands that education is important for all of our kids. We have to come to a solution. We're not arguing

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tonight. We're not going to solve this problem tonight. I'm I'm letting you know. >> As far as I'm concerned, once again, I'm not deliberating. I'm offering suggestions and questions. Every possible option that could possibly benefit the town and put this fire out

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is on the table. No more. This is won't be entertained. Present your options. Let's figure it out. >> That advice that advice is which is well taken. That advice was given maybe a half hour ago or more from from a select what

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>> Mr. Hawk and just to clarify the finance committee we just don't sit around. >> Yeah, >> I know that. >> Okay. Well, hey, >> we all been there. >> You know how many you know how many hours I've I've taken away from my personal and family time >> over freaking 20 years. And I'll use

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that word. I don't care. >> It It's a lot. >> Okay. >> Again, we don't the position of the finome of the board of selectmen. This is this is serious stuff and we have a serious problem here, right? We're trying >> and I just have the answer.

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>> Let's just I don't have the answer. >> Let's just be clear because the number isn't 2.4 million. What we said that we can agree to is a $1 million number which still includes eight cuts on top of the 14 in the previous two years. >> I think it would be helpful that and that was what I was trying to get at.

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And to your point, Mr. Halcraftoft as a finance committee we try to understand all the town departments budgets what their needs are what their constraints are what their struggles are what they're looking to do so I think that what I I watched like I said I watched

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your presentation last night and what I would like to hear from is you had a slide it looks it's this one here that says FY27 contractual budget area increases >> what page >> um page 19 >> Mhm.

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So are these in is this the constraint driven budget or is this the level service budget? Is this the needs driven budget or the superintendent level service? >> That's level service. That's level service. Okay. >> So all right. So that's what we're looking at. So that's the 1.5 million.

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Correct. So I think what would be helpful for us to understand because this is a big number. 1.5 million is a big number. That's what a almost 10% 9% increase or so to your budget about that. >> Um so that's so I think that that

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requires further explanation. So if you could walk us through you have special education costs increase 174,000 60%. Um, so what what comprises why is special education? And I think we all

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have an idea, but if you could be specific and say what's driving that because two down you have out of district tuitions for over 200,000. So if you can >> walk in this year at $284,000 residential placement

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>> and we have no control over that cost. >> That's one factor. That's just one example of those fixed costs that we can't control. >> These are all legally mandated costs. >> I know that's a top crop. I I absolutely do not. >> It's not an option there that we're

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spending 260,000. And that was the point of my question because when you see 200,000 I think for the rest of us, it's it's better to understand that that is there are placements that are 2 3 4 $500,000

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placements. I know that better than a lot of people here. So that's what I wanted others to understand. So when you have your special education costs, the 174, what is driving that cost? >> We had additional paras one to one paras

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that were mandated on IEPs. That's one example. >> Yes, I noticed that the paril increase was about three two $300,000. So about 10 paras is that does that make that sound about right?

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>> We had three new paras over $100,000. >> Um I don't know >> maybe in well this is in your >> in your superintendent's budget. >> There was a par behavior tax. >> Yes. >> Parent increase for um about 300,000.

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Oh, okay. Um, high school tuitions increased by 280,000. I know there's been a lot of conversation about that with changing the high schools. So, if you could give us some information because I think on your presentation you said you had 10

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additional students from Old Colony. So, 10 times what about 15,000 is 150. So, >> 30. >> Yeah. Where's the for the tuition? >> We have 10 alone from Old Colony, >> but of of our own graduates, I think

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we're up another four or five from where we were >> this year, >> we pay the special ed costs for those students with the districts they go to. >> And I had to factor in at the time we did the budget the contracts that are currently what that was currently in

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place. So, in other words, Fair Haven, they can still enroll through August and they'll still get their 12,800 per student. So, that's all factored in there. That's why it went up that much. >> And Old Colony has less seats. We're down to 44 seats. And it doesn't mean

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that it's 44 seats necessarily for children at Ford Middle School. It's students in the town. They could be in private schools enrolling at Old Colony. So, we're seeing an influx of more students going to the high schools versus Old Colony

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>> and Bristol. And we have more Bristol Agie. >> And so, do you and and so do you have the signed tuition agreements with all of the the um districts now? We have two executed agreements, Old Rochester and New Beckford, and we're still discussing

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with Fair Haven. >> But kids that go to Behaven High School next school year are going under the current arrangement, the current agreement >> under the current >> current cost. >> And so how were the um I don't know if you're at liberty to say the the per

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student tuition. I know, you know, back in the fall there was a lot of discussion about that the tuition that a cushant was paying to our our our neighborhood schools was too high. Um, so is did did that exercise help the

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budget at all? >> I'm just trying to see a difference for next year based on the Fair Haven contract and based on the fact that 10 additional at least 10 additional students are going to Fair Haven next year. So, we we're not I think eventually we will see savings, just not

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next year. >> Okay. >> So, to answer your question, >> um is the cost that we're paying Old Rochester going to be less than the current? Yes, we have 16 or so kids signed up to go to Old Rochester. So, we're not going to see the benefit of that this this go round. We'll see how

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it plays out in the future. >> Is their tuition equivalent to Fair Havens and New Bedfords or is it is it lower? These old watches are lower. It's equivalent to Fair Havens and New Bedford's. >> I didn't catch the question. >> The old Rochester tuition. >> Is it equivalent to who?

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>> Fair Haven and New Bedford's per student tuition or is it lower? >> It's lower than what we were paying previously. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right. Um, we've done everything we can to be creative. Um, we got a waiver from New Bedford on our tuition for the

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next two years. However, we don't have a lot of students right now attending New Bedford High School. So, if we have a couple, it's still a savings. We've done everything we can to be as creative as we can with these contracts. And I think we did very well um in negotiating those

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contracts. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you said we have what 16 enrollments so far for >> OR. >> Do you do we know how many for New Bedford? >> Probably just a handful. We don't typically have more than 10. It's it's usually less than that. >> I think it's only two or three. >> Two or three for this year. So I mean

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wave tuition for two years is fantastic but if only two or three kids enroll in that school you know >> is did they wave the tuition for all grades or just certain grades? Was the tuition waved for all grades or certain? >> It's just kids that are going this coming new enrollments. >> So just new enrollments. Okay.

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>> But I mean the vast majority of students that are attending traditional high school environments are still enrolling Haven at least for this year. Is that accurate? Yeah. I don't know what the total number is. Actually, it was um a lot of our kids first choice continues to be OC

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>> and then they have second choices. A lot of their second choices is Fair Haven. >> So, because we lost 10 seats at Old Colony, our Fair Haven enrollment is actually higher, right? Correct. >> It has been that. >> So, then Mr. Kelly, how will that affect the overall town budget with the less

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students going to Old Colony? So, the costs are shifting. Will you when will you see that change? If we have less students at Old Colony with the old colony assessment next year. >> But right now their increase is 4102.

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>> I could I just ask in the weeds question uh the base for all these determinations on the budget and the increases. Does the base include the $155,000

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that was taken out of free cash at town meeting? >> Yes. >> So that base is inflated really on 155,000 because free cash is supposed to be for a onetime

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only expense and now we're carrying it over in the base. >> Taken for two positions. Yeah, but >> which is a >> but it's still in the base. So that if you were looking at a true base or a

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true increase, you'd have to add the 155,000 to that. >> Yeah. And to and if I may, I mean, that's something that was brought up in discussion. I know I stated that during initial budget conversations last year. It was stated at town meeting that

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basically if we're using free cash to retain positions, then that cost is going to follow through to the next year and the next year and the next year. So, I mean that that certainly is something that we were cognizant of and I personally cautioned against it. I don't want to see anybody lose their jobs, but I mean I understand how structural

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deficits work. It's pretty, you know, remedial budgetary now. >> But I I think the increases listed here should be increased by 155,000. So your level funded budget is really an

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increase on the base of 155,000 that you took out of free cash at town meeting. >> Well, we didn't necessarily we didn't ask for that. The town >> No, the town did, but that's a one time that's supposed to be a one-time cost.

