all right we're recording and um just a reminder um that this is a dual meeting it's a meeting of the finance subcommittee of the school committee and concurrently there is a meeting of the full school committee because we do have a quorum of school commit members present um Mariah who's the chair of the
finance subcommittee will be acting as the chair of both and um that's it you can take it away thank you Psy welcome everyone to the February 26th 2025 Finance subcommittee of the school committee and as Betsy said um we are running a concurrent meeting of the full
school committee um we are going to go into um several uh um quick uh reviews of minutes and other approvals and then we'll get into the meet of the meeting so the first item on the agenda is the approval of minutes
from the February 5th 2025 um Finance subcommittee um I'll make a motion to approve can I get a second second thank you Carolyn how do you vote Yes B yes and I vote Yes um
then we also have approval of gifts approval of Grants and review of Grant applications am I correct Betsy that there is no there are no Grant applications to review it's just the gifts and grants that's correct okay I just wanted to make sure I was a little confused by the materials so um for the
gifts we have two gifts um one is an anonymous gift for $5,000 to Ace scholarship um for students to be able to attend the Dominican Republic over February vacation which was just ended um and then the second gift is to parent child Plus for
$300 um this is a program in beep um so these are very generous gifts we thank the donors can I get a motion for um acceptance I'll move it I can't hear you Mariah is it just me can't hear yeah I can't hear you either
shoot let me now we can I think maybe I'm putting my hand somewhere that I shouldn't be on the microphone of the laptop sorry about that okay um I'm also kind of horse so you moved it Carolyn I will second it
Carolyn how do you vote Yes Val how do you vote presume still not able to join us completely so I'm gonna vote Yes does that count Betsy or do we need to come back to this one for a v I think we should come back just to
just um why don't we come back then in that case to all of the votes because we don't have Sarah yet either right that's right okay so um we're going to jump to we're going to skip 2D right now so that we can go onto the first item of um
budget development for next year which is continued discussion of strategies to increase revenues and contain costs and there were several questions from the school committee um uh about some of the proposals that have been brought to us
and the first one is about um Staffing at the high school and how the $500,000 cut at the high school would be accommodated and then the second one is about possibilities to raise revenues in athletics rather than reducing costs and I don't know who is
um presenting the slides or talking through this so I'll let you all I presume you all are coordinating and and you'll talk us through you'll take slides um as you are ready to take them so I believe you said we're going to let the high school go first Mariah is that what I heard
yep so why don't we jump there hey Anthony and team I think this is you okay why don't I start with this Dr Giller thank you and thank you school committee members uh for having Hal and Kyle and me and and we're happy to join
District leaders um to answer some of the questions so um since before break uh my team and I have been working with District leaders on the reduction in impacts to BHS I would say just candidly a
$500,000 um cut at the high school would impact many aspects of BHS I list some here we certainly would need to look at uh our administrative team and our administrative positions um we would
need to look at clerical positions I want to take a moment though and acknowledge we're going to show you an organizational outline that was one of the requests from school committee members and so I think that will give greater context to some of these aspects
because we lay out um some of our leadership structures and uh the Departments and programs they support um and uh you know I think rightly members of the public members of school committee District leaders High School
leaders staff have talked about the importance of retaining as many uh instructional positions as possible and and trying to have um the reductions and cuts not impact that I'm using the term here student facing and get to that in
Greater detail when we look at the organizational outline but we obviously have teaching positions we also have a number of student facing positions from librarian to nurse to associate Dean to Dean to program coordinator um and then
I'm listing instructional positions so it would be some combination of these things knowing how many courses we offer and what our class size is needs to be um as much as possible are um Northstar so um as noted we would try
to limit the impact on class size and and course offerings and Hal is going to speak to um some of these questioning these questions in how we schedule and how we treat courses that are enrolled
be below 18 or below 15 um so as we began the budgeting process we agreed with Dr given that there would be a reduction at we began um planning for FY 26 because our enrollment is declining um so we had an
original 3.0 that we were reducing given our decline in enrollment um and as uh Hal has written in this slide um we're 7%
larger than our pre-pandemic size um uh before covid our average was 2041 um the district is down the high school remains up and that said we are going to decline next year by an estimated 40
students and so um from the get-go we were looking at a reduction and rightly so um so I think my general answer I don't know if there's a next slide to this Betsy or sorry if that's who's running the slideshow so I think where
