good evening and welcome to the first in a series of fiscal year 26 budget hearings hosted by the Boston school committee and superintendent Mary Skipper we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance I will ask all of my
colleagues to unmute and join me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States states of Amer and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God
indivisible with liberty and justice for all because this is a virtual meeting I will ask Miss Parx to please call the RO thank you chair Dr alkins Mr K
Hernandez Mr isma Miss here miss palano Garcia pres Mr Tran here Mr O'Neal Miss Robinson here we have a quum
thank you Miss provits tonight's session is being shared live on Zoom it will be posted on the school committee's web page and on YouTube tonight's hearing documents are posted on the committee's web page bostonpublicschools.org
SL school committee under the February 13th meeting link the documents have been translated into all of the major BPS languages any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they
are finalized the committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation in Spanish Haitian Creole cap Verdian cantones Mandarin Vietnamese and American signed language the zoom
interpretation feature has been activated Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference I want to remind everyone to please speak at a slower Pace to assist
our interpreters before we get started I want to briefly review the committee's budget process on the first Wednesday in February as outlined in the city Charter the
superintendent presented her preliminary fiscal year 26 budget proposal to the committee starting tonight the committee will hold a series of hearings to take a deeper look at the superintendent's budget
proposal tonight's presentation will focus on school budgets on Wednesday March 5th the committee will hold a budget hearing to focus on the central budget the committee will hold a third
and final hearing on March 19th immediately followed by a regular school committee meeting over the course of the next few weeks committee members are invited to ask questions and SE suggest
modifications to budget items the community is also invited to ask questions and provide feedback about the superintendent's recommended budget by offering live and written testimony the superintendent and her
team will work diligently to respond to the committee members questions and suggested modifications as well as clarify areas of concern before presenting a revised budget to the committee on March
19th I will now turn it over to the superintendent her team for the presentation wonderful thank you chair and good evening to everybody um so first of all um it's great to be here for the first of the three public school committee budget
hearings um thank you for the opportunity to explain our budget decisions and how they directly impact our school's abilities to provide every BPS student with access to high quality student experience they deserve um last
week the district's Finance team joined me in presenting the $1.58 billion FY 26 preliminary Boston Public Schools budget um and this really officially
kicked off the 2025 26 budget season we began the presentation by identifying different highlevel trends that affected the planning of this year's budget
um a full year without Esser funds and the impact of inflation on our maintenance costs in addition after several years of decline our student enrollment has stabilized and although our total enrollment is lower than it was a decade
ago the number of students with disabilities and multilingual Learners has increased steadily these factors mean that we need to change the way that we allocate staff and resources while continuing to
consider our highest need students first as you'll hear tonight this budget is closely tied to the priorities of this committee as they were identified back at the Retreats that we held in the fall accelerating academic performance
by creating high quality academic experiences for all students through the expansion of E equable literacy and the use of highquality instructional materials uh ensuring access for all
students particularly multilingual Learners students with disabilities and multilingual Learners with disabilities through the implementation of our inclusive education plan and expanded multilingual
programming and providing a highquality experience for every student through the District's long-term facilities planning defined by our community as rigorous and culturally affirming learning
experiences wellness and enrichment with a supportive network of caring adults and physical spaces that support learning our first goal tonight is to give you a clear sense of how we collaborated with school leaders to build out their budgets and at the
school level particularly you get to see how we use service mapping as a tool to take a closer look at the needs of individual students and reflect them in each school's budget our second goal tonight is to
show how we've identified efficiencies and cost savings across the system and strategically directed that money back into classrooms for example the $21 million in savings that we've seen through our
long-term facilities planning for next year has allowed us to add positions to support expanded multilingual programs increase the number of dedicated bilingual instructional coaches and grow our secondary schools programming just
to name a few and our last goal tonight is to provide you with a clear understanding of all of our investments at the school level which include program in school enrollment expansion ions 34 new
classrooms at 25 schools and other school-based positions including Paris teachers Librarians and swimming programming staff I want to acknowledge that there's real concern for me and our team about
the potential impact of reduced Federal funding on our district however I believe that in this budget we've created a fiscally responsible budget that honors our commitment to put students first while
maximizing our previous Investments and strengthening what we know are the programs and initiatives that work Chief Financial Officer David Bloom and budget director Serena luk will are here tonight and they're going to walk
us through the district's decision-making process um they're going to explain our school's distribution strategy and they'll review the use of school-based resources including service mapping to better support our
students as we mentioned last week some of our schools have been using service mapping for years but what's different about this year's budget process is that we did this with all schools in a consistent manner service mapping centers our
highest need students first and asks who are we serving what services do they need and how will those Services be provided Frank viente who's the deputy chief of instruction from the office of specialized Services is with us tonight
and he'll further discuss service mapping and explain how it works by walking us through a day in the lives of two different BPS students we'll also hear and we're really excited about this from two School leaders Caitlyn Murphy from the
English High School in Jamaica plane and Carleen pado from the Channing Elementary School in Hyde Park um each of them will explain how service mapping has helped them to maximize their support of students while also ensuring
accuracy during the school budget planning process I really want to thank Frank Carleen and Caitlyn for taking the time to be here it's it's just a really busy time of year for school leaders their firsthand experiences whether it's
supporting schools like Frank or supporting teachers in the classroom like Caitlyn and carlen they're just so important to informing this conversation for the committee so at this point I will turn it over to Chief Bloom and to his
team thank you superintendent let me just pull up the presentation here okay good evening chair and members of the school committee I'm excited to be back with you today with members of our broader District
team to discuss the impact of our FY 26 proposed budget on schools I'm also aware that I'm handing off to three instructional leaders from the district so I will try and get through my remarks as quickly as possible so you can hear from them who I know you're excited to
hear from before we dive in I wanted to ensure that those who are watching tonight for the first time get some of the basic information we presented last week we are currently several months into what is almost a year-long budgeting process this evening
marks the second formal session of our school committee engagement around the budget but as you can see from this slide it's not the first conversation we've had with the committee or the public as a superintend o sorry as a superintendent mentioned in
her comments this budget is tied to the emerging school committee priorities we believe that this budget we have presented to you reflects a good portion of those priorities discussed in the fall and we are looking forward to further discussion and
refinement the goal of these Investments of the past few years coming out of the pandemic is to deliver a high quality student experience we know that some school committee members had questions at the hearing last week of what is meant by high quality experience and so
we wanted to share all of that with you much of what we have heard Maps directly onto your priorities as a school committee and the feedback we've heard directly from the community Through focus groups and listening sessions with over 500 School uh community members excuse me as well as a survey that
yielded 9,000 responses to continue my recap from last week this is our over all FY 26 budget as presented thank you to the mayor um and all of the school committee members for considering this budget over these two months a budget of continued growth
we believe this budget is fiscally responsible while enhancing the quality of services our children deserve and positions us to weather any future Financial storms last week I told the committee about $43 million of new investments in
schools later on this evening our budget director Serena Lorac will share with you in more details on this $43 million new investment these Investments were only possible thanks to the difficult work that the school committee and the community have engaged in around the
long-term facilities plan this work identified two main types of school-based efficiencies first there were savings from closures and reconfigurations under the long-term facilities plan second classroom closures from
under enrolled programs these were cases where the projected enrollment for the classroom was expected to be zero every dollar from these savings was reinvested directly in schools we also identified Savings in
central office budgets by going through a zerob base budget process these savings allowed for the continuation of temporarily funded school-based or student and family facing initiatives from school year 25 and are freeing up $5 million for additional investments in
schools we are going to come back to the committee on March 5th to go through these these numbers in more detail finally I wanted to share some new information uh in response to questions we heard from the committee last week to ensure that we are being
clear about how money is distributed to schools every school started with their Baseline budget from fy2 at the beginning of this budget process as we moveed forward into FY 26 we made adjustments for average salaries and the
opening and closing classrooms I discussed on the previous slide schools then had additional investment for inclusive practices language programs and ESL Services these allocations are the ones that are most tied to the concept of service mapping that Dr Chen introduced
last week and that we're going to discuss more later today finally we review the allocations for positions given out using a formula like social workers psychologists nurses to ensure that we had the appropriate ratios to meet the needs of
students uh there's some information in the appendix of tonight's presentation of with what those ratios currently are every school went through the same process but their needs were not the same an alternative school like Bata
with very with expanding enrollment had very different funding impact than an elementary school with flat enroll not mentioned on this slide is the pro step in the process that's ongoing right now which is a review of school budgets based on
feedback we know our process works pretty well for schools on average but we also know if it works well on average there are probably some schools that doesn't work for individually when Serena joins later this evening she will uh present more
information about that review process that is ongoing and where we are in the process finally I want to briefly review the most relevant supplemental materials for our conversation tonight the first three items on this list all represent different ways of
looking at our school budgets comp comprehensively so you can understand where every dollar and every school budget comes from these three documents are documents that we have published traditionally with the school committee at least all 10 years I have been here um and the second two documents
reflect new Investments for FY 26 around inclusive Ed to help understand the rules associated with those Investments the first document explains the total allocations to school rule by rule in a spreadsheet so you can make
comparisons the second document talks about um supplemental allocations that are specialized and somewhat unique giving you an explanation of the rationale for each investment how much each school got or sorry each allocation how much each School received and why
they received their amount if it is not covered by the original rule the second two documents go through the rules we used to allocate funding for inclusive Ed of school schools and what guidance we gave to schools around that
investment that guidance explained how schools were to use service mapping to identify the needs of students first and make sure those were funded and then gave them ideas or concepts for additional resources they could invest in to support inclusive
EV the second document here gives the total investment that each School received both last year in last year's budget process for this school year and in this year's budget process for next school year these items are summative so
fy2 is the total investment for school year 2425 and FY 26 Builds on the fy2 investment to give you an updated total for school year 26 I will now turn it over to my colleague Frank fente from the office of
specialized services to talk more about our approach to service mapping good evening members of the school committee and thank you to superintendent skipper for having me to be a part of tonight's presentation my name is Dr Frank viente I am the deputy chief of instruction for the office of
specialized services for Boston public schools and I'm here this evening to talk to you about the practice of service mapping before I dive into the structures of service mapping I just want to take a moment to frame the opportunities that I've heard a little
bit about tonight around service mapping and the benefits the first is really about equity and access service mapping is is a key strategy to this because we're committed to ensure that all of our students and in particular our highest needs Learners receive the
specialized instruction and support that they need and that they're entitled to the second is about maximizing inclusion in BPS we believe in the power of the inclusive classroom and service mapping allows us to look Services
strategically and build schedules that maximize the time for our students with disabilities and for our English language Learners to spend in the general education classroom with their peers and then ultimately data driven
scheduling instead of taking a one-size fits-all approach to the work when we service map we use data about students and their needs to drive our scheduling and make informed decisions and what that does is it allows us to
look at our resources and allocate them both effectively and equitably so let's talk a little bit about what service mapping is so when we service map what we're doing is we're taking a student- centered
approach by identifying the specific academic social emotional and language development needs of our specialed education and our English language learner students and we are prioritizing their service
delivery the way that we create that priority is by looking at strategic instructional groupings and we build schedules for those essential Services first so this includes specialized
instruction related services like speech therapy or counseling and designated instruction for our English language Learners and then we build our Universal schedules around those needs so once we have those critical Services identified
and they're placed in the schedule we can build the rest of the school schedule around them and that ensures that these students needs are met and that we can maximize their access to inclusive classrooms it also puts us in the best
place to to optimize our resources so service mapping helps us to understand what our resource allocation looks like and by seeing where our services are delivered we can identify our gaps and we can ensure that we're using our staffing
effectively and our resources effectively can we jump to the next slide so the benefits of service mapping when we service map we're able to increase inclusion because we're prioritizing services and creating
schedules that support the maximum time for our targeted students in the general education classroom we're putting ourselves in the best position possible to improve our student outcomes because we are being really thoughtful about making sure that
we have the correct Services the right services at the the right time for our students and thinking about improving their academics their social emotional and their language development needs and outcomes and then again I want to reiterate that Equitable resource
allocation service mapping really helps us to ensure that our resources are distributed based on what our student needs and not just taking that General one-size approach to the work it also creates greater transparency
the process provides transparency and how we're meeting the needs of our students largely because of the level of involvement and the strong team approach that we take by talking to each other with the data that we have so my hope is as you hear about
service mapping and you learn about it it'll help you to understand how we're working to achieve and and maximize the experience with our students but what we wanted to do tonight is just take some time to take a look specifically at the student experience by looking at a
couple of student Prof uh student profiles so to illustrate this I want to first introduce a student by the name of Sammy So Sammy is a fourth grade student Sammy has an IEP that outlines that she must receive math instruction
from a special education teacher she's also provided speech and language Services three times a week to address her communication disability and furthermore as an English language learner Sammy requires 90 minutes of English as a second language
instruction every week and this is delivered by an ESL teacher so to meet these needs Sami school has structured the following schedule as you can see stam's day begins in the home room for morning meeting and social emotional
learning Sammy attends her ESL class in a separate room with six other students who share a similar level of English proficiency she then participates in specials with art being her favorite before her having science lunch and
recess Sammy is then pulled out of class for math instruction in a small group setting with a special education teacher she returns to her home room for history and is pulled out three times a week for her speech and language
services and Sammy concludes her day with 45 minutes of support in the resource room so in total Sammy spends 1,215 minutes each week outside of her home room classroom now looking at our next slide
we look at a student by the name of Saul so salul is also a fourth grade student and Sal's IEP specifies that he requires additional math support from a special education teacher as well as Occupational Therapy Services three