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And if I remember correctly, a town meeting they were saying that we'll take it out this year and we uh because it's an emergency and going forward you have to address different things and I'm just

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saying to be truthful that level funded budget should be an increase of 155,000 and the constraint budget should be an increase of the million 1,812

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plus 155,000. >> I mean, when we're talking about retaining positions, it's not like those positions only exist for one year. I think we all understand that. Um, and it may it may impact what those different, you know, budgetary scenarios would look like at at a point.

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>> Yeah. But when you're looking at a revenue increase to pay for everything, >> y >> then every one of these budgets right now reflects a increase of 155,000

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that has to come off the top of that revenue increase because it was taken out of free cash originally. >> Yeah, I think that's a very valid point. I don't know how the math actually works out. I'd have to ask although to, you

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know, run the numbers again, but I don't necessarily >> Your statement is correct. There are towns that put part of their free cash towards their their general fund working budget. It's not recommended, but there are many cities and towns that do do that >> for that reason. But there's no way to

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have cut that out unless we began our budget by saying, "All right, we're laying off those two positions that we just paid for. They're right off the top, and now we build our budget." No, I'm just saying when you look at this, you have to take and say the increase is there

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and then you're looking at the 960,000 revenue increase. And if you're going to include that 155,000 in it, you've got to decrease in effect the revenue increase

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by 155,000 or take it off the top, so to speak. >> I mean, I don't see any issue with going back and just double checking that. That That's fine. >> So, that's you're looking at an $800,000, >> right? Yeah. >> revenue increase right now. I'm sure the

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chair would be happy >> for your level funded budget and we're looking at a uh mandated cost of 933,000. >> So you're already at a deficit just in mandated cost. And when the town asked

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the departments for their budgets, we asked for two type of budgets. We asked for a level funded budget where you absorb all the mandated costs in the level funded and we asked for a level

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funded plus only the mandated cost. >> We didn't ask for anything above and beyond that. >> Okay. >> This is fun. >> Yeah, I was going to say we were we had just talked about the special education cost question. I think we're still on slide 19. Um did you did you want us to

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go through the remaining items on that list? >> Sure. Um let's see. I think the one that I the only other one I thought of >> and I I think I know the answer to this transportation of students $274,000 increase. So

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>> that's I know I know the bus contract goes up every year and that is a true fixed cost. I mean we talk a lot about fixed cost but that one is a true fixed cost. So >> these are all true loss at $1.5 million

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over that. >> Right. Just keep in mind in the energy utilities about 240,000 of that is the fact that we >> your credits. That's right. Exactly. Um but what about the transportation students? if you could just review that for the committee a little bit how what

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that came up because I did see in the line items in the budget we have it looked like you had an 11% increase in your home to school to home but then there was one that inc there was one did you did you have to add a bus is that um >> so in our budget proposal we have 10

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buses currently >> with adding or we're looking at right now adding an 11th bus >> we're working on trying to work out routes so we can maybe carve that out. >> But our buses went up. Our contract was a a three-year contract with Emerald for

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two additional years um to make it five and the increase is already built in. So this year it's 11.44 plus that added bus. We are still currently working on trying to figure out a route because remember has certain start times and finish times. So does the Bedford. So does Fair

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Haven. So your buses have to make the routes and get through. >> We thought they get back here for your start times. Exactly. And I guess there's road work going on. I know one of my people in my office is working on it said now they're going to be repairing a road all year or something.

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>> So we got more issues. So we're trying to look at the students. We sent out early a request of who was going to be taking the bus, you know, sign up for bus registration so we could see all the students, plotting them, seeing the bus routes and trying to keep all the bus routes under an hour. So, we're trying to get back down to kind of I'm talking

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with ORR to see if there's a way that their buses, they're also Amaral, their contract, that their buses could come over the line into our town and maybe we meet and drop students off and switch. So, we're still working on that piece. Yeah. >> Okay. So, that's something that, you know, and I know a lot of these things

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can change, >> you know, at any time. you could present a different quite different budget next week depending on special education, depending on something that you said. Um, so I think I think the the point of my questions was to try to better

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understand what's driving your increase so that we can all understand it. I mean, clearly it's it's a big increase and but schools are expensive to run um and and they provide a very important service. So, I think it was just helpful

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to go through and, you know, really pull out because 1.5 million, that's a big number. It's obviously more money than the town has. Um, but it's helpful, I think, for us to understand where that's coming from. Um,

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>> want to address the 16,000 per student, that number does include the high school, >> your high school tuitions, correct? >> Because we pass tuitions, not only to OC, but everyone else. So when the department of ed receives our data at the end of the year as to how much we spent, those numbers are all included.

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So the 16,000 per student cuz our chapter 70 was probably 13,000 per student. But by the time you add all your grants in, you add OC in, all your additional costs, that's where the number goes up. So that's why it's 16,000 and that's a true number including our high school.

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>> Yeah. And I think to to make a point on the administrative like the split between educational and administrative costs, if we pay one of our out of district schools, well, I shouldn't say out of district. If we pay one of our tuition schools, we'll just say $12,000 for

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tuition. Well, it's not like that $12,000 that we're paying for tuition just gets dumped right into their education budget. A a percentage of that gets utilized for administrative costs. Now, that obviously isn't reflected on our end because we don't necessarily know what they're spending the money

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that we're paying them on, but realistically speaking, a significant portion of any tuition that we're paying to those other districts is being spent on exactly the same things that we're spending on in this district. So I think that breaking down the administrative

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costs per student while there's some there's some validity to it, one of the things that we also need to understand is the when when you look at the amount of responsibilities and work that a given administrator has to take on in a in a day.

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Frequently speaking, the amount of work that a, you know, superintendent, assistant superintendent, whoever else is going to have to do doesn't scale linearly with the number of students in the district or having an additional school. It just doesn't. It's there is a

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floor to the amount of work that needs to be completed. And frankly, when we talk about administrative split, if we take a look at slide 24, which is the constraint driven budget that we've put together and discussed as a committee, you'll see in there that we have on the

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first page that lists all four budgets next to each other, we have eight FTE reductions. But if you look at the breakdown that we provided on slide 24, you'll see that seven of those are standard FTE reductions and one of them is an administrative uh position

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amounting to about $100,000. if we have to go to the full, you know, level funded budget. I I mean, I don't think that we've necessarily gone through to see exactly what all of those different positions would be and what the split would be, but I can almost

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guarantee you that there would be more than one administrative cut in that mix. I mean, this I'm I'm hoping that we don't have to get there, of course, because I don't want to see 21 people have to get laid off. But the reality of the situation is in the constraintbased

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budget that we've proposed, we do have a substantial administrative cost reduction in there as well as other FTD expenses. >> Yeah. And just as a point, >> can I just and I'll let you make your point. >> Um, letting teachers go is it impacts

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kids negatively. Letting administrators go is puts more they wear a lot of hats already. So that puts them doing more things taking away from the core responsibilities of what those jobs were to begin with. and that affects our kids too. So, >> and I don't >> there is a there is an impact to to to

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these to these decisions. >> Absolutely. And I think when when Sue mentioned the admin costs, the report from DESIE, just so that it's clear for everyone, it compares when we as school business officials report our end ofear costs to the state, they're all reported

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in the like the budget that you see here by their coded numbers. The administrative costs are school committee costs, superintendent, business office, legal, some technology. So that's what we're comparing. So

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that's what goes in. The tuition costs would go in and be reported regardless of how our out of district schools spend that money. That goes in reported another way. So what Sue is getting at is that the the administrative costs for all those school committee um business

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office legal some technology that's what she's comparing and talking about and that's what DESIE does in theirs and they say okay I'm going to look at the cost that Kushnet reported I'm going to look at the costs that New Bedford Fair Haven Old Rochester and so on and complete those reports. So that's what

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it's comparing is strictly the school committee superintendent business legal tech against a Kushnet against other districts and then and so on. It goes on for instruction for pupil services for operations and maintenance for tuition.