we would need to um potentially limit some course selections is whether students would be able to say take second courses in some subject areas this is something we've allowed for as there have been seats available and I
think it will depend on how course selection goes and then we move from what courses students select to how many sections do we run again Hal will speak to this in Greater detail but examples would be Juniors who are taking preal
who also want to take statistics or um a more common example is Juniors who are taking biology also opting to take AP Cam and then we also have seniors taking two Social Studies classes we have some students a low
percentage who take two languages throughout um their time in the high school I think we would need to look very carefully at what how this would impact um the number of classes we can run and so that might be a limitation
and now it looks like we're getting into a larger slide and Hal I'll keep going here but you um you can add in as well we do run some performing arts classes um smaller than a threshold of 18 students and some of those for good
reasons such as size of you know Caroline we have a great Performing Arts digital um audio class and it is in a rabbit Warren of a classroom on the first floor and it can only fit X number of students uh and so it's capped at a
number like 12 or 15 just based on class size um but then there are also some just as an example some performing arts classes that we don't get to the threshold of 18 students and run them um because of the great interest in
performing arts and you know we love uh the program um but we would we would need to look carefully at those classes um and we worry about the impact on our Afterschool drama program so we have a
very open dialogue with Kenny on this and and um trying to plan for that um we also run some Wellness classes um Helen's favorite we have swimming um and we just run it at really small numbers
and it's an important class for students who don't know how to swim or learning how to better swim and that those would be hard to to run um based depending on um the size of our reductions Hal is there more that you
would want to say there uh I could go into a lot more detail on any of these I'll defer to the committee's questions if they have additional questions about this but I can certainly go into a lot of detail and and as much as as many layers of the onion as we want to peel back I can go
into details on how this happens during sectioning and what goes uh you know what that process is like and I before I see Jesse's hand is up before I do the second bullet on this slide says there's a threshold of 18 students I thought that the meeting we had that was that
was reduced to 15 students giving you greater flexibility in running smaller classes I guess was that not the case I think you're asked both ways I think originally you're recalling correctly at least from my perspective Mariah that um the slide on
Thursday the 13th said um class sizes at the high school from 15 to 25 I think in conjunction with Jodie we were looking at both 18 and 15 and Hal can speak to both of those thresholds in terms of
examples where we might run something smaller and examples where we have but in this environment we wouldn't pal do you want to offer yeah I mean there's there's a whole host of class that we don't that that we would keep at 15 for
example in the drama area we have the shop class the the set building class essentially I've got power saws in there I've got all sorts of equipment we don't want more than 15 kids in that room just so we wouldn't want more than 15 kids in the wood in the in the wood shop over in
the UA building I've got so I've got a number of classes like that there's a safety restriction or I've got a class where there some classes where there's a room restriction that is to say for example up on the fourth floor uh in the UA the rooms that we um share with
Brooklyn interactive There are 16 machines in those rooms so I can't put more than 16 so you know if we get further into the numbers I'll show you examples of classes where I might have 14 kids in the class but it's a room that can only fit 15 kids so I'm not as concerned
about that type of class whereas I've got another class that's got 14 but should could have up to 24 kids in the class and those are the classes that will be looking at uh with a much Keener eye for next year's uh um
sectioning I see thank you Jesse um yeah my question was um on this prior slide it shows that 500,000 Mariah um my question is where' that come from that was on the list of cuts that was presented to us a week and a half
ago thank you yep um I have question this is a big picture question Howen Anthony and then Caroline I'll get it to you so with this if we were to take this $500,000
cut are we essentially just rolling back to where we were two years ago where we had overcrowded classes what's going to be different about this versus two years ago so that we don't end up exactly in that situation again and maybe the answer is nothing we will end up in that situation I certainly would hope not and
we would plan plan for it not to be the case does it have an impact and does it undo some of uh the FTE we've added yes I think um we need to be very careful of the cuts and have them
impact uh additional aspects of our um organization so looking at administrative structure and administrative positions looking at clerical positions trying to keep Cuts away from um the classroom as much as
possible as noted some of the his you know doubling up that we've allowed historically um I think comes into question uh how other thoughts yeah so just just to further that you know when we talk about doubling up it's not as if