times a week to assist with his fine motor needs and like Samy so is an English learner and he receives 90 minutes of ESL direct instruction daily his school has made intentional efforts to integrate the services he
requires within his Home Room classroom setting so Sal's day begins with morning meeting and seal instruction and after which his ESL teacher Mrs Smith team teaches alongside with his Home Room
teacher Miss Jones for English language arts and ESL instruction so Miss Jones has her SEI endorsement a course required by desie that teaches content Educators how to shelter classroom instruction for English language
Learners so will then attend specials followed by science lunch and recess so participates in math instruction with his home room where both his classroom teacher and special education teacher collaborate to support his learning and
throughout the day s engages with grade level content and has multiple opportunities to interact with peers who serve as his language models he attends history class before being pulled out three times a week for his Occupational Therapy
Services s finishes his day in another classroom with additional resources or excuse me additional resource room supports the total amount of time Saul spends outside of his main classroom is 315 minutes a
week now while both examples of Service delivery aligned with the guidelin set for by set forth by desie and ensure that neither Sammy nor s is separated from their peers for extended periods we encourage the school leaders to reflect on these examples and how
they might provide students with more frequent opportunities for inclusion in the general education setting so by looking at these two opportunities we can see students with similar profiles in different ways that we can map out their services and be
thoughtful in their scheduling and the resources that we need to have in place to maximize their services so at every school we map out services for each student and by doing that we're ensuring
that we have Staffing models that support the needs of all of our Learners and we allow our schools to maximize resources which teachers it allows us to really think about where our teachers are at and what our students need and how do we put ourselves in the best
position possible both with resources and with important expertise in service of our children so we've been very excited about the potential of Serv mapping and how it improves the outcomes of our students we're going to continue to refine this
process and provide regular updates to the school committee on our progress we welcome your feedback and support as we work to continue to implement this important initiative so I want to thank you for the opportunity to share this
information tonight and I am going to introduce my colleague Miss carlen PN who will continue to speak about service mapping from the school leader experience thank you Arlene I think you're still on
mute well thank you for that because I started speaking well let me start over thank you good evening my name is karlen pnat and I am the school leader at Channing Elementary School in h Park we are a
small but vibrant school with with an active School site counsel and parent counsel our school Norms are to be safe respectful responsible and
inclusive I am a proud product of the bostom public schools and I learned English as my third language in the district schools I am excited to be here tonight to talk about what inclus Ive education
has meant for us and our school Community see our inclusive education Journey started in the school year 2022 2023 to prepare all of our
Educators to give students differentiated access to Social and academic experiences to ensure that every student has the right to engage with their
typically developing peers using our till1 curriculum we partnered with the office of specialized services and our expert teachers here at shanning to provide schoolwide
professional development so that we can all acquire shared understanding and mindset mindset on two things that were critical we knew that we needed to deepen our
understanding of behavior as communication because we needed to develop inclusive classwide positive behavior and support systems we also knew that we needed to infuse
evidence-based methodology into our till one curriculum to give all students access to high quality quality teaching and learning experiences so during our professional learning
together and in partnership with our school our School site council members we knew that we needed to revise our school Vision to ensure that it aligned with our District's Equitable literacy
priorities which by the way happens to also align with the school committee's priorities our vision is pretty lengthy and you will notice the content and the connection between our
District's Equitable literacy and the school committee's priority here it is Channing invest in people and resources to achieve daily academic
excellence and social responsibility to support the belief that with rigorous instruction and high academic standards in the least restrictive
environment which is not just the law but children's rights that all students all children are bound for success in life
when they have access to Services based on their individual needs intersectionalities and entry points to grade level standards or above I'm sure you have noticed the
connection between our Equitable literacy and our school Comm committee priorities and Channing fion so when we learned that we were transitioning to inclusive education as a district we were thrilled for two main
reasons one we had already renewed our Collective mindset with the support of our schoolside council members and our Collective mindset was on providing inclusive learning experiences to all of our
students and the shift in our student population Within an increase in our multilingual Learners and our students with disabilities and we could not have done better if we had not engaged in the
district provided professional learning opportunities for school leaders for teachers for parents and other service Personnel so all of the work that we had done the year prior with the Equitable
literacy that happens to connect with the school committee's priorities revising our vision all of these components really really put us in a position to really
succeed you know while we have historically created some version of service mapping at the school level we had not previously considered it in a thoughtful and calculated way the district designed it and for a very long
time we thought we are student centered until we experience the district service mapping collaborating to complete the service mapping document with our Educators here
Channing empowered us to plan for individual students using data from the perspectives of all adults who service them when it came time to present my service map during this year's budget
collab I quickly realized the Departments are speaking the same language and they were at the table intently listening to build the school's
budget not as a means to comply with regulations but especially to materialize high quality these student experiences and I'm going to give a quick example of what we've done in the past
and our current practices to meet the needs of our students I like to think of them as three interconnected phases so that we can show how we have evolved as a school because the district
has evolved in the way that we see service m in which connects with centering students in the budget process so during our budget collab the team discovered through our service
mapping that we had done at the school level with different teachers and support personnel and notice that our enrollment projections would see that we would continue to have distinct student
populations with the same Service delivery determinations for one and two so we used to hear eld1 el2 it's it's a similar language with Service delivery determination meaning that students in
with l 1 and two they are just learning to learn English uh not just socially but to prepare them for College and Career and we also had students with service
determination one and two who needed specialized instruction and both populations required 90 minutes of instruction with a licensed ESL
teacher and additional moderate services with a licensed special educator yes regulations support combining these two groups for esel instruction this was phase
one and in budget meetings that's where the conversation ended we met compliance there's the budget no further conversation was necessary because we checked off the
list we met compliance so as I talk about phase two and phase three please consider this our process now and moving forward
ensures that phases two and three are the norm moving forward so in phase two we collectively named that students with significantly significantly different
learning profiles must access to one curriculum and received targeted additional instruction to accelerate their learning something that was part of academics and instructional leadership
in schools it was not part of the budget process phase two which once required Fierce advocacy and my principal School leader colleagues can attest to that it's not the
norm Le leaders are expected to discuss individual needs within the instructional groups and make decisions based on a shared understanding of providing high quality
student experiences aligned with the budget and the budget's office has a transparent system of funding distribution and part of their
priorities are we must provide students with the least restrictive learning and social opportunities and that is in the inclusive classroom where our children belong we must account for our
multilingual learner needs having been one myself and is still one and the needs of our students with disabilities and in in this and Final
Phase phase three the budget collab team reached a decision that was informed by multiple sources and of information School language pathologist OT special ed teacher Home Room teacher
School leader observations meetings uh steaming structures all of that was considered in building those school's future budget the budget's office consider the needs of our multilingual Learners and
student with disabilities and for example in the case of Channing allocated funding for a learning specialist to plan for and Implement specialized instruction
through Behavior analytics both within and outside of the inclusive classroom this process recognizes each student's specific needs the learning specialist in
collaboration with existing teaming structures at the school including ESL teachers will recognize each student specific needs based on the concept of the whole
child this is sure to make each student schooling experience memorable for them and for the adults who serve them our shared goal to ensure all students have the maximum opportunity to
learn alongside their peers using quality curriculum effective instructional groupings learning tools technology resources
materials and trans Personnel to support them there's no other way but to thrive the district's new service mapping approach and collaboration with the budget office guarantee
that and I will quote every child has the same unfeathered access to every conceivable tool to unlock the greatness Within in them and that's a quote from the
opportunity and achievement Gap policy I now turn it to my colleague Caitlyn Murphy thank you thank you klen my name is Caitlyn Murphy and I am the school leader at the English High School in Jamaica plane
English High School serves over 750 students in grades 7 through 12 our middle school program is in its third year and was created as a full inclusion program and currently our n9th and 10th grades are full inclusion settings we
also have two substantially separate programs one in the High School for students with complex disabilities and an emotional impairment program for students in grades 7 through 12 while both programs have substant
substantially separate classrooms we have created many opportunities for inclusion with their classmates in the general education programs across the school day at the secondary level our planning for inclusive classrooms attends both to
the need to provide our students with the support and specially designed instruction that they need to master grade level standards and to our commitment to providing choice in their course selection as they work towards meeting
their Mass core requirements we are also mindful that for all of our students we are tasked with doing all that we can in the time they are with us to prepare them for post-secondary Independence through the lens of
inclusive education for students with disabilities and multilingual Learners this means being intentional about planning for a shift over time to Greater Independence and least restrictive environments as appropriate for the individual student but with the
ultimate goal that students are ready to navigate the world once they have earned a diploma this year our work has been informed by the service mapping process and it has allowed our team to deepen our understanding of what supports and
services our students need at a more macro level when a approaching building the master schedule or Staffing supports this process allows us to both ensure we are meeting the needs of the individual
student as represented in their IEP while also seeing Trends across the school and by grade level about the types of stud services our students need that work of service mapping
combined with the implementation of the new IEP has led to Rich conversations in our team about how to ensure that all staff members working with a student can more deeply understand that student's needs
and services and how we might collaborate in teams to provide a variety of access points to the curriculum in one of our grade levels this year we were able to use the service mapping process to to adjust the
second semester classes for students in math to more closely match student need with Staffing and the result of this shift has been that the students some of whom were struggling in semester 1 now nearly
a month into the second semester are having a much better experience which we believe will lead to a stronger understanding of math content we're also working to provide all all Educators in the building with
professional learning experiences that allow them to more deeply understand how a student disability will show up in their content class so that they are prepared to collaborate in a meaningful way with the other team members who are
supporting that student if all team members can move Beyond a cursory understanding of specific learning disabilities we are all in a better position to support a student whether we are the science teacher the school counselor or the
assistant principal from a budgetary and scheduling perspective the service mapping process provides an organizing framework for conversations about the best way to provide services to
students and it allows us to see in a snapshot all of the students who need a particular service in one place given the highly complex nature of secondary scheduling high school
schedules the master schedule is very very complex this tool has helped us to understand what kinds of Staffing we need for the students we currently serve and over time we hope that it will help us to see trends that will help us
to predict the needs of the students in our entry years so those students who are coming to us in seventh grade generally from in the district sometimes from other places and those students that are coming in the ninth grade whose
IEPs we won't see until we actually meet them in person which is um you know months after the schedule has been built the increased flexibility provided in this year's budget process of an allocation for inclusion supports that
did not prescribe a particular Staffing model has allowed our team to look at the service delivery data reflect on the first year of the high school inclusion rollout and then make decisions as a team that is based
in data and the lived experience of our community and then decide on Staffing requests that best meet those needs our work at English is just beginning but with these supports and the dedicated Educators in my building I
think that we are in a good place to create the conditions in which our students will be able to grow and Thrive thank you for the opportunity to share and I will now turn it over to our budget director Serena
Lorac thank you Kaitlyn our Focus remains on building school-based budgets that prioritize student needs this year we reinvested in schools through both city funding and the Strategic reallocation of District
resources these efforts were made possible by identifying and implementing efficiencies a process we began in fiscal year 25 and continued to deepen this is the challenging but necessary work of redirecting resources
that have been stretched to fin ensuring they are effectively use uh more effectively to better service our students we have identified two types of key efficiencies one through central office
so this year through zerob based budgeting we thoroughly reviewed our budgets from top to bottom eliminating Legacy programs that no longer service our students effectively our Focus this year was to minimize the impact on school by first
identifying savings within the central office budget we're going to discuss these efficiencies in Greater detail during the March 5th Mee the second is uh through school efficiencies our Focus
today while we're committed to ensuring all schools receive the necessary funding to support students including those with declining enrollment we also must find efficiencies this means striking that fine balance accurately estimating the
cost of student program pring such as service mapping as discussed by carlen and Caitlyn and also Frank avoiding funding empty classrooms and advancing our long-term facilities plan including school
closures and reconfigurations these efficiencies have allowed us to reinvest directly into schools expanding opportunities for all students this includes adding staff at Gardner Haley and hernandz
as well as introducing surround care for KO K2 and expanding our programs our holistic approach ensur that schools receive the financial support they need provide a high quality education while making the most of our
available resources now we know that efficiencies can impact our staff we want to make sure that we are supporting them through any changes that impact them for smaller changes that impact uh one to two classrooms in a school we try as much as
possible to identify vacant positions that employees can transition into the same school if there is not a position at their school we work to ensure they have one at another school permanent teachers that are
accessed are guaranteed a job in the district and for our provisional Educators who have worked in our district for Less years we provide them with the support with job applications and they receive recommendations from their school leaders our goal is to retain our
talented Educators and ensure we have diverse staff we know that when a school closes there's a larger impact on staff and we work to ensure that those impacted have every opportunity to remain in our system
as we reinvested funds and allocated new dollars from the city our top priority was investing in inclusive education in addition to school-based budgets we provided additional funding
by considering the number of students they serve in general education studies includ including those in substantially separate classrooms who benefit from learning alongside their peers in an inclusive environment to ensure schools could best
meet their staff their students needs we provided flexibility allowing them to First identify necessary services and support through the service mapping process and then allocate their funding
accordingly including any supplemental Services aligned with our guidance in some cases schol identified additional needs after completing their service mapping as Frank described earlier when this happens we review
these requests and allocate additional funding as needed from the reserves we established our goal is to ensure Equity by addressing the specific needs of students at each School while a funding formula works for M schools we recognize
that will always be outliers this approach balances the consistency of a funding formula with the flexibility to meet the unique needs of students earlier carlen and Caitlyn
shared the impact of these Investments and the service mapping process after their school and you received a document tonight with more detailed information about this allocation and guidance on the use of these funds