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So you can look at those reports and that I just wanted to give some context committee costs. Are you suggesting you should be paid for? >> That'd be great. >> Some some districts are but then you have your budget would be higher. Correct. >> Pretty penny. you'd have to put somewhere else, right?

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>> And the way districts report is not always accurate. That data is not always accurate. >> Just I just have a question. So what is operations like what is what is just tell me what

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when you refer to operations what that what that represents? >> You're referring to slide 24 D. >> No, it's the handout. >> The hand just think I'm looking at these things, right? So, it's like, you know, I I appreciate this. This is really helpful. It kind of reminds me of like,

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you know, the different cable packages, right? I get this, I get this, I get this. So, like operations, maintenance, professional development. What does that represent as part of the budget? Right? Those aren't people presumably, right?

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Those aren't jobs. So, >> what do you have booked for operations? What does that mean? the cuts that we would make towards that $1 million budget there. >> I know. What does operate like? What are you saying? >> So, I'm talking about the custodial

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department. I'm talking about the maintenance of our fields, the maintenance of our building. I'm talking about the amount of floor wax. We maybe wax once a year. >> So, that's under oper operations. >> That's under both operations. >> Maintenance. Okay. >> Um we've been doing um this year

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especially a lot of our repairs inhouse. one of our our head of facilities is excellent with boilers. So, we haven't been calling um service contractors as much call for the extreme items. Um that the the um the repairs we're doing in

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place, repairs in classrooms. Um we had some students from Greater New Bedford Tech here um being paid minimally but doing work that would usually give to vendors. Um, >> how much is what's that number like? Do

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is that part of the the line item? Do you guys have that? >> Well, what we proposed in almost a million dollars in cuts, $240,000 from operation maintenance and professional development. You know, the um programs we would send teachers to. We're now

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doing situations where we do the the in-house training. We'll send one person out to get trained and come back and train our staff here. >> I'm just trying to educate myself. Sure. >> Understand what the lesser of any evils are, right? If you have to play Solomon, you know, could you live without some

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maintenance or is that something that's if it's a one-time expenditure, >> you know, that that >> So, for example, our boilers have been breaking down all winter. We got two in each building. Um there's tubes in the boilers that the water flows actually on the outside of the tubes that flows through. They've been rotting out and

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rusting out. It floods the inside of the boiler, the flame goes out, building goes down. We fire up the second boiler trying to keep the heat going. So, we've already spent like 65,000 this year trying to keep them going. So, I put a article in to see if over the summer I can replace every tube in one boiler in

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each building. Every tube and then do general maintenance to the outside, the pumps, you know, there's diesel fuel, there's filters, pumps up to basically rehab one complete boiler in each building so that come next winter, no matter what, we at least got one boiler that was going to function properly.

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>> Yeah. Just I mean I think it's a fair point >> that don't have a heartbeat. Right. >> Correct. And there's a small percentage of the budget that is not fixed and that maybe we can influence. Right. And maybe it helps, but it isn't going to solve the problem. >> Like I'll give an example, but it's a

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small example. I believe there's $32,000 in a line for teacher tuition reimbursement. I'm working with the ATA president. Um, we've done a survey of teachers to see how many courses they plan to take next year and depending on what we get through. If the ATA agrees,

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we want to lower that line because we are in a state of emergency. So, we're just trying to think of all things, but again, that's not a lot of money when what we're talking about here, but we're trying to chip away at it. Just like with our high school tuition, we're trying to um be as creative as possible

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to help. >> Is it fair to to be able to get that budget right and that becomes kind of the starting point just so we can see what is >> you know what we're working with >> the constraintbased budget >> whatever even including what you're talking about Dr. prevailing like

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>> the the problem with that is it's not a de we have to work it out. with getting the survey results and it would have to be anou with the teachers union because contractually it's a fixed cost right but if they agree to it and I've already talked to the union president um you know I think they're open to it this

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year right because of the situation so again that would also be something they would have to vote on so I could tell you these ideas but I don't know if they're going to come to fruition >> if we start out with a constraint driven and like was saying you know and start looking at

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maybe we can forgo a little bit of maintenance, you know, those things that don't have the heartbeat associated with it like and make that the starting point, right? Like just something that we could, you know, look at before, >> you know, that is at least directionally in the right place

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>> because right now we don't really have that. >> We looked at is the constraint driven budget as the compromise what we could live with the level funded budget. I mean, that's going to decimate the school and that's that's not going to be a school system that's quality

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education. And I think from where we all sit, and I know you agree with this, is our job is to present a fiscally responsible budget that provides quality education to our kids in a supportive, safe environment. Right? So, this is

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still going to hurt. We're reluctant to to recommend this constraint driven budget, right? But we also understand the situation that the town is in. So, um, we can continue to chip away. Like I said, we have these little ideas. I I

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don't know that we can find a million dollars is what I'm saying. and and yeah, >> if you're going to either the constraintdriven budget or the level funded budget

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for and I'm the guy who's leaving so it's uh but collaboratively working to identify if you're cutting positions each

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position and who occupies that position and whether they take insurance or not. We're rolling not quarters but pennies

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right now to try to find savings. And it we're going to have to identify each one of those positions whether it's the level funded or the constraint and see if there's any savings in the insurance

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budget to because as the select men have said we have to deliver a balanced budget to town meeting. We cannot deliver a budget that's out of balance. >> Yeah. and ask town meeting to balance

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it. >> So I think that I appreciate the the thought track that you're on there, Jamie. Realistically speaking, it's not like Well, for instance, we'll just use another another town as an example.

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Let's say you had to make a headcount cut to DPW. Sure. Well, you need to have a certain number or a minimum threshold of employees at DPW that carry certain licenses, water operators licenses, you

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know, CDLs, that kind of thing. Well, you can't necessarily cut somebody if they're the only if that's the only person that's credentialed for that job. I get that. The schools in many ways are very much the same. And the other thing of the other thing of it is that a lot of times when you have to figure

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out headcount cuts in the school, it essentially follows the number of students that are enrolled in each grade level. Now you could have just theoretically I have not looked at individual pay pay rates. Let's say that, you know, like Melissa had mentioned, we have a bunch of teachers

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that are at the very high income level and all of those teachers happen to be credentialed or licensed or appropriate to teach grade levels that we just have a lot of kids in. Well, it's very difficult to justify cutting those positions because we need those teachers. >> I'm not talking the positions. I'm

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saying you've got to do a deep dive. >> Sure. >> To identify the individual. we have and we have >> and and knowing the bumping rights and everything else involved >> and and then look at >> looking at savings. I I we understand

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that. We also um need to ensure that um if we are cutting people, this is serious business. This is this is people's livelihoods. It's their careers. They have families. We need to treat people with dignity and respect. And so we will deep dive and the information about what positions are

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being cut will come out when it's ready to come out. But we need to treat people with respect. And I know you and we also can't target cuts at folks that to your point take up health insurance. Like that would be un I'm not I'm not saying I'm saying words

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that came out of your mouth, Jamie. >> Once you figure out who it is, >> okay, >> then we can go back and look and see if there's a savings in the insurance budget. >> Do we offer health insurance optouts in the town?

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>> No, we paid for. >> Okay. >> So, I know that that's something that's come up for discussion in you know, prior years. Your point about health insurance is well made. That's a very high cost. And you know, in many circumstances, there could be folks where there's two employed parties in a

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given household and maybe they can just go on to the same insurance. That happens all the time. We've done it in private industry. We see it in municipal all over the place. I think that that's a great way to address things. I'm just saying once you identify any savings in

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any line item, >> that's one way to identify it >> and have the insurance savings because literally >> Mhm. >> you're looking at trying to save

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$12,000, let's say, for an insurance and that might make the balance budget. Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, there's a lot of tangential cost. >> You might have five people who opt out and it saves a position.