it's an it's a automatic reduction if I say that ninth graders can no longer take two languages for example well I'm still going to give a nth graders a full schedule they're still going to have a seven block schedule so they're going to be sitting in other classes so there's not necessarily a a an immediate FTE
reduction just because I say you know that that the school might make up a a um a policy or not a policy but the school says you can't take two languages at the same time and again the the the savings there would come over four years
right four years it would lessen to some degree the FTE that world language uses if we were to not allow kids to take two languages at the same time uh but again it's not an immediate one for one uh savings just because we say that you
can't take that we wouldn't allow kids to take two classes in the same discipline thank you Carolyn and then Helen thanks um and this may be a question to park and come back to because I think you have a bunch more
slides um but I'm interested if possible and it might not have to be today in understanding a little bit more um about the efficiency or how FTE are used like I'd like to be better educated
about the 4+1 structure and releases um I'm not sure if releases are the same as plus one um but I'm just interested in in sort of hearing about that and and whether there's um sort of
wiggle room there for um like keeping teacher student facing without reducing as much sure Carolyn I can take a swing at the describing the four plus one model as
long as is that something um Mariah you and the team and and Dr Giller want to hear about um I think there's a lot of interest in the community and questions about how it works and whether there are efficiencies there so you explaining how it works I think would be beneficial
over for all absolutely so um the four plus1 model dates to Dr Bob wein trob and the idea was largely around two things how do we recruit and retain really strong
excellent teachers I should say three things how do we um have the core academic um teachers have very Ma you know manageable loads in terms of grading uh espe
um and how do we also support students in general education through programs like tutorial so most specifically um or at least specifically we have um in the core academics minus English so English teachers written into
the contract have just four classes with the idea and the reality that those teachers are conferencing often and it makes up it's Akin to a fifth section as an English teacher myself and how can attest to this just the grading of
papers um and efficient grading of papers really important to have those four for math science social studies and World Language we also have a four plus1 model where there are we would say five teaching assignments but four
traditional courses in the department and then a fifth teaching assignment that I think we came to a school committee committee meeting last year to describe so that is largely tutorial calculus project would be another example of a fifth teaching assignment
uh and a third um concrete example uh second teaching in World Language second teaching in World Language thank you for noticing I was drifting off for a moment there yes uh is a second teach teacher in some of the world language classes beginning one
beginning two where we've got large numbers of students and large numbers of students on IEP so I I it is not co- teing in the traditional sense of a regular educator uh and a special educator it is two World Language
Educators so we understand that this there are we have resources and the district has resources in 4 plus1 and we know how important it is uh to um recruit and retain our best teachers and
we worry a great deal feel about um not having this program moving forward both for Recruitment and retain retaining and retention and uh also the programs that we support like tutorial and mainstream
academic Support Program Hal did you want to add something uh yeah I mean that I was just going to talk a little bit more about tutorial but I think you you picked that up at the end I mean we think that's a really vital function for the school for all a lot of kids who don't have access
necessarily to outside tutoring that some kids do but many do not and you know nth grade is especially where we where we uh concentrate that resource and it is a valuable resource for kids hopefully they get weaned off of it
hopefully it's a one-year thing for many kids it is they find they need it but it's what makes we think the 9th grade more successful because it's a place where kids can come in and get that support from subject teachers uh that otherwise uh the kids
might fall by the wayside and fall behind in their academic classes and thanks Hal I also wanted to Carolyn asked a second important question which course releases so I would describe those as rare and with four plus one in particular we've tried to stay
consistent that those are student facing student supporting positions there have been a couple of examples as we were developing wisp a couple of years ago we used a couple of plus one assignments um in order to support the creation of that
course um we used a plus one assignment to support a teacher in doing really important environmental like climate awareness and sustainability work um and we would argue that's very much student impacting in school impacting in terms
of course releases those are generally when we've had them through The Innovation fund though I'm sure there are some examples given the size of our faculty and staff um where we've uh had course releases I know for instance one of the Innovation fund proposals that's