our second investment priority was expanding access to and support for multilingual education through this investment we added resources to strengthen both new and existing multilingual programs and
ensure that all students have the necessary ESL Staffing to meet student needs as outlined in their service Maps this this includes additional Staffing support for schools launching new multilingual programs funding to
enhance dual language uh bilingual education and dedicated bilingual instructional uh instruction coaches for the school expanding dual language programming or schools who have dual language programming in our um
underrepresented languages such as Vietnamese Haitian Creole Kate and cre we are also building out curriculum and professional development resources for our new program all of these Investments are in
addition to schools based budget our inclusion and multilingual Investments use the majority of our new funding from the city to ensure we were aligned with our school committee priority too ensuring access for all
students these two items are not the only things reflected in this budget following school committee Priority One accelerating academic performance we invested in expanding Secondary School programming to provide additional
opportunities for students to have access to Advanced coursework and Vocational programming on this slide you'll see a number of those Investments being made finally as I mentioned
earlier we reinvested money from our school closures reconfigurations and classroom closures for those with little to no students projected and reinvested that money in new programs and program expansions at
schools across the district based on enrollment in need this allows for a wide range of students to experience the best that BPS has to offer including at the new buildings for the
Carter school and Quincy upper now before we close I wanted to speak briefly about where we are in the school budget review process as David and then I mentioned earlier while our funding formula meets
the needs of most schools we recognize that some schools have unique circumstances we recognize that we need to take a balanced approach our approach strives to maintain the consistency of a funding formula while allowing the
flexibility to address specific student needs to support this we established a process rooted in student data and needs that that allows schools to request additional resources beyond their
initial allocation when reviewing these requests we consider multiple factors including student needs based on data a school's existing funding and Staffing levels available discretionary dollars
to the school and how the school chose to use those funds schools have submitted their requests and are teams are actively reviewing them this process will be finalized by the end of the month so
that the superintendent can include her recommendations in the final proposal to school committee now lucky me because I we wanted to minimize TR uh transition I got to borrow this moment from David to talk about our budget
book we're excited to uh presenting you with a working version of the budget book later this month for your review and feedback and we will be publishing the final version with your approved budget
finally we will be taking a little break between now and our next budget hearing on Central Budget on March 5th that will be the third of the five meetings to discuss and vote on the budget and we look forward to taking your feedback and
questions thank you and now I'll pass it over thank you all for the presentation and because this is a budget hearing I want to pause here and open it up to questions from the committee Miss panco
Garcia thank you Madame chair thank you for the presentation um okay thank you thank you for this presentation I'm going to start with the case of uh I think that's very important
so I thought it was very important how they discussed the case of s in this presentation so what I was able to see uh with the c is that all the instruction was done in English including um English Math and
Science since we have been talking about how to use uh the native language as a support for instructions So based on that I'm going to ask my question so my question is how will the district
guarantee the development of reading and writing in their native language and in English I I don't know if there's a um I I can start I think uh it would be great if uh
Joelle were also able to come on great so I think what we didn't Define in this particular one is whether um Sammy and Saul were in any kind of specific programming um it was just a
generic classroom situation more to show how Services would get delivered uh it we didn't specify uh for instance if they were with a teacher that was in a bilingual track um but Joelle you might
have more information on this particular example sure thank you superintendent just to clarify more of the case of Sammy it's um it's said it's described that he is a multilingual learner with specific
needs and based on the analysis it was also said that he is a multi learner so in that sense I um saw that the instruction that Sammy is getting is similar to what our
students are receiving nowadays that all of the instruction is done in English I thought that we were going to see some changes and how to use the native language as support in the
day-to-day um learn and experience sure thank you so much for your question uh member um Garcia palanco it all depends on the format or the program model that Sammi is in if
Samy is in a dual language school and sami's receiving ESL instruction then yes Sammy is receiving some native language instruction if Samy is in an inclusive model then Sammy is receiving
the ESL instruction that is required um for the time and minutes that is required of um for Samy to receive it his ESL teacher will utilize language acquisition instructional skills to help Sammy utilize and um learn English and
um as all School tools that we have in BPS we want to ensure that families feel very welcomed but again it's a choice for every family not every family will choose a dual language school or a program like a that would provide native
language instruction um but the school will also utilize will have a welcoming experience for Sammy but it all depends on the program model that is utilized at the school thank you uh for the clarification so my second question or the second
question that I have is regarding the mapping service so I'm very curious um if we are making sure through through the process if we are providing support to the services
given that um some the needs are in constant changing we're constantly evolving and are changing [Music] so every every student um that you know
the need of every student for example the multilingual learning student so how are we making sure in the process this projection since we're seeing that we will have more M multilingual learners um and we're seeing that in our
projection so how are we making sure we have the the staff the the number of Staff um with you know Specialists about Reading Writing um so since through this
mapping service we're seeing this that we're going to need um therapist like uh specialized in reading and we need staff though to teach multilingual Learners how are making sure that these um staff are
bilingual as well so how are we making sure we are doing that through the process um thank you for that question I can answer the first part for sure um so we do a couple of things to ensure we're
ready to meet the needs of students for the upcoming year the first is we look closely at our enrollment patterns over time to project an estimate a future need so if we see a school's enrollment has been
growing with multilingual Learners will often project continued growth we then do the service mapping based off a combination of what are the needs of the students in front of the school right now and what is the
estimate for future growth now we know there's no way we're going to get that perfectly right and we don't know who's actually going to be enrolled next year at this point in the process so what we do as well is create
a reserve for additional enrollment and we start reviewing that Reserve in early April as soon as round one assignments go out and Frank and several members of his team um and Joelle and members of her
team are in meetings that we have multiple times a month to review enrollment at schools review issues we're hearing from schools and ensure we're hiring staff as soon as we know there might be additional need in a
school thank you I think the I think the other part to that and Frank maybe um this is one that you can address is I think member palanco Garcia is also asking as enrollment is fluid and changes during the school year uh School leaders
will do the service mapping at the beginning to set the schedule but then how do we use it as enrollment changes or as um say uh students IEP needs change or multilingual Learners needs changed how can a school leader use it throughout the
year sure thank you so um just to give some more context the one of the primary components of a service map is the development of instructional groupings so when we look at instructional groupings what we are
doing is we're looking at common profiles of students and we are taking in consideration students with disabilities students who are multilingual Learners and students that represent both of those populations and so we consider the the
learning profiles of those students related to their disability we also look at our STD levels which Define the levels of service for our second language Learners and we work within the confines of both of those um areas of need to
determine instructional grouping so that we can think about the students that we can service together what's the appropriate size of those groupings and then use that context to have more enriched conversations at the school level about what does that mean for our
staffing what does that mean for our resources what does that mean for our scheduling what it allows is this multi-disciplinary conversation to come together to look at all of those different components so when we have our individual groupings and we start to
build out the work around them we start by looking at each one of those groups and when we have an identified group of students we then ask the question so what do these kids need and so as we build out multiple groups then we start to collectively talk as a school what
does the school need and that's we can look at those patterns and we can identify the needs both in the present and we can do that as the school continues to evolve and as we continue to revisit this process of service mapping and creating instructional
groupings and working on putting together numerical uh representations that service kids in the best way possible so really what it does is it creates an opportunity for an important data informed discussion that's based on the
identified needs of kids and then we can look at holistically what does that mean for us as a school to make sure that we can then ask the questions when we get to all of these other processes including our work with David Bloom and his team in budget to think about how are we going to serve as kids in the
best way possible thank you for the uh [Music] clarification so yeah thank you something I want to say about the mapping service is um if you've been able to engage the families
if the families are engaged in this process because they can be a determinant factor and and they can help so how have you thought about engaging families because he mentioned that they have a group uh working and analyzing
this so have you thought of it about it or how are you thinking of engaging families in this process thank you for that question so I can start and I can tell you that through service mapping and thinking about our instructional groupings this
is one bit of information and data that we can bring into the IEP process so oftentimes as we're thinking about Service delivery specific to our students with disabilities we have the opportunity to talk about where they're currently at with their needs and what's
happening around them and the ways that we're thinking about their services in terms of their current data in terms of their progress and then engage you know our multi disciplinary team and our parents as stakeholders to the process at that level um I'm not
sure if if Caitlyn or if uh any of other school leadership have any thoughts beyond that but one way we can definitely use that information is when we invite parents into the IEP process and engage them through that conversation when we're thinking about that work thank
you okay okay I see lots of hands up but I think the first was Miss um Lima Barbosa followed by Dr alkins and then um Mr
ishmail thank you chair uh thank you for the team for the presentation um I wanted to start just sort of going back to the overview of why we're here and the you know your objective not only the finance team uh
definitely in collaboration with the community engagement team on centering communities uh particularly schools that historically have been underserved uh I I I know throughout your presentation I'm probably able to
identify how you all have done that but it would be good if you could give examples of maybe new uh monies new dollars that really are impacting said communities and we're talking about black students we're talking about multilingual students uh students with
disabilities and all the inter intersectionality um uh that comes with that so it would be really good to hear more uh from the district like what what were those priorities uh what were those changes that are going to be impacting
these particular communities um talking about new monies and not necessarily the same budget items that we always unless we've increased it at a particular amount that that also nice to learn um thank you so much for that question
because it it gives me an opportunity to go back and correct something I think in my presentation that I didn't spend enough time on which is um we've made a pretty big structural change to our school budget process
recently and I promise uh member Li Barbosa I'm getting back to your question but when when I first started in the district we used way student funding and we were getting a lot of feedback about weighted student funding as we went through the process uh I
actually remember from my our two School leader colleagues who are here tonight have given me some pretty spirited feedback over the years about wayed student funding and what was working and what wasn't working and one of the things we found and we presented this to the school committee probably just before the
pandemic um was that weighted student funding was creating a cycle a vicious cycle of disinvestment in schools where a school would lose some enrollment not a huge amount but enough to reduce their weighted student funding budget it
wouldn't be enough enrollment loss to for them to be able to close in classrooms or for them to adjust their instructional needs and so they would have to take their reduction in weighted student funding and lose art programs social workers Librarians all the sorts
of things that make school more than just School right that help build it into a thriving community and so with all that feedback we launched what we call the reimagine school funding process to think about
what could a new system look like and so um one of the key things that is in this presentation that is different than prior years is every school starts with their prior year budget and they only get reductions if it's tied to a
specific lack of student need and that may not sound like an investment but what we found was with weighted student funding when we did the analysis the schools with persistent enrollment decline who were impacted by that cycle I just mentioned earlier were
disproportionately schools serving our black and latinx youth right and what we have found through that through this change is we've been able to stem that cycle right so schools may still be losing uh some money in their budget
right but they're losing that money because they have a entire classroom that can be Consolidated and they're not losing a librarian an art teacher a social worker unless there are really significant shifts happening in that school's enrollment that we need to make
more major adjustments and so while it may not seem like new money um it really is something that we think um is really important and is sort of an investment uh away from the reductions in in weighted student
funding I'll I'll then also just add I think when we look at our investments in inclusive Ed and multilingual Learners what we're seeing is those Investments are disproportionately affecting our black and latinx youth as well as multilingual Learners uh and students
with disabilities and that was actually in the there's some of that analysis in the equity impact statement we shared with you last week but we didn't we didn't bring it up at the time so thank you for mentioning it tonight no no no worries and just to kind of keep on the same theme and I'm only
bringing up to school not because I'm biased and I'm an Alum but it is a budget that I looked at and I'm going to use it as an example because I feel like that the doctor Holland School of Technology there's a lot of similar high schools are just throughout the district
schools that serve a similar population and the same population that we just spoke about um in term of black students immigrants as students with disabilities and so on I'm curious to see schools like um Dr
Holland that has 430 students and I'm only seeing a one budget Island for guidance counselor I'm a little bit concerned and I know that's not a unique uh structure or or staff
um allocation so I'm again I'm using this as an example but I think it's something that we should look into it holistic basically of schools that serve this these type of populations but there are very key Cal crucial roles like a guidance counselor that is as important
as we're trying to invest in the academic space right in the academic learning but I'm also thinking about the services that the same students are getting when it when we talk about guidance counselors there are students that need more support when it comes to SAT prep when it comes to mcast prep
there are students that are first generation so they have no idea what to ask the guidance counsel when it comes to going to a college or other career Pathways that does not necessarily mean college career so if one school has 430 students um I'm concerned that we are
not Staffing you know folks uh and I do recognize that are external partners that we have that usually partner with some schools to support uh our students that are thinking about college career Pathways but um I'm aware that you know
the guidance counselors has has a a lot of task it's it's also mentoring it's some of them have to just hear students vent about their personal life so I'm concerned there because I think it's something that is as important as we are investing uh in classrooms when we talk
about inclusion education plan we should also think about those type of positions uh and that's nursing everything else right and we've heard nurses all year telling us that they feel overwhelmed it's a lot of students so I think it's it could be the same experience from some of the guidance counsil so we love
to hear more uh how you're making decisions of yeah how many guidance counselors per School especially when we're talking about we're centering this population so if we are how can we do
that there so um uh couple I have a couple of thoughts on that um and thank you for pushing our thinking on it the first is uh there's something we need to improve in our communication and we are very close to being done with that Improvement and
we'll share it with you soon which is um there's sort of a there's a difference between the allocations we give uh and what schools actually budget so historically the district didn't allocate guidance counselors
specifically starting about five four or five years ago uh as we were rolling out Mass core we started an investment in guidance counselors for ninth grade and so we should be more specific in this document that's what this allocation is so the Holland School actually does have
two guidance counselors um in their in their budget but the allocation only reflects one because we were only sort of allocating above the their sort of Base allocation that one additional one