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>> So, that's why when we say we know early retirement, you if you have a pool of 10 people that are that are at the 80%, maybe three of them take it, maybe five people. These are not going to save $1.9 million budget deficits and gaps, but they might save positions.

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>> We should be flipping over every rock trying to figure some of this stuff out. But you've got to figure it out because >> those are my words. >> You got to figure it out because it's >> I don't think it would benefit the town just from the number of employees we have, but it might benefit benefit the

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school district. >> Put out a survey or something. >> There there's a very very important point that you just made Jamie. So it's not benefit the town and benefit the school district. We are the town. like everything every every single position that the town pays for is the

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town. Now, if one department happens to have more employees that could theoretically be a good fit for some sort of an early retirement benefit um or a health insurance opt out. Well, okay, great. I mean, that could easily have been, you know, in years past with

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DPW or it could have been with town administration. It just so happens that right now there's a lot of new positions in town. There's not a lot of folks that would dip into those benefits. But real in reality, like what's the largest employer in the town

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that that the town has control over? It's a school department. >> It is the largest employer in the town. It's also the largest cost center in the town, realistically. >> So when cuts have to happen, the biggest budget is al is always the one that's going to have to have the most scrutiny. I totally understand that. But I I think

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that what we need to do is exactly what we've just been discussing, and that's not only looking at operational cost savings, which we've identified, looking at ways that we can reduce FTE headcount both in educational and administrative roles, which we've done.

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Looking at ways that we can potentially reduce costs in other maybe more difficult to calculate ways until we actually see who would take advantage of it, such as health insurance, opt outs, early retirement benefits. So, I think that we both as a committee

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and an administration, town and finance committee are are asking the right questions. We're all realistically we're all rowing the boat in the same direction. There's just different cost pressures that are going to impact this department at a higher percentage of the overall town budget than other

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departments. I I feel like we really are doing our due diligence here, but I mean ultimately the conversation that we're having right now, I think theoretically could impact this year's budget with some of those additional steps that we're taking, but we're getting away from the root of the issue. And I'm not

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saying that a Prop 2 and a half override is the way that I would like to go. I don't like that idea. I don't want to pay more money in taxes. I certainly don't want to see my retired parents paying more money in taxes. But if we're looking at something that, you know, we plug the hole in the dyke

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this year, I we're going to have 10 more holes pop in that dyke next year and then another 15 the year after. So, while we can't just put a band-aid solution to Dave's, you know, to Mike's uh point, knowing that it's not going to get any better, well, realistically

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speaking, I think that there is enough of a fiscal crisis across the state at this point that there is going to be an unbelievable amount of pressure put onto our elected officials. They don't have a choice but to solve this problem. Because if we go from 54 now 56 Prop 2

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and a half overrides in the state looking for $158 million funding gap next year, how many do we think it's going to be? I would guess it's probably going to be in the '60s, maybe the 70s because the the formulas aren't changing, but the costs are continuing to go up. And we're going to see that

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now. You know, we're involved in a war in the Middle East, which is going to to the point that we made before increase fuel costs. We've seen huge huge issues come up in the energy industry. I don't know if anybody anybody here has looked at the news, but now it's looking like,

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you know, the entire um Cape Wind project that's been ongoing for years at this point could fall through at the last minute because G's suing Cape Wind and Cape Wind is suing GE and now that all the the money that's been put into

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that infrastructure investment might not actually be realized in any sort of utility savings. Like there's major issues that we're facing as a commonwealth. that we're not going to have answers to. I mean >> I mean to your point about Proposition 2 and a half, the other thing that we have

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to think about is anyone, you know, if if the town entertains an override, >> they have to understand that that that now becomes our new base. There is no going back. >> It's a permanent increase to property taxes. Exactly. And the only way that a

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2 and a2 override would ever stand a ghost of a chance of passing muster is if select fin school the other town departments teachers association PTO everybody in town has to be in support

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of this or it is never going to pass and we're going to be back to square one >> and at some point we're not going to have a school if if we don't do something we're not going to have a school to run here. And and and to you know Ron's point that's a while a nebulous point it is a realistic one because one of the things that we're

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going to run into and Ebony can speak to this as well as some pincom members is the special education out of district tuition costs. That is a massive nut. Uh it's a huge part of the budget and one of the things that I feel like this administration has done a pretty darn

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good job of is keeping as many of those students in district as possible. While our special education costs in district go up year-over-year, if we start losing a large number of positions and we can no longer fulfill the needs of children's IEPs, at that

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point they go to out of district placements. And if we go to an out of district placement, while we might have saved some money, well, a substantial amount of money, I shouldn't say some. I'm not going to, you know, knock this down. While we may have saved a substantial amount of money in, you know, FTE reductions,

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if those reductions then cause five more students to go out of district to the tune of 100 to$250 or more,000 a year, and the town is obligated to those funds. Now, we're really between a rock and a hard place. I mean, a couple of years ago, Patrick um the previous

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school uh business manager had to go before town meeting and ask for a supplemental appropriation of what was it? 280 250 186,000. I'm getting my numbers all mixed up. >> $186,000 because it looked like the school was

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going to have an an unexpected outofd district placement. And I just want to add that 186K was part of the money that we returned to the town last year. So that wasn't the school's money to spend in other areas. So when people say we we returned

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300,000 or 400,000, well 186,000 of it was for a special ed placement that didn't end up happening. And we felt that it was the responsible thing to send the money back. It wasn't our money. >> Well, it wasn't even it's it's not even that we felt it was a responsible thing. Like we're obligated to send the money back. Yeah. It wasn't our money. It was

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the town's money >> as it happened that >> you know what's you didn't incur the exact get criticized for sending the money back up back into a lot bigger of an issue if we start talking about it because I

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could go on a very big deep dive >> on why I make comments about certain things and I know that was directed towards me >> it's a narrative that's being put out the narrative starts and it's prompted and it moves forward once again guys we're No, I'm not going to I'm going to

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finish my thought. I I No, this is a joint meeting and I can speak about it. >> You want to finish your thought? Don't cut me off. That's all I'm saying. I was Okay, go ahead. >> No, I I'm done. I'm done. >> So, I'll finish my thought. I I just think that it's irresponsible to put

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just throw numbers around without context. That is very important. And that context is very important to what happened last year. >> Correct. in content. Releasing a letter to the public before a meeting without depth of

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context so everybody thinks budgetary constraints. Look at the board of selectment. Look at town hall. It's simple as that, Ron. That's all I'm saying. I don't even know what that meant. My comments are reactions to letters released to the public in the 45 calls I got this weekend trying to

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explain I have no idea what the school's talking about in regards to budget constraints in regards to fifth grade moving to the elementary school. That's where the comment you're referencing came from. >> My response to I don't know. We haven't even discussed budget yet. How could

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this possibly be budgetary constraints? Because we hadn't sat down. You're missing the first half of the contest is what I'm saying. I agree with you. >> I was a little unfounded and I shouldn't have said what I said. >> Okay, fine. No problem. No problem. >> It's a trigger in response to an

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>> irresponsible and inappropriate release without detail and data. >> Okay. Mr. King, I'm going to finish my thought. Jesse, thanks. >> Okay. Um, there was context because a few weeks ago the the budget subcommittee had a meeting. Mr. Bush was there. Mrs. Delgado was there. Jamie was

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there and we were informed the ask was to have a um no budget increase. So there were budgetary constraints presented to us and we were working through that. So so I don't know what you mean by you say it hadn't been presented to us. >> What I'm saying is releasing the letter

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and I understand the letter and truthfully I think fifth grade going to the elementary school is a great idea simply because of the age. When you start the conversation that way with the the public and they see that they don't have the context, nobody

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watches budget subcommittee meetings and they see what they get in the mail. They get a letter and they see it and they say, "Holy crap, what's going on?" And then they panic all weekend until Tuesday. So, yes, I'm admitting that I was irresponsible in my response. But