moving forward involves a course release but that would be funded by The Innovation Fund in order for us to revise a long-term course into a really powerful learning experience so Carolyn I hope uh we answered your questions
thank you um Helen Stephen and Sarah I'm going to ask you to ask your questions in order but go quickly because we have another we have two more chunks of the BHS puzzle I'd rather listen to the rest of BHS first and then then ask my questions let's let them finish okay
sounds good Stephen are you okay with holding too do the same yeah okay and Sarah took her hand down that's great so why don't we keep going to the next um uh portion of this thank you so this is really about section so I'm just giving you a few examples here and I can go
into as much detail like I said as you guys want um this year we definitely ear on the side of going smaller sections you know the the sectioning process involves us looking at the number of requests that we have for each class and uh coordinators and Anthony and me
sitting together to say how many sections of ninth grade English do we need this year how many sections of 10th grade English how many sections of Japanese do we need in every area and it's complicated uh as you can imagine when we came to those questionable areas
like should we run three sections or four sections this year in order to help keep those classes smaller we were airing on the side of smaller sections based on you know the the the Mandate and the monies that the um school committee and District leaders gave us
and it worked I mean the my I haven't my my uh Master lists for the the schedule this year look great I've got good numbers the numbers that we want we've got the numbers that we want in honors we've got mostly the numbers that we
want in our AP and advanced classes and in some cases it's be they're they're too small because we were so wary of starting at that higher level for example and Josh Paris and I have talked about this a number of times ninth grade advanced math is the most complicated to
to plan and to to figure exactly what the flow will be and those classes we didn't let them start higher than 30 unfortunately now some of those classes are at 20 I've had you know a full 30% of kids move out of that
advanced level math class and and so I've got smaller than I want advanced classes and I'm pushing the limits of what I want my honors classes to be for example anyway the the overall we're super happy with the way that the
uh m worked out this year for the sectioning and the schedule um I give a few examples here you know Spanish intermediate Spanish 2 we had four sections and unfortunately they only average out at 155 that was a mistake we should have run three sections they would have averaged at something like 20
but it gets tricky you know like if we said that 18 was the number and I look at Algebra 2 you're like oh you've got two sections of Algebra 2 that are uh running at 16 and 17 maybe that is also a mistake and that should have run at Three but a case like that that all four
of those sections are co-taught sections and it would mean that we'd have three sections with all three co-taught and uh you'd have those sections up at 23 which is definitely higher than we would want to run uh a class like Algebra 2 especially as that's the class
that's leading into the um mcass and then World Language is a whole set of complications we don't have one World Language Department it's really five separate departments and there's all sorts of pressures on the number in World Language so for example I can show
you my numbers in Japanese which I've got two robust freshman year classes but I've got a very small sophomore year class it just varies from year to year and I'm you know once the kid is started in the language we of course are committed and I'm sure you guys will support committing to keeping a kid in
that fouryear sequence of the language it means that next year I know I'm going to have a very small junior class my my Japanese 3 class will be very small next year but I'm going to be challenged at the Japanese 2 level because I've got two classes in the mid 20s of of Japanese 1 so are we going to run one
section or two sections you know these are the types of things and again it's just more complicated in World Language than in the other disciplines I if it's all right I think I'd like to ask my question here because I think it's relevant um
so this is really encouraging to me um because it suggests to me that that there is some slack that can be tightened without without substantively um eroding the quality of education at
BHS which is a great relief to me um I I just want to say something and then I want to ask a question so it seems to me from this slide that there was a misunderstanding or something got a game of telephone was played um the school committee certainly did not issue a
mandate to reduce class sizes to Historic levels it seems that perhaps that was translated through through District leadership that's what we wrote in our guidelines Stephen to Historic levels yeah we said to previous that was where like that's a quote
yep when we had conversations when we had these conversations though when we added the seven FTE the conversations about the budget was how do we avoid the overcrowding crisis that took place at BHS the budget guidelines were that that
was the aspiration but what we were doing was to to make sure that that we didn't have this happen again so what I want to ask here is about the strategy that's been proposed by the administration in your opinion if you think it's the right one um so as you
know the proposal is to add um sections Reserve sections to uh to the budget that can be applied as needed and rather than uh assign them initially