for 9th grade I think this is a real sort of challenge in the way we present and explain our budget and in the way we do our allocations so one of the things we're thinking about as we shift to wayed uh to reimagine school funding
is how much do we specifically require schools to have versus how much flexibility we give them because the more requirements we offer schools where let's say you have to have one guidance counselor for every 200 students
whatever it ends up being right then the flex the flexibility they have is limited so we're trying to sort of strike that balance so at the Holland school they have two one that was part of their weighted student funding original allocation and one that was supplemental I think this is this is a
good it is a good point though about the college career and guidance and I think the other piece to this is is that as we talk kind of about the social emotional academic supports schools have had some Flex ability with how to be able to use
allocations too so um in the case of Holland like there's also deliberateness around social workers and expenditure on social workers s social worker which was added in and so I think that they see it as a team of individuals like schools
look at this in different ways but um they see it as like a team of individuals who support the whole child right whether that's uh the college process whether that is um you know uh the social emotional counseling piece whether it's the family connection um but I I think your Point's really well
taken U MMA robosa because I think we need to find a clearer way to represent that so that you can actually see what the organization looks like um so I I think we can take that back and um that makes a lot more sense I I
also think it's just ensuring that the schools are actually hiring and have the two guidance counselors um they tend to take a lot of additional tasks when others leave the office for leave for whatever reason so it's just again it
was a very critical I had I had like three different guidance counsels at edber when I was a student yeah and to hear that this year they've been functioning with one it was a little bit you know concerning so I went to look at the budget like okay how is are we
making any changes there uh and how can we do that another thing that I did not see in budget Dave and maybe it's another it's somewhere else um and not in the school budget in particular is the K Varian Heritage program at the Holland uh I know it did
not work out this year because they didn't have any staffing but just curious if it's not in the budget right now why or maybe it's somewhere else maybe a department that funds it just uh Curious there I think actually Joelle
it would be good if you could I know this is an active conversation for us yeah Ally as we're thinking about you know the excitement of the Dual language um at the uh win clap merger and then what does that mean for high school um
Joelle do you have any update on that um yes well not really like an update but we were actually having a team meeting today we were talking intensely about um uh sorry in talking about Heritage
courses for our students and especially highlighting for our what we can consider you know not that it's not special but Haitian Creole K Verdian um Creole Vietnamese thinking about Pathways since we have dual language programs for those languages and
thinking of Pathways as options for students but then also thinking about schools that have high populations of certain language groups and um creating those courses Heritage coures courses at those schools there the main
point of the Heritage course would be for more students to attain the Seal of biliteracy and so we will work within our department and um Outreach to other departments too about um looking at where we can Implement them and also um
just increasing that opportunity for students in the district but yes I know the Holland once had it and um is really interested in in having it again and there are there are two positions in the two teaching positions in the budget for the program for the the program is that
on the school on the school's Budget on the one page right now it's not on so it's part of their the one page is where I'm looking at like where's everything but I know not gonna tell me every single thing in detail But It's tricky because it's a part of their base allocation like sort of the base
instruction and so I think um one of the things you'll see you're going to get as a part of the budget book is you're going to get um a second page because I think the allocation one pager is great but it only tells you how money gets to
the school it doesn't then tell you what the school uses the money for okay understood right and so but that's a real problem that we need to fix and so I think you you're already giving me more I wish it wasn't already in process of being printed want to change it a
little bit based on your feedback but we'll change it for the final version I I yeah sorry no it's great just Fe just to make sure you answered my question so right now in their budget there is money allocated for the the teachers that
would run the course but are there any other uh budget items related to the course other than staff that we need if so is it not on our the school's budget is it with uh joelle's cabinet that's what I'm trying to like get the full
picture outside of the teaching POS the teacher positions I guess yeah so the the teaching positions um are on the school budget and then I think as part of our investment in supporting multilingual Learners there are also funds to support
professional development and curriculum design in the budget of the office of multi okay that's that's that makes a lot more sense since the department is helping with creating the design implementing them and all of that so the schools actually don't have to carry on
that particular money in their budget all right uh I'll stop here and let my colleague take some time if we have an for around so I have more questions thank you thanks Dr alkins um thank you for this um
preliminary presentation um a bunch of questions and I'm trying to figure out how to Pace myself in this um so I think my first question is related to the service mapping and we heard a little bit about it but I'm
curious as to um how many schools we we have currently implemented service mapping in across the district um and particularly um what has been
the what has been the the return on perhaps like professional development that teachers are getting back as a result of these things um like how are how are we hearing um in terms of the implementation aspect of it how teachers are
receiving this that's my first question Frank do you w to start and yeah jump in thank you yeah so I'll start so um to begin with we introduced formally the service mapping work in December at an all leader PD so that we
can ensure that all of our schools had the opportunity uh to walk through the process process of service mapping to look at some examples to look at some student profiles um profiles similar to what we presented tonight to give folks a a foundational understanding and to
also give some thought to some of the work that they were already doing um In Pockets that was had been less formalized through then a a district process so with that all of our schools
across Boston had then the opportunity to go back and service map at their schools and start working with their teams and thinking about ways they can then start to build out their instructional groupings and look at their building based resources and use
that information to inform their practices first as they were going into their budget hearings and their budget processes but additionally then work with their IP teams and work with their individual school-based teams and grade
level teams to be able to to just have discussions about so so what does this mean for our kids so which instructional groupings make sense for our students um which pairings do we currently have of students that make a lot of sense what are the groups that we have and are there changes that we need
to make and from that to be able to just really think about the critical question similar to what you're asking about what's next is there certain things that we're missing is there certain things that we feel like we need to advocate for is there professional learning that
we want to engage in So at the individual School level all of the schools are then how having those conversations both going into the budget process and Beyond to just really think about you know a lot of those groups because often times you can look at a
group of students who may have a similar profile and based on their profile you could say well these groups because they all present with similar needs they can be grouped together but it's that Collective efficacy of our
experts to say but there's a reason why we have these kids in the certain groupings that they're already in and sometimes it might make sense to do some combination of that and sometimes it might make sense to do some movement with that and so really what it's doing is it's creating an opportunity for
dialogue and I think part of the answer to your question comes to those dialogues that the schools are now having on a regular basis to talk about what does that mean for us and and and also too when I think about the both the size of groupings and also the number of
groupings that I have and you know one of the things that you will see when you start to service map a school is you start to see Trends well it's really two things it's Trends but you also start to see outliers and so if you can see clear areas that become a focal point then you
can also use that information to be able to build out a more thoughtful and fruitful plant so that's the process right now that we're all going through and then having continuous dialogue to think about how does that work move forward right so so I think the other
piece of that question was around understanding if the process has been implemented enough to the point where we're actually seeing it reflected in what this current budget is is is is reporting right or if this is something
that will'll see more of an effect on in next year's budget so I think it's also partially that yeah what I'll say is um service mapping is reflected in the budget in two ways the first as carlen and Caitlyn me mentioned earlier for
those School leaders who have been doing this work to some extent already they were able to sort of bring service mapping right into the meetings so klen described this one two three-step process that she went through in her collab uh um and it's wonderful
that was how she experienced it and it was really in large part because of her experience and expertise that she was able to experience it that way that she was able to come to her collab with a a detailed sense of her needs but it's
been it's only been two months since we rolled it out and so some of our schools are still going through that coaching process of developing their service maps and that's why we built the review process that Serena mentioned so school
like caren's like she came she did her service map in the collab we signed off everyone's happy she walks out the door she's done other schools they came to their collab and what was really clear was they weren't done with their service map they weren't ready yet to adjust
their budget so we did the best they could to build a budget that met their needs right and we did some service mapping live in the room but a number of them then needed follow-up conversation and some of those follow follow-up
conversations have then resulted in requests for additional funding because it turns out when we got deeper it it was missed and so that's what we're doing right now and then the best part of it is I don't think there's a week go
that goes by where Frank isn't talking to somebody about a service map and then checking in with our team to see if there's additional need Frank I don't think we've had one of those weeks yet um and so Frank is a part of these meetings where every couple of weeks at the very least we're reviewing the
newest service mapping data that people are bringing to us the assistant directors in special education who work with Frank are identifying needs that are coming up in their regions right and we're going to we have resources set aside and dedicated to go out as soon as
those needs are verified yeah thank you David and if I maybe I just briefly add those resources there definitely I have a lot of conversations with David about the uh the budgetary resources but also too with teaching and learning because there's a lot of schools that are that
are coming and saying we through service mapping are identifying that we have certain professional development needs or certain instructional needs or certain curriculum things we're thinking about and it's becoming really clear To Us by mapping all of this out and then we're able to think about those
resources as well thank you um and um another question that I have I think is um I think in the same uh vein as what we heard member um Miss Lio Barbosa talk about and except
this is a little bit related to this is more related to multilingual Learners um and so if I'm just cherry-picking so to speak looking at the the budget that we do have um I've looked at some of the
the the Staffing that I see available for multilingual Learners and it and it kind of seems like we're we are we're we're we're cutting down at least if I'm looking at teachers if I'm interpreting it correctly so I just want to make sure
that it's not a disinvestment um within um like multilingual Learners and sort of the those positions but if it's a reallocation somewhere else I just would like a little bit of clarity like on that and and for context I'm looking at
the um the Excel spreadsheet but specifically out for uh Ells so that's how I'm I'm I'm combing through some of this yes um thank you so much for that question so we had a coding methodology
in finance historically that said all of the te all of the teaching positions in our BPS i programs were coded as multilingual or bilingual teachers even if the teachers weren't multilingual or bilingual themselves and if they even if
they were teaching entirely in English as part of the BPS SEI model that was historically there so as we roll out this new me uh mechanism for multilingual education we are
eliminating that old program coding so and replacing it with our new mul purely multilingual programs that really are multilingual and are you know requiring more multilingual staff and so as a
result a number of teachers who have Legacy been coded as multilingual are having their positions switched either to be general education positions or uh special education positions as the case may be right whether they're doing
working in inclusive Ed or in in General Ed and what we are seeing then is you're seeing a decrease in positions that are coded as multilingual as that Legacy model moves away but an increase in the number of positions that are truly multilingual and unfortunately our
financial coding framework doesn't have a great way of accounting for that and so we're working on our best to figure out how to explain that change right and I would just say that this is really important because as the questions come up about being able to track uh teachers
who are bilingual Educators that are bilingual and and and teaching in multilingual programs it's really important that we have that information so it's necessitated moving away from Legacy and toward the new coding is that the same for like the
support So if I look at aids for example is that the same like is that the same rationale or yes it would be a very similar rationale there are you know some limited cases where a position might be getting deleted uh for example if they
were at one of the schools that closed I know the Frederick for example had a number of multilingual AIDS and those positions were closed but as the the programs change the aid positions are also recoded along with the
program okay uh no no thank you um thank you for that and um I'll I'll I'll come back in a in a second round thank you first I'd like to start by saying thank you for your
presentation now and my question is just like in regards to your to the Investments you guys you guys have made and I was just like wondering what data you guys are going to use to update the to update these investments in the future and if you guys are going to be
communicating with the communicating with schools and students and and families to just make any changes to them and see like how maybe you can improve maybe any changes needed any changes needed to them um thank you so much for that
question I'll give you the quickest two-part answer I can um the first is that um our budgets are living uh documents and so as um School
communities and families raise issues and provide feedback we are always trying to make adjustments uh to the budget based on student need the second thing is um we're sort of always taking feedback
on the budgets that are upcoming so one of the things that we try and do through this process is both take feedback on the current budget that's before you but also really use this as an opportunity to create the first round of feedback
for next year's budget so there are some things you may ask of us or push us to do that we're not able to do for this upcoming year but we're able to say okay let's put that on the list for FY 27 and so I know we've had a number of
conversations and and working on this idea of how can we collect more student voice early in our budget process and while we might not be able to revamp what we've already done for school year 2526 planning I'm sort of optimistic
about our early plans for school year 26 27 planning and so I think that's really our approach for now I another question I know you guys mentioned communicating with School site councils I just wanted to see if you
guys like how specifically School site councils have helped with have have what changes they have made to the to this year school to this year's budgeting and like any examples of what you guys have heard from them might be interesting if either
Caitlyn or klen would just like to share their experience working with their School site Council sure I'm sorry I can't see I couldn't see if karlen was about to talk so I can start um so um I think this year was
um in the context of the especially the service mapping we worked both with our inclusion planning team and our School site Council um and so it's you know there's some set meeting times when we meet together and um we share with them the pr AR uh the budget numbers and then
um we're able to we actually did like a combination meeting with our ipt and our School site Council to kind of go through this is what we're seeing as the needs for this upcoming school year here are the allocations um and so how do we
want to sort of best address this and so um I think this year we engaged the School site councils in the normal way but we had sort of an additional tool to kind of think through um have we chosen the right positions and the the right
Investments with our budget I don't know if that helped uh that helped thank you yeah I think that's right we've we've put just a a big effort into um working with family and Community advancement to make sure that School site councils um are
working and school leaders are working with uh IPS to be able to lay out the resources and anytime priority shift within the district um that would impact how School resources need to be used that's something that's shared during
that School site Council process is they begin the budget omir so this you're right the School site council is a critical Link in the budget process thank you wouldn't hear any Jerry sorry Mr TR yeah is it so it's my
turn yes okay thank you um similar to all my uh uh colleagues who went before me thank you for a very thorough um presentation of the um the
proposed budget and and um individually from from from me thank you for setting aside additional investment into uh ESL students as well as students
with disability uh I do have certain questions arising out of my uh legal concerns service mapping the way the way
that I understand right now is uh what we are doing is to use the service mapping in order to
devise a new way of accommodating students with uh disability that the the the ESL student and and the look act had already been raised by member Rafael Bano Garcia I share that as well but I'm