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it's all because of how things are presented. and good, we're all about working together. But then something happens and then I respond to it because I get attacked. My board members get attacked. Town Hall gets attacked. And I don't think anybody

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realizes the depth of this right now. So when you release information to the public without context, you can't assume that they're watching budget subcommittee meetings, FINCOM meetings, you can't assume that they're watching your meetings. There's a lot of people here 75 years old. They have no idea

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because they have no children in the school and they're like, "Why would I randomly watch a school committee meeting?" I'm not saying that's the right answer. What I'm saying is every year, and this goes back to the dawn of time with elected officials, schools, towns, and everything. It's always us

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against them. And I felt like that. And I spent all weekend diving through budgets looking for it. I was going to speak tonight and say, "You know what? After I spent three hours today going through this budget, yeah, we have higher admin costs than most, but if you look at all 351 municipalities, uh, in

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Massachusetts, in the Commonwealth, every single small district K through 8 has high admin costs because it's relative to the budget. I'm not even here to nitpick about this. We're talk we're talking about solving problems. And all I'm saying is I wasn't going to bring anything up about it. I was

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actually going to have a conversation with every one of you afterwards and then you bring it up and that's all I'm saying. There's context, there's reactions and there's always going to be me defending my board for the decisions that we have to make cuz trust me, I lose sleep over this. Every single day I

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lose sleep over this, especially knowing that both my children are in this district. >> Most of the people I know have children, let's move forward. Okay. All I'm saying to you is we fine. you you have a problem with the letter. I understand that people called you, but when we make

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statements on social media like that that lack the context, then people take that and run in all kinds of directions. >> I provide the context. >> Okay, guys. >> I can go back to fisc $350,000 a year has gone to the schools. This is the first time I've seen all

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these positions as far as I know last year at the town meeting with the 155. We saved two and I was told that all the teachers were back to work. >> Well, no, they they applied. They got other jobs in the school, but we still had a decrease in >> correct. And once again, it goes back to

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contacts. And I'm not nitpicking this and I'm not saying this isn't a bad list. You know, I'm not saying this isn't heartbreaking. What I'm saying is in the grand scheme of things, it says you lost six positions. You didn't lose six employees though. >> No, but >> No, I think that's a very good point of

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clarity and I'm not justifying trying to say, "Okay, now we really need to lose six." I don't feel that way. I absolutely do not feel that way. But you're talking about context >> while we're having problems with context. So, we're both in the position where we're not providing the right

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amount of context and we're also not seeing each other's details and filling in. >> Well, last year we had a similar handout that talked about the net loss, right? So that so for example if we were eliminating 10 positions uh >> uh seven of them were finding other jobs

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in the school we might be losing three but those are still six positions that are not delivering services to our kids >> correct but it it's how you approach it and that's all I'm saying if you're going to if you're going to I don't want to use the word question that's not really what I'm getting at >> hold that

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what I'm saying is if you're going to and and I'm this is not an attack and And I'm agreeing with you ultimately. It's just going to take me a little bit to get there. What I'm saying is if you're going to say things like without context, what you say is hurtful.

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It's the same way on your end with situations like this. Because if the public looks at this and sees 21 positions, but come to find out it's not really 21 positions from a net teacher standpoint or a net admin standpoint. I think what we're getting at this whole

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entire meeting now is we have to all solve this problem. And it sucks. So, let's not do what we normally do. >> We're not. >> You You kind of did. You kind of started. >> No, I didn't. I just want to provide clarity on the 186,000. That's all.

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>> Going back years before, there's more clarity that I provided to other people. So, there's unless we want to hold a personal account. >> No, we don't. All I want to say though, Bob, is like when you say it's not 21 position because maybe maybe it's not

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made. All I'm saying though is that yes, if we cut 21 positions, I don't know how many of those would be able to get other jobs >> in the school. Correct. But that's still 21 positions that are not providing services to kids. So there's an impact. >> Understood. What I'm saying is in this

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situation, >> if there was no net loss in teachers last year, And then when I look at this, this confuses me who's been involved with this for four years. So the public's

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also going to feel a little bit of confusion. >> Well, can I just I just want to say, and I don't want to go back and forth, but I think what would be really helpful is if people have questions moving forward on specifics, call me, call my office, call

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the school. But I think we need to start staying in our lanes because what happens is we're answering things and saying things and it's not true and people are getting very confused. That's why I try to be as transparent as possible with that letter so that people

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did understand what was going on. We got great response from families. People are very happy that fifth grade is moving over, but it also greatly impacts our teachers because they're not licensed. So, we're working very hard with them. They're very understanding. Um, but

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we're doing we initially did this because we were told we had to come up with level funding even though we couldn't. But that was a way to to cut reduce positions in a way that we could live with and it was also a decision that was good for children. But it was

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not a knock at the town in any way. It was just saying we looked at our budget, we want to do this. And I believe in the letter it also said this is also good for kids. >> Yeah, correct. It did. Okay. >> I thought it once again I actually support fully just based on the age

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group between fifth grade and eighth grade. I 100% believe that it should have never left the elementary school. Obviously size, building size, capacity and everything like that completely separate from the occasion. >> Is that factored into the level service budget? The move to the fifth grade is

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has that already been factored in or not? factored in to the constraint budget. >> I mean, >> you have 100, you know, let me just explain one thing. Right now, currently, just to give you an example, we have two ELA fifth grade teachers, two math fifth

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grade teachers, and one combined social and science teacher. So, we have five teachers at the middle school. By going over to the elementary school, we're bringing that down to four teachers. So that's an automatic cut that we're able to do because they're more

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self-contained in classrooms. We also have to look at the fact that we'll have a hundred less kids at the middle school. So there's going to be other ways that we can save and that's why we were able to get down to those eight positions because there are ways that we

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can look at reducing because there 100 less kids needing service in the middle school. So, that's just one example of how it is related to the budget, but it's also good for kids. So, it's it's twofold. Um, it's just the reality and

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it's just being transparent. >> Jamie's been waiting. We should let him talk. No matter whether you pass a Proposition 2 and a half override or not,

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going forward in this process, you have to create a balanced budget. And if you're going forward with a 2 and 1/2 override, then a two and a half override budget. But you're going to have to

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create a balanced budget. So that means that you folks are going to have to get together and figure out >> where you're going to cut. >> We've done that. >> I mean, we have done that. That's

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>> Well, just to clarify, Jamie, are you saying that constraint driven budget is not an option? >> I mean, it's not You won't create a balanced budget that way. I I don't think that at this point the town is capable of creating a balanced budget unless there are sweeping cuts

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across all departments. >> Correct. >> I mean re the reality of the situation. >> Correct. >> So if the constraintbased budget that we've proposed as a compromise is not going to be a workable solution no matter how the you know the deck of cards gets cut. Well I mean we're

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looking at a substantial number more layoffs than eight. >> Can I can I just say one thing real quick? Dave, you said that everything was on the table earlier and I know you also said that trash collection was not

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an option, but I look here at the numbers from the town. Trash collection it looks like is going up almost 40 $40,000. And Patrick last year did a whole study of this and it would if the town did

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trash collection, it would raise a million dollars for the town. I don't know of any other towns nearby that don't have charging. And I'm not saying I want to tax. >> That's just that's a back door override. Really >> it's a tax by another name.

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>> It's a tax by just trying to come up with solutions. >> Still giving additional revenue. It fixes the budget >> 99. I just wanted to add that, you know, we with the the students that we have now, we do have an influx of special needs

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children, children with a diagnosis, whether it be mental health or developmental delays who need additional supports. And that's something we can't mess with. I mean, our kids need support. There's assist of technology that's needed, the staffing, training for the staff in order to support those children. And I think that that's

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something that we have to consider too when we talk about these increases here. Well, we have had an influx and we need to support those children. And I think we're trying to be creative with it. I'm a I'm a I mean this is for myself, not for any speaking for anybody else, but I'm a firm believer in inclusion and trying to make that work and so that our

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students can be a part of the full community. And so we are trying to navigate that and try to look at that as options too like how to can we rearrange things so that it works with what we have and support our students. And I think we're we are all here for the same

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reason. We want this town to be successful. We love this town and that's why we're here. But it has been a like okay us against them and we really do need to work together in order to make this work. It it I'm nervous for what's going to happen. It's terrified for our

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students and my students are some of them. It's not just my students. It's everybody's students the kids and this community. We have to invest in them and this is part of it. And I do appreciate that everyone is sitting here at the table together because I know it's not easy and there are a lot of emotions

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behind it. So I >> put this out there. This is for all the committees and also the board of selectman. >> I think it'd be a good idea for each each of us to draft a letter to our state house to to the governor's right

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to the governor's office. >> I'll do one from the finance committee as a chair. >> You'll do one as a school committee chair. And >> I've done one already with Aldo. We just hand I hand delivered. >> You guys did one state house a couple weeks ago. >> The board of selectman's office does one.

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We have to start speeding upward the state. >> Would it be better served if we did one in the signed off on it together? >> But but I think I think we're at that point now where we actually have to ask for more help, >> you know, because it's a state problem

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really. I mean, this is not >> we shouldn't be arguing with each other. >> We're not just I just want to make something clear. I have no uh animosity. I want to move I want these groups to move forward. We have a major challenge in front of us to solve and this is

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there's nothing more important that we are doing than that. So I hold no animosity to anybody >> for anything that's happened in the past. My goal here is to move forward and solve this problem. >> 100% same here. You know I just always think about the taxpayers. Um

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>> and it's just this has gotten so tough. >> One more excuse me one more process question. So I'm trying to go back to my knowledge of ed reform, right? And that gives the hiring and firing in the hands of the superintendent. Correct. >> The principles

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>> the principles, right? >> So I mean, and I get it. Ed reform was passed in what? 93 92. >> 93. >> 93, right? >> I think that was the year I was recalled from the school committee. But I think, you know, we're in a

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different time and I get it that the school committee and the superintendent and principles have their remits and what they can and cannot do. But I mean, we're the we're the vanguards of the tax dollar. And I think we got to look at a

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town whether it's a hiring, you know, anytime there's a position vacated. >> Mhm. >> Is it just, hey, we're just going to fill it because it's been vacated and we need to fill it or is there going to be a discussion about >> do we can we move that money

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>> elsewhere? Yeah. you know, and you know, I know we try to do it on our end, and I'm sure you all do it on your end, but you know, I think that's like those types of infrastructure changes need to take place for everybody like, you know,

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on our side, on the town side as well. Um, not just hiring, you know, replacing it because it's always been there and that if we don't do it, then we're not going to have the money and then we'll lose it, you know. So, you know, I I

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think those types of things we've got to put in continue to put in place and not just do the same old same, you know, >> ultimately zero based budget. >> Wait a minute. I've been waiting long enough. The uh >> Well, John, I'm I'm done in a couple

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weeks, so I want to get my >> Well, I won't be for another year anyway. >> You still owe me breakfast, by the way. >> The 10th one I owe. and you owe me lunch, >> right?

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>> I think Mr. Boucher's uh suggestion is a good one. I don't know how it's going to affect this year, >> but I think a year two years ago that you had a meeting with our legislative delegation of selectman and and uh and

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yourselves. >> The school committee wasn't there by the way. Um there are several I can off off off the cuff think of how we could have some legislative fixes uh which could

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could enhance uh state revenue and but it would take the work of of of a legislative delegation. I'll give you a one example is that regional regionalized school districts are re uh

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the the transportation costs are reimbursed by the state. We're the only one that uh you know I think one of the very few that is a tu tuitionbased um community and we're not reimbursed uh

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for uh transportation. Why c can a fix be put in that turn that the only uh community that has you know a base you know tuition base be included as a

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regionalized and may have you know reimbursement uh on our on our transportation which is a sizable amount of you know money. I can think I think if we put our heads together to think of what other legislative uh obstacles we

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have in order to enhance our revenue. Uh and then we then we uh basically can you know what's reimbursement levels for rural schools for example compared with with with cities uh that you know all and

415
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since we have three um legislators we're very fortunate we have not just one we have three that can make an impact as they as they uh they start getting their seniorities and work you know in committees and be able to fix things. So

416
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I think I think your what you your your suggestion that you would take it one further and and have uh that kind of meeting and draw up >> a step further than that. I mean I can think of a few legislative fixes in the state. You probably won't agree with them.

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>> If I I think one of our committees should demand that the state perform the audit that the voters requested. How much money would that actually reveal? I mean, I'm willing to draft a letter. Is anybody here else willing to sign one? If I if I draft a letter

418
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>> uh to the state house demanding an audit because I think if we can f if the state can find some money and you know there's fraud that's going on um that can benefit our schools and and our towns. I mean, we have to do we got to do something. I mean besides, you know,

419
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constantly banging our heads against the wall, you know, and the voters wanted it, but it's like where is it? It's like it just >> they gave us the empowerment act and said and said go ahead charge more on excise tax stand. >> It's uh it takes a lot more than letters

420
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to get action. It takes me finish. It takes a little bit of twisting. >> Okay. It takes a reason and twist it. >> I'll tell you what, the protest that should go on in the state is taxpayers marching down to the state house

421
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demanding uh the audit. Basically, that's the protest. >> Can we figure out Sorry, can we figure out We have two two people signed up for a comment. Can we make them like a comment? I'm done. >> Yeah, I'm done. I'm done.

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>> All right. Uh Lisa Calvaro, can I just >> You're only going to give me three minutes. >> You have three minutes. So >> please, it needs to be it needs to be relevant to the to the >> It's always relevant. Sharon, >> um you know, I appreciate what everybody

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does here. I know it's not easy. We sit here every year. This isn't my first rodeo. I've been here for 30 years. I can remember years when the finance committee asked Kristen how much oil was in the oil tank because um we were so short on money in the town. But the big

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question that comes up all the time is like we get here last year that $155,000 that we went back and asked for was a total wheel and deal at town meeting. Um Mr. Gasbard, we were talking about the whole street sweeper. It was like a

425
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wheel and deal. We don't need to take it from here. We don't need to take it from there. That could have all been discussed before we actually got to that point where we had to hold signs and stand out at town hall for people to know that we were people were losing their jobs. People just need you guys

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need we're all saying the same thing to each other instead of listening to respond all the time. We should be listening to understand each other because ultimately the only people that lose are the kids and taxpayers. I mean 21 cuts to our system. I've been here

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for 30 years. This is the most difficult year I've had in teaching in my whole career. Um, there's an influx of students that are coming in. They're disregulated. I've been kicked, punched, stomped on this year. I mean, I didn't sign up for that back in 1992 when I

428
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signed up to be a teacher. And that's the kind of stuff that we're seeing. And those are the kinds of things that need to be funded. We need the staff. That's why you're looking at this bed cost and you're seeing the influx of paras because some of these kids need a one-on-one para. I mean, I look around

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the room at who is here. A lot of us are at that cusp of retirement where in the next 3 to seven years, a lot of us are going to be gone. And who is going to want to work in a cushion when your neck is on the chopping block every single year? You're not going to get the staff

430
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that you have now? you're not going to see the scores that you get with the staff that is here. You know, I hear this stuff about health insurance and in negotiations, the ATA actually brought up having people take an incentive to not take the health insurance and it was

431
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shut down. We've come to the table with ways to save money for the town and people just keep saying no. I mean, Old Colony taking $400,000 for four grade levels when we have a prek to 8. I mean, I understand it's fixed with them, but

432
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at a certain point, we need to fund our kids here and not give it all to a high school. It's it's a lot of money. We were in the same boat with them last year. Um, you know, what is the plan? I guess what what is the plan that you're going to come up with all of you to try

433
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to figure this out? Because it's not we just keep kicking the can down the road. Every year we're here. We're all pointing fingers at each other. We're all here with an axe to grind about administrative costs. I mean, it gets old after a while because the only people that are really getting affected

434
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by it are us, the staff, because they're not cutting. I mean, this year we're cutting some an administrator, but it's the teachers that get cut. So, we come back and say there's no money. What's the administrative cost? It's like, if you knew how many hours these people are working, and even in a small district,

435
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they don't have the number of administrators a big district has. They still have the same amount of things that need to get done and they are doing it. They're wearing 5 million hats. So, do I agree sometimes with salaries? I don't. But ultimately, that's where we're at. I mean, Dr. Bailey's been here

436
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for 8 years. You can't expect her to make less money now than she did when she started. So, the whole administrative thing needs to like I feel like needs to stop being spoken about and we need to talk about what's best for our kids and our staff. 21 teachers. I mean, the letter went out

437
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because people need to know that they're getting laid off. We can't wait until June 15th to tell people that they need to look for a job because every town is in the same boat. People need to be able to apply for positions. It's their livelihood. Um, you know, I I respect

438
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the fact that that was one of the things that she did and is moving people over to our school, but it makes a lot of turmoil and now everybody's waiting, right? We're just waiting to see who's going to get cut, who's going to get rifted, who's going to be non-renewed.