I'm I'm now looking at the the uh particular the particular groups of students with disabilities so the uh service mapping as I said so far what you have explained to us and
present and presented to us I consider it a new way of identifying other the kind of reasonable accommodations in order to provide students with disabilities
certain um in you know inclusive times aside from their their you know the times that they are required to be uh uh that that that they they they are provided under Ada uh
Ida what section 504 okay so I the question I have are multi first of all providing devising this this plan with
accommodation and inclusion have you involve input first from the parents any kind of con cons uh consent from the parents
second have you also involved input from you know the suback on disability you know groups of parents who who are pretty much professional expert who ha H who have
professional expertise in issues dealing with students with disability um do you or the school devise this mapping all by yourself or
with those inputs from the groups that I just mentioned or in addition to that any other professional groups to ensure that all those uh laws Ida Ada Section
504 are somehow not going to be challenged at a lated you know subsequently at a lat date by parents or or or or by any other interested groups
um before committing to implementing the service mapping was there any legal support from you know your own
legal staff or the city uh legal department um the concern is maybe it's uh maybe it's too farfetched but the reason I raised this because I I I I kind of foresee it may rise up to
that that that you know that level of of legal challenges based on the different uh understandings and and and and um interpretation of the law so that that's
why uh I was wondering whether there are supports for this also do you have backup evidence showing that
students with disability under the the the new service map with uh you know with uh inclusion um time are now uh more successful in terms of grade
the or in terms of um educ educational attainment as opposed to when they were not in the inclusion practice I'm sorry you know I have a series of question that I was trying to
posee you know to pose there so I that that's all I you know that that's the concern thank you so I think there's probably a couple people that can um chime in here I think Frank you can maybe talk about um member
tron's questions about the legality ensuring that we're following IEPs we're following 504 guidance uh we're following um student minutes in terms of uh uh ESL Service uh through the service
mapping um and then on the parent side um how that input would come in relative to the IEP itself which then gets reflected by the service map um and so it's probably a combination of you and Joelle and maybe Linder on
this sure yeah I'll start um thank you very much for your question I think the the legal side of it isn't particularly important something that I that I often think and say in in special education in particular is that special education begins with the law and ends with
children and what I mean by that is that we have to start by looking at the regulations and making sure that we're considering the regulatory guidance and then call on our expertise to think about what do students need what does that ultimately mean for them um how do we access you know the input of our
teaching Experts of our families to make sure that we're maximizing our potential so the first thing that I want to cite is Massachusetts CMR 2806 is the specific Massachusetts regulations on instructional groupings
and the ideas around service mapping is built on the premise of instructional groupings so just some general context every three years school districts go through a process of review with the Department of Education and one of of the data points that they always
ask for is information relative to instructional groupings so the idea about thinking about thoughtful groupings is something that it is a common practice in the Commonwealth and as we introduced the ideas of service mapping we did make sure that we looked
at two very important things and introduced this in writing to all of our school leaders first was a full understanding of that specific Massachusetts regulation about instructional groupings to make sure that we are compliant and being thoughtful about our students with
disabilities I'm sorry to check what what's the the CMR again 2806 thank you the you bet the second part is thinking about the doj guidance from our omme partners so that we can be thoughtful about our students who have
second language learner needs so when we think about how we develop an instructional group in a service app we look at both the profiles of Learners with disabilities and we look at their level of needs relative to Second
Language instruction so that we can make sure that we're being thoughtful about our groups that are addressing both areas so all of this work is been very consistent with some of the expectations here in Massachusetts we've made sure that we've
um taken the time to be really thoughtful about the requirements of instructional groupings and why this work is important and also how it aligns with the data points that we're working on with the Department of Education and with our omme partners with the
Department of Justice so that we can be very thoughtful about that part of the work because that part is really critical before we're going to move forward and really be thoughtful about what does this mean for our students is any other comment because so far I
haven't heard anything with regarding input from parents and and legal uh input what you have just uh relay to me on Section uh 2806 it's it's a standard
CMR in terms of providing reasonable accommodation for students with disability it doesn't me mean anything regarding the the the the grouping right now I I I I I I admit to you I haven't read the whole thing I will but my concern is was
there any consent sought from parents was there any legal support sought from legal department is there any support showing that students uh that with
disability who are now in the inclusion program Fair better than when they were they were placed in separate setting right so I think TR do you mind
if um I think uh maybe if Caitlyn um wants to just jump in and explain on the school side how it works um because I think the this is really just in ensuring um that what is legally Bound in the IEP and what's legally Bound in
the language plan is happening right it's actually like an extra way to assure that so the parent feedbacks happening in those meetings around the service piece so for instance uh that's where a student for inclusion uh would
be recommended is at the team meeting for the IEP um but Caitlyn do you want to just talk about your process like with the school yeah so um the the service you superintendent you're welcome um it's I think it sounds like
something um maybe more complicated than what we're doing at the school level and so what we're doing is we're taking a report that already exists in Ed plan um which is where all of the data lives for our students with disabilities and this is the normal report as school leaders
and registrars and school counselors we look at this every single year when we're building out the schedule to make sure that each student is scheduled appropriately based on their IEP which was developed in collaboration with
their parents with everyone at the team and so the basis of service mapping it it is literally a report from the IEP and so we're just taking that all in one space and instead of school leaders
waiting until the spring when we're building the schedule and inputting individual student schedules or sort of um making sort of um General educated guesses about well if we have this many students with an R1 or R2 code we
probably need this many teachers we're taking that now as we go into our budget and saying okay I see I have this many students in the n9th grade who need math services do I have enough teachers on my staff to meet these services so we're
not changing their services um we're just looking at them in a more holistic way um and then the conversations that folks are having because because we're asking everyone to do this now and and also I would say because of the new IEP
process there are there is significantly more investment and interest across the entire School Community whether you're a special educator or not about like okay okay well so what does this mean um and as the superintendent said at the
beginning of the call we're all definitely seeing the level of need rising in our student population and so this tool the service mapping tool um is helping to bring more people into the conversation but it it's really just
taking the the um the grid from the IEP which is the document that was developed with the parents and allowing school-based teams to sit down together and say okay these are all the students in the ninth grade who have reading
Services um what's the most effective way to group these students and so we bring in um you know certainly like our if as we know the students you know what's going to be the the the best groupings and then we're constantly communicating with parents sort of like
you know as things come up and checking their progress and checking in in the same way through the IEP process the way we do um progress monitoring in that context but it's really just taking something a something a report we already have and making it more
accessible for schools and then also requiring that all School leaders engage their teams in a conversation about this so that it's not something that's siloed with like a special ed director or special ed staff it becomes sort of something that is the whole Community is
thinking about thank you okay okay Dr alkins oh I wanted to give deference to you chair and you Vice chair if you all had questions for our first round before
I wi Mr O'Neal thank you Dr alins uh yes chair I so like to start at a little bit at a higher level and this is probably for Mr Bloom and and maybe a little bit for Dr Vincent day as well um you know Mr Bloom
you talked about the move from weighted student funding to service mapping and I understand it and appreciate it I do remember or you know as a basis for funding right I do remember vividly when we first moved weed student funding what
it exposed was a lot of inequities in our district um um quite frankly there was favoritism right just schools that and school leaders that knew to push made it happen and over the years we saw a lot of inequities that weighted
student funding exposed and it took a number of years to move back so talk to me about any concerns about service M Service marapet as a basis for funding and is there the potential for
inequities to creep back into the system um I really appreciate that question uh by Sir O'Neal and I think it's an important thing we consider because um there is always even with weighted student funding right there's
always the potential for inequities to creep back into the system and it's something we have to be very vigilant for and so I think one of the things that Frank and his team have been spending a lot of their time doing over the last few months as we've been
rolling out this service mapping is being really clear with what are the data about student need that we are using to make decisions and so it isn't um you know well my service mapping says
2.0 and your service mapping says 2.4 so uh you know you you need more you get more than me or whatever it is it's it's okay we've looked at the we've broken down the need of student on IEPs we've put all those needs together right we
are looking at the specific data about their STD levels if they're a multilingual learner right and then we're applying some standard rules for what level of service that requires um and I think the the nice thing about
that compared to weighted student funding has been in weighted student funding we would always have this Awkward Moment moment in the budget process where people would come and explain this is the student need that
isn't being met in my school but it would always be very narrative and there would be this pressure to um support those schools right who came to say this is why W student funding isn't working for us and we would always try and
identify rules-based ways and data to uh ensure we were making a change so if we were making a change in W student funding we would say okay if Wade student funding didn't work for this school let's go back and identify every school in the same position and adjust
their budget as well I think the thing I appreciate about this new approach is a it's not a finance approach it's a districtwide approach in collaboration with academics and multiple departments and B the data we're using has been very
upfront right we actually explained to school leaders right at the beginning of the process here's the data we're going to be using to review here's exactly how we're going to be doing the reviews here's some examples the schedules you saw earlier today we actually presented
two School leaders at their PD and then Frank and his team have been doing a lot of norming on how do we ensure that you know we're treating schools the same way Vice chair I would just add also that um the service mapping piece we
tried to just illuminate as an example of a tool that we're using to be more precise and ensure that we can do that double check to make sure uh schools have the resources that they need because now we're actually attaching it
to how the services would be delivered and so I would not um I can understand how that connection is being made but like it is not a replacement for weighted student funding right it's not an allocation method methodology it's really more of a tool that we all
um because we want to be upfront with school leaders like when we're trying to like this is the tool we're going to try we're going to use to check so you should just have it in advance so that um you have the same we're being very transparent about how we're checking to make sure you indeed have the services
that the resources that you need yeah Dr Chen thank you that's a great clarification right that it's not a direct replacement it's an evolution and it's a tool that is included in the toolbox so to speak is that a better way to think of
it right it's not an allocation methodology exactly great thank you um it it does bring up and and uh Mr Bloom you talked about this and uh it was mentioned earlier by
Miss Laro about the review process appeal process whatever you want to call it where um schools get to file a Google form and lay out some findings and and ask
for reviews which are being done by the Regionals Finance Etc I'm curious how many schools filed and asked for a review um so we got 38
filings um representing just over 30 schools because there were some duplicates of Rose uh one of the interesting things and I um I think Caren alluded to this earlier in a way is that some of our
school leaders didn't quite trust that the process was going to work um and so we have a number of them and we haven't quite finished our review yet where the actual finding is no longer needed because it was funded as part of the
process where they sort of they actually were really fast on doing their service and they said okay here's what I need and they filled out the form because they had some fear that they weren't going to get the resource and then we F by time we actually finished their budget process they were like
oh okay we're fine right um so I think we're going to end up something around the range of 25 to 30 Real reviews right so I would say probably about 20% 20 25% of schools will submit
something but and and those reviews are not all related to inclusive Ed the majority of them are but there were a number of other things so um we have schools that want us to review the enrollment counts we use for social work allocations because they feel like we
miss something in our data and their data is showing something different or we have schools that um have a specific funding need related to a program that was temporarily funded by a grant that they're asking for some additional
funding for and so of the probably 25 to 30 um schools that filed something I would say it's probably more like 15 to 20 that are directly related to inclusive education and multilingual education and the remaining 10 are about
sort of a variety of other smaller topics um that we still encourage schools to file about and are are giving us the opportunity to double check our math and make sure that we're we didn't miss anything in the review you know um Neil degy Tyson tells his famous story
about when he was in art class at Harvard and he spent a week being told to paint oranges that were in a bowl and then the second week the art teacher told him now paint the space between the circles and he uses that as a metaphor to not only look at what's in front of
you but think about what you're not seeing and so when I hear 30 Schools file reviews I think about the other schools and the ones that either the school leaders are not are trained enough in uh service mapping or still new as you talked about versus the
highly experienced School leaders and um you know that have spoken tonight and I'll trust that in a minute and also the ones that say yeah no this budget looks good to us we're fine why are they saying that so um just make sure to Think Through you know looking at the spaces beside the circle
so to speak why are some people not fireing on views they afraid to do it are they they don't trust the district that it's going to be treated appropriately is there budget even more favorable than they needed and don't want to double look at it so again I
just want to make sure we're Equitable to all of our schools I want to move on to um our head of school uh Murphy and uh principal pado both of whom are fantastic you um bring so much to the table really appreciate your
presentations tonight and and um I personally always learn when I've when I've spent time with each of you um principal pado when you talked about you know the old phase one of we're not complying or we met compliance and now that's gone as we
move into phase two and three that was really really powerful for me because that's a mind shift for the district you know in many times in the past the bar has been well we have to meet compliance and yet that should be table state that
should be the bare minimum now and so um superintendent I applaud that the thinking is moving beyond that I think that's critical I do want to ask um if if principal penado is and and uh head of school Murphy is still with us I'm
curious your thoughts about you know how fellow School leaders feel about filing for reviews and you know the trust they have in that process as we just talked about sure um I I I mean my experience of us
is as a group is we're not particularly shy about raising our concerns um and I will say we do also there is also a structure a couple of structures that I think support folks um who as you said
you know the more that you do this the more that you understand how things work and the more comfortable you feel knowing who to call or who to talk to but um the return to a regional structure I think really supports folks in being able to know who to Advocate with or who
to talk to or should I file this um newer School leaders also have mentors who are more experienced principles and um I'm a principal mentor and one of the things so the folks who are mentors we meet together and one of the specific
asks was for us to go and talk with our uh the newer principal specifically to sit down with them um side by side and kind of go through their budget and any questions and so I think for the newer folks um there there is that that structure there and then of course there
is school leader cabinet um where which is sort of the way by regions there's a representative um who can sort of bring concerns to the leadership team and so I think through that through those several mechanisms there are ways for folks who
might not feel comfortable raising their hand to know that there are these other resources and um I think at the budget PD this year we went pretty carefully through the the sort of um different Avenues um but again like you said um
certainly the more experienced folks are going to know how to do that right away but I I do think we have the sort of safeguards of these other smaller group structures where you could um feel comfortable saying how do I ask for this if I'm not sure