439
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It's not a fun place for all of us to be. And when you talk about health insurance and health insurance costs, when we access it more, the rates go up for you and for us. So, when we're all under this great amount of stress or we're being hurt at work because it's a safety issue because we don't have the

440
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right amount of staff, it's going to continue to go up for the town as well as for people. And then we're going to be even more short staffed than we already are. So my question to everybody here is like what is the plan? How are we going to bring in more revenue other than building permits and those kinds of

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things that are coming into the town right now for revenue? >> All right. Thank we >> I know, but I mean that's something that we need to seriously think about because we're here every year. >> Appreciate your comment. >> Thanks. >> Uh I I can't read this. I think it's

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Karen. I apologize. I cannot read the the last name. >> Did somebody else sign up for delegation? We can't quite make out the signature on line two. >> I thought it was a sign. >> A sign. Yeah, it happens every time. >> Now you have to talk.

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>> All right. I appreciate it. That's an important part of the meeting. Uh Mr. Bush, I think you were asking me earlier. So, our public hearing on budget, which is required, is currently scheduled for April 29th. Correct. >> Our vote on the budget is that May that

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would be like May 10th week or somewhere thereabouts. That's our current timeline. >> May 10th. >> Yeah. roughly that usually second week is our school meeting with the vote. >> Just so uh town administrators uh Adam Jamie so they know and can be in communication with you

445
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>> school department um so we can make sure that the town warrant is going to get out on time for town meeting >> and we we are we are more than open to having more discussions if need be. Like

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I said, and I mean this uh sincerely, this isn't about the past or whatever. This is about moving forward with solutions that benefit our kids and and that's what we're interested in. So, >> yeah. And I think that it would be helpful for us just to make sure to your point being timely and you know, in time for getting the town meeting warrant put

447
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together that if there are specific um you know, dubby dates for any any individual items that we need to vote on as a body, it would be very helpful for us to have those in advance. That way we can plan meetings, potentially adjust schedules if needed. Uh we just don't want to have everything pushed to the

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11th hour just because there's a misunderstanding about when the fincom or the town needs information from us. >> Mr. Kelly, do you want to add anything about the time frame? >> Yeah, the warrants closing the 6. The board of selectman is

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looking at the in the next three weeks after that. I have to have it at to council and the newspapers by the I believe the 21st of May 22nd

450
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>> and I'm doing this from the top of my head >> and uh it print last date is May 26. So we have to have three or four days to mock it up. >> Sure.

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>> Before that. So we'd say absolute dead drop date for all budgetary >> discussions for the whole town would be the 22nd. >> I'd say give me the >> absolute dead drop date last month. >> 20th 20th. >> What day of the week is that? Let's just

452
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make sure we're all >> the Saturday. >> It's a Saturday. Okay. So we're not going to do a Saturday. Um it is a May 20th is a Wednesday. >> Wednesday, which I think is that when Select is planning on moving their weekly meetings to? I believe so.

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>> Okay. So maybe having it >> days notice to that select meeting. Is that a fair >> minimum? Minimum. I'm saying >> 48 hours if you want to be on the agenda. You have to clear it with the chairman at time of course. But as long as you let him know 48 hours before

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preferably with >> Mr. Mr. Gasper >> Mr. Gasper is currently chair. Um, I would give him he likes to have everything >> ready to go in a book by Friday. >> Thursday. >> Third time.

455
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>> I think having ballparks right now is good, but making sure that we keep an open discussion around it moving up till that date is really going to be critical, especially with M. Mr. Graspar taking over the role of chair. So, >> Dr. Um, given the current state of the

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financial situation in town, I'm just clarifying that I'm planning to move forward with a constraint driven budget at this time, which will mean eight reductions. I'm notifying people as early as tomorrow. Um, and I'm hoping

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that we can agree on that. This is a reluctant recommendation. It's not what I want. We would prefer obviously the level service but I think you know and then we can continue to look at some other things as we've discussed tonight but just in full transparency

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um the school district will be moving forward with a constraintdriven budget which will include eight reductions and I want to remind people that we have more than 900 916 kids in front of us every day that need those adults in

459
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front of them and as Miss Kaval said tonight, "We have children coming in with greater needs. They're disregulated. We need the bodies." So when when it's easy to say, "Well, you just have to cut." It's not easy when you have over 900 kids in front of you

460
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every single day and we have to service those kids. So please keep that in mind. We don't take this lightly, but we absolutely can't do a levelfunded budget. It will hurt kids. So Jamie, does that mean a million dollars on the town side? If

461
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>> so, where's that coming? >> No. Well, that means considerably more on the town side. That means >> close to a million. >> We'd have to cut $2 million on the town side for the milliondoll constraint

462
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budget because you're looking at mandated costs for elections. You're looking at Old Colony which is coming in at 410 on an assessment >> that we we have to pay. >> So 2 million on the town side.

463
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>> Yeah. >> What's the entirety of the million dollars in new revenues already spoken for? So >> but 2 million on the I mean what's the the five months budget is not $2 million. No, I mean >> 1.865 >> if if the school comes with a million

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dollar increase and you've got almost a million dollar increase. Well, it's a million dollar cut on the town side excluding fixed costs like health insurance.

465
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So, you decimate the town. >> So, a million on the town side. So, it sounds like our choices are decimate the school or decimate the town >> or half decimate each or half decimate both. Yeah, exactly. >> In my budget, there's no unemployment

466
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costs. I'm hoping to put that through as a one-time cost and take that out of stabilization. >> Yeah. >> Because otherwise, I got a layoff, as you know, three to two. I don't ever advise stabiliza taking it out of stabilization because you've got to keep

467
02:08:53.679 --> 02:09:09.599
stabilization for your bond >> and everything else. So, >> and we won't know until you deliver the numbers what unemployment's going to be. And that's and that's kind of one of the big unknowns is when you're talking

468
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about cutting, you know, 21 positions, the the unemployment liability for the town is is largely unknown until you know how much the unemployment insurance is going to kick in. So, while there might be in a worst case scenario 21 cuts, there's still going to be a

469
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significant amount of unexpected cost that associated with that unemployment. two. >> That's just the way it is. >> For every two cuts, >> you really have to cut three. >> Right. >> Right.

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>> So, I mean, if we're talking 21 plus that math >> to cover the unemployment cost, >> put another 10 cuts, >> then we're essentially at a budget deficit, not even level funded. >> So, and Chris Daniels will be left. >> Yeah. I mean, that's

471
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>> district. Well, part of that problem is you end up with a class size of say 40, but by law we can't put 40 students in one class. The classroom is too small. >> Yeah. And and you know ultimately while taking money out of stabilization for that particular aspect, the unemployment

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cost is >> not ideal. It is realistically a one-time cost. It literally is like you only play unemployment until somebody finds another role or after a certain amount of time. >> This year. >> This year. Yeah. Right. But you're going to be doing it year after year.

473
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>> Absolutely. And every single year we're going to have more one-time unemployment costs because that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to cutting positions. >> Yeah. >> But there's no way that we can do three to two. I mean, that's >> you've got

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no real revenue growth, >> right? >> You've got fixed cost growth growth that's outstripping revenue growth. And there's no way you can increase your revenue, >> right?

475
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>> Uh >> substantially >> to the substantially other than if you either do an override or you get the state to kick in more. And how many districts are getting

476
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minimum aid from the state right now? 200 something. >> Yeah, I I don't know the number off the top of my head. I'll trust your I'll trust your research there. If the House or the or the Senate or the compromise come back with more education money, can that be ours? >> Education money as far as I'm concerned

477
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is always the schools. >> The U one thing about uh stabilization that we since we have a spike an unusual spike in in energy that that may be you know be be able to be applied for that

478
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because it's a oneshot emergency deal. You follow me? >> Yeah. If you can break out in all your budgets, what's the one when you know one, you know, that spike number uh you know, you know, they can help as far as dealing with this budget.

479
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>> The real problem, the energy is not the real fixed cost problem. You're looking at the benefits. you're looking at $100,000 a year for increase from Bristol County retirement just so they

480
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can meet the mandated target down the road a piece to be funded. So when you look at all these costs just dominoing up, that is your problem.

481
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you're you're stuck between in effect 750,000 and 950,000 in increased revenue year over year. And this year we've pushed it every way I

482
02:12:53.840 --> 02:13:10.960
can think of to get it to 960. And I mean realistically that's the point that I made at the beginning of the meeting is if if we level fund this year, we will essentially need to level fund next year and because of contractual

483
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obligations and cost increases, if we maintain level funding year-over-year and we do 21 cuts this year, not even taking into account the unemployment consideration. Well, now if we math out the math and we're looking at another 8 10 12 cuts

484
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next year because we need level funding. Like there's no end in sight. There really is no end in sight >> for either. Yeah. >> Yeah. No. For the town, for the for the school district, for all the other municipalities around here, there's no end. >> That will also compound because if you don't meet your net school spending

485
02:13:44.159 --> 02:14:01.920
numbers, then they take away your chapter 7. They start reducing. You start getting penalized. So >> that's actually a good question. What's >> the actual minimum net school spending number? >> I mean, we know it from two years ago. >> It's going likes to be back in 2024.

486
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>> Yeah. >> Like, >> well, so essentially, it takes two years before all the numbers are certified by Desi and they tell you what your net school spending minimum was for, you know, two years prior. You you basically get a one, generally speaking, you get a one-year buffer where they slap you on

487
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the wrist and say, "Hey, you need to get back up above net school spending." And if you were $100,000 short this year, you have to pay that $100,000 back the following year. If you still fall below net school spending, that's when you start losing access to Chapter 70 money.

488
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You can start losing access to other state aid and things completely snowball. >> We've never gone below net school. >> I mean, I don't know what ever. I can't speak to that. I know that the reason that that comes up is that's the conversation that Fair Haven is having right now. Although we went below net school savings once

489
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>> 17,200,74. >> Right. >> So when we estimate, >> remember that's not a good transformation, >> right? Yeah. When we estimate for what the net school spending minimum is going to be there, there has to be a slop of sometimes up to a half million dollars

490
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on what that number is going to be. Because what'll happen is if let's say we estimate that net school spending is going to be on the dollar. Well, when Desi comes back and does the math 2 years later, sometimes they don't agree with the

491
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school department's math. And if you come in slightly under, well, under by 100,000 is no different in their eyes than under by 500 or 600,000. It's just the way it is. >> Just so this is going to be broadcast.

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Mhm. >> Everyone understands it. Net school the school spending we're talking about. >> Mhm. >> Does is that total education spending

493
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for the town including OC Old Colony and Bristol Aggie? >> Bristol. >> Um >> we pay tuition correct but >> and the tuition for high school. Old Colony is not because they receive their

494
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own chapter 70. We just pay the town portion, the required town portion that we pay to them. >> Bristol Aggie, I think we pay them in full. We do. >> So they're simil similar to the tuition. >> Yes.

495
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>> So when we talk about I'm just so everybody understands it out in TV land. When we talk about next school spending, we're excluding Old Colony >> and we're including all of the others. >> Yes. Yeah. That all comes out into the

496
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the tuition piece. So, so Jesse is looking to make sure that Aushnet public schools meets their required minimum net school spending for the spending from from the schools from the school budget plus any costs that the town pays on

497
02:16:59.519 --> 02:17:15.280
behalf of the school such as health insurance, pension, um some liability insurance, any debt, principal and interest. So it's looking to see so when there's a report that's filed every year that the business manager will say this

498
02:17:15.280 --> 02:17:32.000
is what we spent in the budget in the grants everything that you spent and you add in the town costs and then DESIE will say whether or not you met minimum net school spending which is the state says the adequate amount needed for the

499
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school for an adequate education. Now we can all say that we don't want an adequate education. Yeah, that's the bare minimum. >> That's the minimum needed for an adequate. So, it's not a good situation. >> Um, cities, big cities hover at net school spending all the time,

500
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>> but they're also funded better than than towns are. >> They get $1,500 for student increase year-over-year. We get 75. >> So, the, you know, so many schools are well over net school spending. And I'm just, you know, I'm not sure where is the cushion right now over net school spending

501
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>> this year. Very close. So, what does that mean? >> 26. >> How much? >> I think we're only over by a couple hundred thousand. >> A couple hundred thousand. >> But you can't really calculate that till you get your final cost. >> Correct. >> Correct. And as you said, sometimes at the end of the year, you have purchases

502
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that you're making that may come in less than what you thought. And when you're really right at net school spending, that's when you get into jeopardy. If what you thought you were going to spend with some, you know, purchase orders at the very end of the fiscal year, they they come in less or you're not able to

503
02:18:37.840 --> 02:18:53.200
procure it or whatever, then you get into trouble and get your um penalty as was said. >> And and you know, like I said, the first year the penalty is typically speaking, they give you a sound slap on the wrist and say you have to repay that money in the next school year's budget, like

504
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you're obligated to. And if you still fall below net school spending, then you lose state funding. And if you lose state funding, that's when you're at risk of them coming in and taking. >> By the way, that's typically what happens. You don't know. >> It doesn't happen often. >> No, >> it's very rare.

505
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>> It's ahead. >> No, sorry. When you said over 200, that was with or without the the town the health insurance and stuff. >> That's with >> That's with like the next year I estimated what Jamie had said about 18% increase.

506
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>> But yes, there are years that we were like 700,000 over. you know, I looked at prior years, but that numbers are getting smaller and smaller as the budget's getting more constrained. You got to get to the point where you might be upside down and you need to make it up. So, >> yeah. And I want to be clear that when I

507
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when I said the town has to plan to be I said a half a million if that was just a rough number. I'm not saying that's the number in this district. That's the number that is specifically been called out in Fair Haven, which to be fair is a much larger district. larger district is going to mean that

508
02:19:56.240 --> 02:20:12.720
this the slop value so to speak to stay above that net school spending minimum by nature has to be a larger dollar value. I was just making a making a point that you can't plan to fund on the button at net school spending and it needs to be significantly over that because of some of the points that were

509
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just >> that raises a whole different question is is what are we going to deliver the bare minimum to it. So that but that's a whole different discussion. So I it's getting late. If we have anything new, maybe we can add it. But if we don't, I would say we can I have a motion to adjourn the school committee meeting.

510
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>> I'll second. >> Then we'll do a roll call. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Modera. >> Yes. >> Mr. Ellis. >> Yes. >> Mrs. >> Yes. >> And Mr. Hoff? >> Yes. >> Do I have a motion to adjourn the finance? Make a motion. >> Second.

511
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>> All in favor? I >> like this. >> Good night.