that's really helpful thank you and and thank you for the mentoring that you're doing to other school leaders as well I hope they all Learn Your Excellence at attention to detail and I'll just leave it at that
um um I do uh Mr Bloom I do look forward and I think this will probably more in the in the central uh presentation you talked about finding out about some of those cuts that are made and how they're being reallocated but you you alluded to the fact that that would be talked about
in the central budget so I'll leave it since we're on schools with one final point and and this really comes from being out visiting some of our newly built schools and some of our schools under construction so the new Carter school that's under construction the new Josiah
quinsey school um Austin Arts Academy even the Dearborn we are now building highly complex uh buildings Within incredible um
infrastructures around technology around um HVAC systems all the utilities Etc and there are many skyscrapers quite frankly many of them computer generated and I think it really brings to bear
that we may need to have different supports for the infrastructure of those buildings and some of our more traditional buildings and so I want to make sure that you know I I think about the fact that like Mass maritine you know has a Facilities Management program
and a lot of their Engineers end up as the engineers in Boston skyscrapers and it you know I want to make sure we're leaving space in the budget for these new buildings we have and that are coming online they're going to be building and that we're thinking in terms of including in the
budget um you know folks that can handle that very technical infrastructure um yeah and number one and number two two that we're providing in the budget and I know superintendent you did it last year for the Carter school but we're going to have the work
at Ruth Batson coming on and and a bunch of other schools we're going to be building now that we're planning in the budget support for the school-based budgets that they can do the planning on how this school is going to be very different yeah so I superintendent I see
you're nodding no way at this so yeah excellent points and questions right I think we work closely with um with PFD on the city Side when it comes to the management and the technology of the buildings um but Brian Ford uh and
Sam have built into their shop capacity that has kind of this increased awareness of the technology and understanding of um you the ventilation systems and so forth a lot of that stuff gets managed remotely um but there is capacity that's built in each year as
new buildings come on um at the school level I think it's a really interesting point because I think there's kind of a couple places where a school leader capacity is needed um one is certainly when we're undertaking a large project uh the school leader can't necessarily
run the school and the project at the same time and be there so um we have in each of these cases created some backfill and support and we'll continue to do that I think the other place that we're also sort of learning about it is that as schools go through um
whether it's uh mergers um or relocations into new builds um there's also the leader support around working with the community working on communication so there's a whole adaptive side that also has to be addressed and so we will be building in
uh or we've built into this budget some additional capacity to be able to support leaders going through those transitions yeah I mean I look at sha Taylor I look at Ru Batson I look at what's proposed on the table you know for clap Etc um right and I just want to
make sure that that is being built into the budget great not only the hard cost but also you know having the right support at the school level to be able to do that plan yeah yeah I mean it's interesting because the things like the the ventilation and the room
temperatures like those are all now managed remotely we can see into every classroom uh and so and and it's all set up so that we can get a arms when something goes out of range uh the technology is just evolving so much AI is evolving so much with this so it
really is an interesting area uh and you're right these buildings the level of technology in them is um just over one build that might have happened a decade ago versus a build that's happening today are just night and day so we have to you need a building engineer a building man exactly we have
to stay current from our custodial staff exactly exactly and and um Chief Ford has been building that capacity within his shop right thank you thank you m thank you um I do have a few questions
and I know we want to do another round and we have public comments so I just want to let remind everybody we're already now at 8 o'clock so we need to um pick up our Pace a little bit um um thank you again um David for the um and
your team for all of the hard work in getting us to this place I want wanted to go back and you you say when when you begin with schools you you you go back to their Baseline budgets and I wanted to find out a little bit more about the Baseline budgets themselves are they
adequate I mean how do we evaluate them as we're telling the school this is your starting point is there review process to understand how the past year is gone what comprises that Baseline budget and how many temporary um grants also impact
that is part of that school's um allocations um yeah thank you for that question chair I think um we're we we continue to start from this basic principle of
um we want to in invest in the schools that need it the most but not by taking away from schools other schools that maybe have a little more I think um I remember a meeting I was in with some school leaders a few years ago where
they were sort of talking about an inequity that was in the system at the time that we've since rectified and um I was saying to them you know in this budget the only thing we could do about it with the amount of money we have is to take the money away from the schools
that have more for next year that's like we can't afford to raise everyone up to that level in this year's budget and the thing they were saying is no you know the approach we're asking for even as a schools that are underfunded relative
right is not that but to say let's hold those schools flat right and bring up those schools that are relatively underfunded and so when you look at our inclusive education methodology that's before you tonight
one of the things you'll notice is we assigned a funding Target for every school rather than just saying here's your dollar per pupil your everybody's getting this amount more we said we want every school to meet this per pupil Target for this particular impacted
student community so this this target per student with disabilities and then we measured where were the schools against the target so the schools that were closer to the Target received less money less new money because they already had a lot of the resources in
their school and schools that might have been historically slightly underfunded right received a differential per pupil amount to get them up to that Target so it was both differentiated by the number of students with of Need You served and
by the per pupil allocation you historically had for those students I think that's how we're trying to approach that challenge okay um I also noticed that in some of the budgets there's still a hold harmless line
item um as we are moving towards any number of changes within our schools and you know H how is that still happening and where specifically are those dollars
focused within a school's budget um yes thank you so much for that so um the hold harmless dollars are a reflection of our commitment to not reduce the
non-instructional core instructional staff in schools and so effectively a school having hold harmless dollars means that weighted student funding would have indicated they should have had less of the non-instructional
resources in that school um we have been struggling over the course of this year to determine whether it's useful to keep that description of the money in there or whether we just
sort of eliminate it now that it's a part of the um sort of Baseline budget that every school received at the start of the process and I think we determined for this year it was useful to leave it in
to continue to communicate part of the challenge and reason we needed to move away from weighted student funding I think every summer we're continuing to talk to the community and do more research to determine okay when is the
right year to try and fully revamp the system fully revamp our finance language get rid of all these old terms and fully reflect a new terminology and I think what we've decided now in partnership with many
other departments and stakeholders is while we're doing this work focused on inclusive education and the way we're providing service delivery to students we don't want to muddle the issue by then changing all of our finance language which while important the
language itself doesn't necessarily impact students and so we're keeping some of this Legacy language to try and be clear with what money's in schools without sort of taking away from the more important work that's happening in
the academics and I think each summer we're trying to gauge okay is this the year is this the year we make the switch and so this this upcoming summer we'll be we'll be working through that process again to determine if next cycle is the year we sort of change our finance
language and categories for this new strategy okay um next question is regarding some of the work we're doing in inclusion and I'm beginning to understand how we're trying to look at our class our G our regular classrooms but the question is how are we looking
at the inclusion support needed for all of the specialist areas the art the music Etc particularly those those um areas which makes a big difference in a child's School experience but sometimes
um those classes have not been able to happen because there wasn't the right support in them so how are we looking at this as we are building out our you know inclusion models continuing to grow them in our
schools so chair um thank you for that question because that's so important um and we know our students will do better when they have access to those resources the service mapping helped us to make sure that the individual services are provided along alongside the the tier
one instruction and now what we did for instance today with all School leaders is moved on to the actual scheduling and the scheduling will include all the specials and electives and so forth to ensure that schools have that all the resources and have that mapped out as
well so there will be supports for those Educators as well when those students are part of their program yes okay okay um the last question I want to ask tonight is you know you you're talking
about um with the changes that are being made there are sometimes change to the coding of a particular job so the question is you know we're changing codings what does that mean about the particular skills of
Educators the licenses as well as the job descriptions because it feels like just changing a code um seems to Trickle down any number of other kinds of issues that needed to be addressed and how are
those looked at as we're you know shifting how we are Staffing our classrooms so um I really appreciate that if for no other reason than it gets gives me an opportunity to talk about the technical side of some of the work we do which is a lot of what I live
dayto day um in our budget collaborative meetings in addition to reviewing student need we review the coding of each position how it shows up in our financial system and have an explicit conversation with HR and all of the
academic departments in the probable or portion of the meeting about what changes might have resulted in The Lure requirements for the position so in some cases there are very limited changes um in some cases there are more significant
changes so maybe an additional license is required in that case where lure is required that teacher is notified and given the opportunity to um get that license over time so we know they're not going to have it right away necessarily
and then in that circumstance we'll provide additional supports to that teacher in in the intervening period so the teacher has the time they need to get the professional development and licensure that the position might now require and the students get the support
of additional resources while the teacher is out getting that license but that's not every time a position is coded sometimes the the requirements of the position stay the same right and other times they even might might lessen okay my last question um I think
goes back to some of the concerns that both Miss palanco Garcia and Mr Tron raised with regard to multilingual Learners and the kinds of programs they can access um and I know you know we have talked on this committee forever
around wanting more opportunities for students to be taught in their native language and um we don't have the programming that can do this where are we in our um work with staff you know
are are our numbers of Staff who have that ability increasing to try to keep up with the concern and the desire to have more um students being able to have more of their instruction provided in their
native language so that's one and then knowing that there are probably a half a dozen critical languages that we do a lot of um translation in in in instruction in what do we do for the
other 50 plus languages that our children are speaking that don't have enough to have a particular class Etc and how do we assess their their language English language development as
well that's a group that we really ever talk about in terms of um how we're looking at all of the ell multilingual learning and special Leed um you know inclusion programming here I can be oh sorry well
goad Linda I can begin and Joel certainly can add in um but I think what we've done in the last year is added more bilingual programs than we have in the past and I just want to be very
clear that in these bilingual programs these are research-based programs that have been approved by desie because there is a licensed bilingual teacher that is teaching like instructing in both languages which is different from
which is also important but very different from native language access that they get as a way of feeling included and affirmed and supporting but it's different from actual language of instruction being in their native language so now we have these bilingual
offerings that parents can opt into and choose to send their put on their choice form and then what we are also doing which I think and you can tell me if I'm not addressing your question is trying to make sure we hire more bilingual
staff whether they are teachers or Paras or like every aspect of the The Bu School building right our cafeteria staff bus monitors bus drivers every place our students have contact with adults we want to make sure to the
degree possible we can hire more bilingual staff that provide the support which is different from the instruction I just want to make sure that that's clear for for the public as well well I guess in some ways I'm interested in the both and those who are
able to communic Comm unicate and those who are actually able to teach I particularly think about high school students who need higher order math or history or other topics actually taught in the in their language by a person who
can teach in the language not just speak it so I just am interested in understanding where we are in that process how much need is there that's going unmet and do we have a process of looking at that is part of some of the
programming within our budget yeah thank you so much um Dr Chen for addressing the question um and I also wanted to follow up with in addition to the structures that Dr Chen had um described we also
for families and for students whether are matriculating into Boston Public Schools we do understand that we do not always have the language capacity but we want to create a safe and welcoming nurturing environment so we've also created newcomer programs where newca
programs the students are not necessarily instructed in their language but it's a structure that provides a welcoming environment that acclimates students to structures of schooling here
also is more providing a social emotional support as students um enter it offers the student to be kind of like a buffer before they um enter into the uh with their typical monolingual peers
um and the teachers that are there too are instructing the students and have a lot of experience in terms of language Acquisitions for multilingual Learners you also asked about how are we assessing our students so every year
our students all of our multilingual Learners have to take the weda assessment and actually uh that window is about to close up at the end of the month on the 27th so every January through February our multilingual Learners are assessed for their Ling um
English assessment um and this year too we also piloted in some schools the opportunity to do additional progress monitoring so in L of just waiting once a year to assess the students for their language acquisition also have opportunities to do more progress
monitoring for their language acquisition using the last links and as we introduce additional newcomer programs we were able to assess students and create that progress monitoring tool um Implement that for our students as
well okay thank you I'll go back to Dr alkins uh thank you and um thank you for the some of the responses because they've unpacked a bit of some of my thoughts so um just from a a high level
and I'm particularly looking at slide six in our presentation um that just lists out the the the new Investments and so a couple of them with regard to inclusive practices
um the IP process right which laid out I think um by school but also um across the district what each School Wasing at for their needs and so I'm
wondering um how much of a variance is there between what we're saying is a new investment and how much schools are saying that they actually need across the district because that would give some sense of what the investment is or
how we should be weighing it as we're talking about those things and I think similar to similar to that the bilingual educ investment that we are talking about and I'm particularly interested in
how we should be thinking about the investment here as it relates to what we're seeing in terms of our students who are coming in um and sort of knowing that we're our growing population of multilingual students like how are we
investing that tracks with that and that actually sets up whether it's through Staffing whether it's through staff support as we just heard like how should we be thinking about weighing more into bilingual education I don't know if I
think supports are separate from that but calling those things out so yeah I think there's a couple things in this budget that'll help answer that the question and one thing I'll just say our early review of the responses so we
allocated out uh most of the money from the $10 million already and kept some in reserve to meet nuanced School feedback our initial review of the feedback we're getting from schools right who mostly met with their IPs did their service mapping
right trying to figure out what they needed is that it's going to the $10 million is going to be more less the right amount of money to meet what our schools have been asking for on on the multilingual side I think there's sort of two things you can look at in the
budget the first is what I would call the systematic program Investments so these are things like building capacity in B East which I think just opened right to meet the needs of of our multi our newcomers it it may seem like we've
been talking about it for so long that it must have already started but it really is a new thing and it's happening this year we're expanding it as part of next year's budget we're expanding the nine new multilingual programs um so that's sort of one place you can see it
I think the second place you can see it is in our sort of reserves for future need and our process of reviewing enrollment live so we have sort of our stable of Baseline programs we have
these nine new multilingual programs plus the expansion of B East and actually the multilingual program otro Camino at the collaborative high school as well and then we also have a really significant Reserve to ensure that the
sort of unknown unknown of new newcomers to the city is there so um you know we don't know is it going to be Austin Brighton that gets a big spike in newcomers is it going to be Hyde Park or matapan is it going to be East Boston and so we need to be nimble enough to
respond to those needs when they arrive yeah and I would just say that we built capacity out specifically in this area over the last two years uh simply because we were seeing the numbers come fast so there is capacity in the field
but to Chief Bloom's point this is a constant we're looking at our registrations and we're looking at transfers uh and when we see the need we have the dollars to trigger the positions thank you and I mean similar to that um and I'm pretty sure this is
going to come with the budget booklet um particularly like the the the equity analysis and um sort of use of like the racial equality planning tool to support so I'm I'm curious as to I guess it would probably be under that 5 million
line for program and school like maybe program and school expansions looking at what programs might be specifically targeted to support uh closing of the opportunity and the achievement gaps um so I'm if if there's another way that
we're going to break that out uh Chief Bloom we talked a little bit about an argument that all of this could be utilized to say that you're looking to close the opportunity and achievement Gap um but a little bit more of a a I'd
like to see a little bit more broken out in terms of the the programs that might be um focusing on some specific like um populations or looking at um the Improvement to uh instructional time
access that they might that these groups might have access to that would just sort of help um get some clarity on those uh Investments and then also just a a selfish question around the 1 million in curriculum materials
wondering um if we've started to invest a little bit in things such as AI Literacy for our students um because know that this is coming or not even coming it's here um so I'm just wondering like our some of the digging
into some of these invest well um okay that's a a note for me me to have uh Leslie Ryan Miller on call for our next hearing to talk a little bit more about that and what she's doing in the central office to support academics um the curriculum investment in particular is
as we've spent a lot of money centrally to buy new curriculum and high quality instructional materials the feedback we've heard from the field is that there's a lot of need for the sort of um disposables I always get the word wrong
Dr Chen I'm sorry the yeah consumables consumables thank you I cannot get that word to stick in my brain I apologize but what schools have been reporting back to us is really great you're buying us all this curriculum but then it's putting a
strain on our budgets to buy the consumables because you didn't all increase our budgets alongside that and so as a part of this year's budget the million dollar is a budget for schools to make sure they have the money to buy those consumables along with the new
curriculum That central office is buying I think we'll then come back maybe in the central hearing to talk a little bit more about the work that academics and professional learning as a department is doing to support uh fancy new curriculum stuff like AI I admit I just got a presentation on AI for finance
departments and I don't think I've ever felt older in my life um but I'm excited to learn more about it that's Dr Chen's uh favorite topic so maybe she can chime in here real quick sure um you're absolutely right
there are so many things that are changing every day and part of our investments do include how we are using technology that includes AI um to better not only support students but support teachers in their implementation of the
hqm and there are lots of things that we're working on right now so that teachers can get that support um and know exactly where in the qim to go to implementing new curriculum is always hard and um there are some efficiencies
um I think think of it as a personal assistant for a teacher who can sort of help them find the the areas that they need to pay attention to for certain students as quickly as possible so they can really spend all of their time or most of it on students themselves and
not as much on the planning not that planning is not important but there's there's some efficiencies thank thank you for both and like I said I look forward to the the booklet like when we do get it um and hopefully that
breakdown well that breakdown of um programs that would you know that we're thinking that are going to be supporting that uh the opportunity and achievement gaps thank you sorry Miss Pano Garcia I think Miss Barbosa is first than
me whoever would like to go first I I'll be quick uh thank you uh so just in the the conversation around uh multilingual one of my concerns is it's good that we have the
monies but actually hiring the educator that speaks that language to be their ESL student I'm going to note again uh Dr Holland School of Technology uh there's cases of students that are in their ESL one class
but the teacher does not necessarily speak their native language I know that hiring can play uh a role here so as we are making these Investments what are the conversations that we are having with the human capital Department that
we're ensuring that we're being intentional on the hiring like what are their recruitment efforts right because it's Boston there there's there's there's definitely uh someone that is uh qualified for these positions I know salary sometimes tends to be one of the
challenges but if we're going to make this work we have to have the not only the person with the right licenses with the experience but the native language piece is is definitely the critical piece here I I can't I speak a in Creole
and I'm place um in an ESL one class and the teacher only speaks Spanish it's not it doesn't help there's similarities with Portuguese I get it uh it won't be as hard but if we're going to make this uh work we need to make sure that we're
we're working side by side and I know you all are are when you're working on creating the numbers and allocating that money but putting the right people there is the only way we're going to see if this proposal if this plan is actually going to work meet our students needs so
that would be one question and have something else that has nothing to do with inclusion yeah so I would just say that um we are working um in the the Recruitment and Retention um part of ohc to develop pipeline programs
particularly Paris to teachers um in the low incident languages that's something that Joelle and her Department are working with the communities on um both on curriculum development side but then also on how to be able to recruit from within the community for those that are
interested in in being part of it um but it's really a focus across the organization at every level to try to get as many bilingual and multilingual staff as possible so part of the ability for us and actually this was spurred um
by Miss palanca Garcia two years ago was when she was really asking about how can we track this and so that's really been a lot of the effort of now in the hiring having that identification so that we actually do have a sense of what building capacity is for language so
this is one that we'll report out each year uh it's very important to us we want to see that growth there we have seen some good growth year toe um but again the placement of those Educators relevant to where the students are that speak the languages that's the other
piece that we have to continue to work on yeah and appreciate that you noted that it's not just in the classroom but at every level in terms of Staffing uh from the moment they walk into Welcome Center testing right until they get assigned to a school um I'm going to
change gears here I wanted to talk about our pools our swimming program for the school facilities that do have that Dave can we speak a little bit more on what the investment looks like it's been such a huge um challenge for the district and
the City of ensuring that we have pools for our communities uh could you speak on what investments and which schools um and what exactly is going to to fix because there's so many cases of different reasons why these pools were closed in the in the first space so if
you could speak on that that would be great yes it really is a multifaceted investment so number one priority is get the school up and get the pool up and running so it's a value to the community so almost all of our pools will be up and running by the summer um there are
two pools that require more significant capital investment that might take a little bit longer step two is investing in school uh in school swim programs for them for those schools so we at at those programs
we think at the very least they need an instructor a a swimming pair professional and a lifeguard it's a three-person team um to manage the pool for safety so what we are doing is um first we have identified our schools
that have existing swim programs that are actively running so the Mason has a swim program we're ensuring that they have all the resources they need for that program to operate safely and aligned with you know our best efforts on the guidance and if we're seeing any
gaps in those resources we're allocating more staff to the program the second thing is we're looking at programs where the pool has been operating during the school day for any number of reasons maybe it was undergoing repairs maybe there wasn't school day program and
we're identifying who's ready to start a school program so um we're still in those planning conversations um we'll work to get you a list of which schools are ready very soon um but we think uh we're probably going to have about seven
uh in school pool programs running and then another six pools that are open for out of school time uh swim thank you that's all for me my other questions were asked already I appreciate it Miss Banco Garcia thank
you Madame chair so thank you very much and uh this is actually the the second meeting regarding the B there's been a lot of questions regarding this so I'm going to be brief in my questions and my remarks okay so with regards what I heard from
someone from staff said that the multilingual programs that are being offered are those uh programs that had been approved already by this Desi when with regard to multilingual students that's what I heard from I believe one of the members
of the staff as you all may remember the back in the year 2017 this uh Luke law was approved as you might remember do we have to consider that this law came probably about s years ago
and this particular law attributes the district the responsibility to create the flexibility for this particular program to provide access to native language it's been 7 years already since this law was implemented
[Music] so have any native language as as a base we had seen the benefits we have heard about the benefits there has lot there's been a lot of pressure from behalf from the families themselves the community themselves itself pushing for this
particular program regarding in native language when it comes to educating the students and that we had heard about the benefits of Education in their native language as well as you know the true example my example myself when I came here my son went to school
he was only 6 years old and he started school but he was educated he learned in English not in Spanish and I'm able to see the difference in the way he speaks English and the way he speaks Spanish because of this think I'm sure that he did not arrive to A bilingual student he did not
arrived to a dual language program he arrived and he learned in English not in Spanish being his native language there is my hope and we are this is the second meeting regarding or second session regarding the budget it
is certainly my hope that this particular budget reflects the importance of having native language at least the particular metrics that had to be implemented to reflect this native language as being part of the budget certainly it is my hope that that
happens gracias and thank you very much than you so was that more of a question or a statement I I would like to answer about the look act so yes um member palanco
Garcia the look Act was implemented in 2017 which was great and since then in 2017 the Dual language program at the matah hunt was implemented in a couple of years later the Vietnamese program at the Mather was implemented and then we
kind of halted across the district and last year we really started to look to see how can we offer families more options as they registered their children and um we didn't want it to just be Cong like it congregated in one
area we wanted for when families come if you live in Brighton if you live in Dorchester if you live in East Boston that if you come to register your child and if this is a program that you would like to have for your child child that you do have the option to have a um dual
language program or more multilingual programs um for our students who are multilingual um so since then I I don't have the number off the top of my head because I don't like calculate all but we've with des's approval we've added
more programs in the last year than we've had over pretty much um the last 40 years and that's really listening to the community working with school leaders working with families working with organizations like St Stevens to
really listen to hear what families want and looking to see where we had programs that were considered a BPS SEI program and where we can make conversions to actually provide native language instructions for students um so we have
those programs that we've implemented we have newcomer programs where we implemented as well too or will be implementing as well um and that's just to really create a very welcoming environment so that families and students when they come and matriculate in Boston public schools that they have
a transition period we have TBE program that is beginning as well too and um as we look to see where the course is we'd like to create more Heritage classes for our students ultimately we really want to look at all of our multilingual
Learners as an asset coming into our schools and we want them to demonstrate that asset by them um having the Seal of biliteracy by the time they graduate when we talk about a robust student experience we want to highlight um that multilingualism in our students for the
Investments that we have upcoming in our um budget is really thinking of as we're implementing new programs how can we provide supports how can we provide coaching to the schools how can we provide um curriculum supports and C curriculum implementation and coaching
to Educators so that people don't feel like they're on an island doing this by themselves we're really being intentional and as a superintendent in Dr Chen said and um Chief Bloom has stated that we are working um intently
with the office of Human Resources to help build up a pipeline of Educators who reflect our students thank you thank you right we've had quite a robust um
conversation tonight look forward to our next meeting and at this point Miss parix would like to move on to public comment thank you chair the public comment period is an opportunity for individuals to address the school committee on school related
issues questions on specific School matters are referred to the superintendent questions on policy matters may be discussed by the committee later we have 22 speakers this evening each person will have 2 minutes to speak and I would remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining if your remarks exceed
two minutes please email your comments for distribution to the committee once you reach your two minutes we will allow you to finish your sentence before moving on to the next speaker speakers may not reassign their time to others the time that an interpreter uses for English
interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's allotted time please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or District staff please note the comments of any public speaker do not represent the Boston Public Schools or the Boston school
committee please state your name affiliation and where you live before you begin please sign in to zoom using the name you register with for public comment and be ready to unmute and turn on your camera when it's your turn to speak please raise your virtual hand
when I call your name please speak slowly so The Interpreter can capture what you're saying our first group of speakers is Mike hman John mud Cheryl Buckman Kena Kell and Rosy
Hoskin Mike hman Mr hashman can you hear me yes we can hear you Mike kishman's orchester mayor woo and former superintendent Dr celius signed an agreement with desie that they would
produce and publicize a comprehensive facilities plan Miss Skipper has broken that promise and instead she closes a few schools every year and bushwhacks the school communities after decisions have been made she look deliberately
gives them very little time to mobilize opposition before the school committee rubber stamps her proposals the local version of shock and awe I'm in agreement with Vice chair Michael O'Neal and BTU president Eric Berg we're
calling for a build for us closed later policy let's stop the current traumatic Poli and replace it with the joy of leaving an inadequate facility and arriving to a beautiful and modern new school at our last meeting our superintendent presented the woo Skipper
2025 2026 budget with a pul Tre 3.5% proposed increase we are promised another year of austerity another year of pain and suffering how many millions are being budgeted for non-disclosure agreements
has the racial Equity to been used to evaluate this proposed budget if there is no equity analysis increased racism is guaranteed the promise of another year of inclusion done poorly and cheaply instead of inclusion Done Right the
promise of another year where too many our children seconds that are too cold in the winter and too hot during the warmer weather the promise of another year where too many of our immigrant children who are blessed being fluent in the language and culture who attend
schools with inadequate resources and poor but inexpensive policies this proposed budget is racist and violent attack on our children massive child abuse and neglect will continue we deserve better let's end the BPS Hunger
Games thank you very much our next speaker is John mud can you hear me yes we can hear you yes okay my name is John mud I'm a resident of Cambridge and a longtime education advocate in Boston I have a couple of comments tonight first the budget
presented to the school committee highlighted $4 million in new Investments for multilingual learners but the general fund budget which you vote on has a reduction of nearly 5 million for multilingual programs and the pages describing a comprehensive
budget for multilingual Learners in the schools uh shows a cut of $8 million overall and 5 million of that cut from the budget for schools with an increase of about a thousand immigrant students this year why is there such a
significant reduction in the budget for multilingual Learners what is being cut how will the schools cope with the increased number of multilingual Learners with less funding secondly there does seem to be to me some
significant Cuts in bilingual Staffing and uh in programs uh there is a cut of 21 bilingual education AIDS bilingual kindergarten teachers 38 bilingual
teachers as well as 58 positions in single language program as SEI programs for keran Spanish Chinese Haitian and so on if this is just coding without any program implications please explain it
finally on the screening 30 seconds on the uh service mapping service mapping seems to be serving the the shifting of students into general education with the SL the only response I heard tonight for
C student needs under service mapping is ESL that is the worst approach to educating English Learners English Learners benefit as people have said tonight on the by access and instruction thank you Mr your
time is up thank you thank thank you our next speaker is Cheryl Buckman my name is Cheryl Buckman I'm a former deor Alum parent to a sixth grader who attends the de I also reside in South Boston I come to you tonight to oppose
the closure of the deor elementary the deor isn't just a school but a family-driven community BPS you are the ones who said the smaller schools must close in fact according to your model the de
can fit a large prek through six School in the same building and this school sits at 86% capacity and yet it's still being forced to close you are closing schools with
substandard buildings but that of the de facility scores were higher than one onethird of BPS schools the deor went to receive his ship in 2013 promising to make dramatic
improvements desie too broke a promise and now they're walking away letting BPS to close the school the Deva under its current receiver has made great gains and is heading to was heading towards post
receivership during those meetings with desie nothing was mentioned about closure for BPS to make its claim to close the deor they had to look five years backwards and ignored 30 upward Trend in
enrollment closing the de overal looks its greater potential and signif and Community significance transforming the de into a full service community school with targeted Investments and Innovative programs that can meet the challenges
while keeping it open BPS you must be committed to keeping the deor community together no closure no split up the deor community wants real honest answers thank you thank you Miss Beckman your time is up our next
speaker is um Kena Kendell is not in the meeting Rossy Hoskin thank you Rosie hosking rosindale I am a suar parent of two girls family Council advocacy co-chair a naturalized Latina British Citizen and a
proud Bostonian of 13 years on behalf of the next three speakers and myself we're here to provide comments on the merged Suna filbrick school budget first we note and appreciate many excellent supports already in the budget proposed we commend Dr Weeks and her team for
welcoming family input and proactively identifying areas to allocate more resources although as you will hear from the others there is more still needed to support our fragile new community superintendent Skipper noted tonight that dollars saved from the facilities
improvements are being reinvested into the necessary supports for students we ask Chief Bloom's team to ensure our merged Community can corroborate this claim especially in regards to culturally competent mental health supports for all our students in a
school that is more than 70% High needs there is also a larger policy issue to address our experience is that the seniority Criterion for choosing which Educators retain their roles after a reduction in Staffing disproportionately
affects our most culturally linguistically and ethnically diverse staff due to the Upstream difficulties of recruiting and retaining these Educators this must not keep happening in future merges that are planned for the right
sizing of our district by 2030 30 seconds why because the data is clear students with Educators who reflect their own cultural heritage do better in school than those who do not many members of the committee and Dr Chen
made these points tonight Madame chair and M members of the school committee please respond with urgency to this issue for example by forming a working group to investigate Solutions with BTU and other stakeholders to add further
criteria to thank you very muching Staffing unintended death thank you our next speaker our next group of speaker is Emily B Bachi Megan davoren Stephan goas and dakia Wright please
raise your hand when I call your name hello you can start hi I'm Emily by I am a parent of a semer first griter advocacy co-chair of our family Council and a resident of Jamaica plane the current budget
allocations have our school losing significant Mental Health Resources a point8 psychologist and a one full-time social worker both people of color leaving this new tender Community with wholly inadequate mental health and social emotional supports staffing needs
to not just meet minimums based on know needs but also allow capacity to meet as yet un identified needs yet the budget doesn't seem to even meet the minimum need the National Association of school psychologists recommends a minimum of one full-time psychologist for every 500
students our merge school is projected to have almost 700 students more than 20% having an IEP but only one psychologist and that's with discretionary funding to add point2 over the actual allocated with the additional loss of our only bilingual social worker
Mental Health Resources will be so tight that staff will not be able to will only be able to triage acute needs and not do preventative work or provide mental health orcl programming for the broader student population this lean model for legally
required supports also risks being out of compliant which is an egregious disservice to our most vulnerable residents and will cost just as much in the long run for the district through summer makeup work compliant procedures and lost reputation Madam chair we appreciate that Dr Weeks has already
submitted an appeal to increase the psychologist allocation at least an additional five and we ask the district to not only approve that request but to fully restore the allocation of the Lost point8 we also need this lost social worker position to complete the team
with culturally competent support and allow seal programming for all students we want to ensure a strong start as a new community where all kids are supported sufficient mental health support is essential to the school Success and creating a learning environment that
is anded in self love and mutual respect our next speaker is Megan Doren hello you can start good evening my name is Megan Davin I am a parent to two current suar students and hopefully someday a third it's Lottery season I am
a school te council member and a resident of Rosendale I'm also a lifelong Bostonian and a proud BPS Alm myself I fully support the testimony tonight of the other suner filber parents here with me many of the staff members we are losing under the currently proposed budget or bilingual
including three key family facing roles held by Latino staff given that we are rolling out a Spanish dual language program next year and that our current student population is over 50% Hispanic it is lunacy to consider losing so many of our bilingual staff who are lynchpins
of our community Dr Chen made this point tonight about access to bilingual staff here is a proposal to keep at least two of them first we seek funding to retain our outstanding director of operations he has strong relationships with families and staff and is effective at his many duties not the least of which
is overseeing and providing support for lunch and recess coverage with which is a essential at our school and every school given that the district's one adultt to 80 student ratio for lunch monitors is not sufficient to ensure student safety we also request a bilingual Community Field coordinator as
an additional resource to support the social and emotional health of our students and respond to the overall High needs of students and families in our community particularly during this disruptive time with the merger a move to a new possibly not finished building a roll out of dual language and full
inclusion finally our power professionals are an invaluable resource most are bilingual and are essential to meeting the needs of our students particularly our multi lingual Learners day in and day out we fully support the btu request to staff inclusion classrooms with a full-time par
professional and to pay these hardworking community members a respectful living wage please set our students and our staff up for success by giving them the resources they need thank you
our next speaker is Stephanie golas you can start hello I'm Stephanie gois um a parent of two children at the suar and a BPS librarian proudly um I'm co-chair of the suar SSC and I've been teaching to
2007 as a veteran educator who has worked in over a dozen school buildings across four different districts in my career I understand the demands of the teaching profession and the complexities of lure the district is pushing teachers in thar and throughout the district to a point that is simply not sustainable
with practices that are not doing right by our children yes inclusion done well with thought and adequate supports and Personnel is good for students and I've seen this in practice but inclusion on a Sho string where teachers teach under multiple licenses while doing the job job of two to three per individuals is
not good for students or the teacher teachers are spending energy staying in compliance with their lure rather than focusing on their teaching and their practice this is the plan in place at our school next year as we roll out more inclusion at more grade levels while also asking our teachers to move to a
new school transition to a dual language model and merge communities and school cultures into a new school building the goal of a merger ought to be to pull our Collective resources and take what is best from a community to give students a richer educational experience yet here we are asking teachers to do more and to
stretch further with less when our schools come together allocating supports to the classroom simply based on I minutes and 504 accommodations is not sufficient and is short-sighted it's not the practice that will meet the needs of all of our students in this process we are losing our dedicated reading Specialists
so I have to ask what about general education and vulnerable students with non-academic risk factors who also need literacy support to be on grade level as a school librarian I know all too well there are too many factors like absenteeism family and housing instability and things that can affect literacy and the ability to learn we must do better by our teachers and our
students please respond to the requests in the thumer parents testimony tonight provide more support for this newly merged community and meet the btu on its reasonable requests for inclusion done right thank you thank you very
much next speaker is taka Wright dakia Bri declined so uh the next group of speakers will need um Spanish support and that is Hortensia Calon paa Lugo
Maria Mia Maria Gomez car AAS e Carla Castro ensia Calderon it's not in the meeting paa Lugo um it's not in the meeting Maria Mia good evening everybody good evening school committee
my name is mar I live in rock and my son goes to the blackone school say mother I have to say that I appreciate very much the me parent Mentor program so this has provided significant change in my life if you if we if I see
my life before and after after see as a coordinator as a mom that is a mentor and a coordinator at the same time I have to mention as well that the support that this parent Mentor program is providing to schools has had a significant impact and
changes in many different families because we have professionals that actually have graduated from this particular parent Mentor program I am a good example of this because I'm actually going through college right now so our hope isly that this program
continues to be supported it is part of the budget in this year the parent Mentor program that is for the purpose to provide enough support to the teachers and they feel supported by us as well we have to consider the numerous
amount of students that each teacher has per class sometimes 18 20 students per teacher per class and believe me we are able to make a difference inside of the classroom this program has to be continued not
stopped provided that when the schools are being Fusion or working together they are going to need the support of the parent program programs that they have and thank you very much programs Mentor programs gracias the next speaker is
Maria Gomez Maria Maria Gomez good evening Mar okay Maria Gomez my name is Maria Gomez and the I am a
mother Mentor at the Blackstone School in West Rasberry I do live in West rockberry BPS margar I do have two kids that are part of the BPS assistant they go to margar
and the Blackstone School the parent and Mentor program has brought many changes to my life to myself have to consider that I have a kid with special needs myself I was not able to find a job that had the flexibility to for my kid to go
to school but the fact I I am a parent Mentor at the present time at their schools my son schools I do have the ability to work and study at the same timeas and thank to this ladder of
opportunities that this program provides to us the parent Mentor program that is at the present time I am studying English the fact that I'm more spending more time at school gives me the opportunity to be more involved and my kids my son's
education I have been able to witness in the process the needs that each school has needs related to the additional help that the teachers and the students themselves need the English language Learners kids that
speak English and Spanish in particular and kids with high special needs such as my son but it is not it should not be a secret for anybody that there are classrooms that have more than 15 up to
18 students sometimes and this teachers are by themselves sometimes with or without a power profession even though that's why we are there as a mentors as power mentors to provide the supports that are still students
need and the teachers as well it is my personal belief that the district has to continue supporting this particular parent Mentor program the families like uh my family can be successful have goals and
objectives and be of good use to our community so it will give us the feeling of being helpful to our community and every school should have this particular program thank you very much for listening to me and good night everybody fores
my name is car originally from the Dominican Republic I came for to this country about five months ago with my children one of my biggest fears when I arrived to the country was the educational system that my kids were going to part
of therefore one of me my objectives became different ways of how can I be involved and be inside of a school being able to help have to mention that that then I became aware of the St Stevens program that I did receive their
information this so by doing so through S Stevens I was able to get involved into with the Blackstone School my kids go to the Blackstone school at the present time we do reside in Roxbury fortunately I do have the
opportunity of being inside of a school see my kids progress in the process I do not know up to which point St know the huge impact that that particular program has in us asence and the impact that it has in the kids that
we help for moreover I would have to say that the sping program has a significant impact to the point of being impactful as well in the educational system I have to say it fills my heart with peace knowing that my kids have a parent Mentor that
is supporting them emotionally it's important to provide this emotional type of help in the process of learning the English language but it is very important that it is my understanding that this particular program provides a lot of uh emotional stability as well as good
things to the Asian educational system so it is our hope it is I hope that every school has the privilege of having this parent Mentor program it will be very unfortunate that this programs canot continue and that they depend on external funding for
their continuity our goal is that this progam have the continuity and they are part of an important part of the central budget of the district so they can have the continuity the paring program and the educational system could appreciate how important this parent
Mentor programs is and thank you very much for hearing what I had to say our next speakers um Carla Castro and Felicia dant are not in the meeting so we will continue with the next group Next group of speakers is
haval Abdul Rahman Emily Schuman Madison Morley and Savannah Lewis hi can can you hear me yeah we can hear you you can start thank you hi my name is haval abdan I am a parent of two students in third and fifth grade in De school I live in doister just across of
De school since 2004 thanks for giving me the chance to speak tonight I strongly request that de Elementary School to be maintained to serve the community of Colombia point and surrounding areas I'm here tonight to discuss one of BPS reasons for closing
de School BP s argues that school's facility construction does not meet its standards however dev has a history of producing successful graduates and current students continue to succeed
which shows that whatever the construction status is now it is still sufficient to graduate successful students this proves that the existing School condition is not a barrier to
Quality education my suggested Solutions are the required maintenance could be done during summer breaks over time second instead of closing there are other Solutions such as relocating or merging never with another school if BPS
insisting on closing the school I respectfully request a delay of four to five years to allow most current students to graduate before closing the school my last statement BAS on the above facts I hope BPS reconsider the
closure seconds our demand is please keep the schools open please it is not just a school facility it is a family community please keep our family community together ladies and gentlemen I hope BPS agree to keep the school to serve the community of Colombia point
and surrounding communities thank you very much thank you very much our next speaker is Emily Schuman Emily Schuman is not in the meeting Madison
moring good even you can start my name is Madison Morley and I'm speaking tonight on the proposed closure of the deor as a teacher at the deor and a resident right here in Dorchester I'm appalled by bps's lack of concern for my students and the impacts they will face
upon this closure as I have testified here before the deor is a full inclusion school for both special education and English as a second language a combination that exists in very few other schools in Boston if any are unique combination allows my
highest need students to be placed in a general education classroom instead of being pulled out and stigmatized for being different BPS has spoken so many times about the building experience score and how they will work to ensure all students move to a school with an
equal or higher building experience well what about classroom experience scores you can't tell me that a student in a subpar classroom and an inclusion classroom are going to have the same experience so don't tell our families that students will continue to receive their services because anyone who has
spent even a day in a classroom can see the differences between a classroom where one teacher teaching with three licenses is just checking a box on an IEP versus a classroom with a thoughtfully planned co-taught inclusion practices at a time when BPS is pausing
its roll out of inclusion classrooms across the city can you guarantee that my students will find another inclusion placement because I can't no one can Boston cannot afford to lose seconds inclusion program like the deor they
need us to serve as a model for other schools when they finally decide to commit to inclusion done right keep our community together keep us in our building move us merge us we will do whatever is necessary to fight for both our students and for inclusion in all of
BPS thank you thank you very much our next speaker is Savannah Louis please accept the prompt so it seems like Savannah LS is not accepting the prompt um our next speak ERS Christian
Grant and Christine auon are not in the meeting so that concludes public comment thank you Miss CarX um and I want to thank everyone who spoke tonight your input is critical as we consider the superintendent's budget
recommendations for the next fiscal year thank you and I want to remind you all that you can view all of the budget documents and share your feedback by visiting bub B bostonpublicschools.org buget you can also email your comments
to the school committee the committee will hold its next meeting on Wednesday February 26 at 5:30 pm. the next promote budget hearing will take place on Wednesday March 5th at 5:30 p.m. at which time the committee will receive a
presentation focused on the Central budget our final remote budget hearing will take place on Wednesday March 19th at 6:30 p.m. prior to the school committee meeting there's nothing further I'll entertain a motion to
adjourn is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion Miss P will you please call the RO thank you chair Dr alkins yes Mr K
Hernandez Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss poano Garcia Miss palan Garcia yes I say yes oh sorry Mr Tran yes Mr Neil yes Miss Robinson yes we are
Jour thank you this hearing is adjourned good night good night good night all take care