to schools and the idea behind that is to help avoid crises like what what prompted the this yo-yoing of adding and then removing FTE I guess what I want to know from you both Anthony and how is that the right strategy now we want to
avoid a crisis like what what prompted the additional FTE and the absurdity of assigning them and then removing them which is what we're in the process of doing and having you go through this exercise year after year is reserve sectioning the right strategy here or
should we be trying to look for the right levels of of FTE for BHS right now and stick to those thank you Stephen for the statements and the question I I agree
with Dr given and Dr gillery and Dr Fortuna in the notion of having Reserve um FTE available it's it's what we've done in the past we both um agree with the idea that we're declining in
enrollment um at least for next year and do we worry that that number might not be 40 and we may need additional sections yes but the idea that we could potentially deploy those sections and if and as needed add to FTE say having a
part-time teacher as we did a couple of years ago who uh we needed a another English class at the junior level and another social studies class and then deployed um FTE so I agree with your general description of the tension or
the yo-yoing and and that being challenging and we're in a really difficult um Financial scenario right now and I worry about our prek to8 program um uh and our what our district
is offering in general and so in my reality um we need to reduce at BHS um and of course the question is how much and how or the questions are that's my take Hal please don't totally disagree
with me but answer with cander are you sure yes please okay um it's it it will definitely be a useful mechanism and has been a useful mechanism in the past for exactly the type of scenario Anthony's describing
where just became obvious to us we had miscalculated or 30 more kids walked in the door than we were expecting and we couldn't figure out how to make sophomore English work or Junior math work and getting that extra point to or you know moving those pieces around help
it's very hard to find people it's not always so easy for us to find that point2 person or to find the person currently on staff that might want to increase or move their their FTE so it's it's a complicated way of addressing it
so ideally yes we would have the right number to begin with and uh go from there but the reality is it will be useful I'm certain in you know August when we realize when we have the actual numbers again it's just there there's so
many variables that happen with the high school sectioning and if it's you know 10 kids move in and we get 10 extra kids and they sign up for a certain pattern of classes it's going to immediately point to us that we have a problem that
it's going to be really difficult for us to fix so having knowing that there's some Reserve out there that we'd be able to bring in even though hiring at that point or changing people's FTE or moving assignments around is uh not my idea of a fun way to spend that part of August
uh knowing that it's there will certainly um help us thank you and Stephen just one quick additional answer I think as we look at class size and in courses where we have um you know that are core graduation requirements our
eyes need to remain on those balls and I think what the the bigger issue is going to be some of the smaller um elective academic elective classes so those that don't um don't go towards graduation
requirements but say a Global Leadership or a social justice which are really great courses but I think as we're looking at a decline and resources we're going to need to make careful decisions as Hal said about where we're cutting our sections and how we're working with
splits and how some of those additional offerings that we've had will be impacted and we're in a more austere environment and our department heads are excellent and generally work really really well with with us around making
sure that in social studies 9th 10th and 11th grade are really well reported uh and then we look at senior year and those offerings sorry there are three years of social studies um three years of required social studies at the high
school we want to keep going to you're do you have the Staffing slide in here too so we can see the Staffing overview yeah I think okay yeah we can skip this slide and just go right to the next one I think this is yeah so this I created to give us an idea it might be a little
blurry at least it is on my screen screen uh it's okay here now those are your eyes go ahead H so uh you know people were asking uh there were some questions about showing us an organizational chart so I created
this outline which sort of gives the overall structure and shows where FD in very general terms and I haven't totally proofed this or vetted all any of these numbers so this was just me working through some expel spreadsheets and trying to plug in numbers here that give
up pretty good I think overall picture of how FTE is assigned at the high school and where it's spread out and it's not in any way trying to distinguish between FTE so for example you look at the Deans and it's showing me security who are technically power
positions and Associate Deans and of course those aren't full FTE dedicated as associate Deans they instead are uh those associate Deans also teach or have other responsibilities as well in addition to deaning so you know don't take this as the gospel in exact numbers
but I think it does give a nice overall picture of the of how the high school is staffed yeah it's super helpful and I think I'm just going to quickly say you know I appreciate the idea of no names and not talking about specific positions
or potential reductions in this format it's work that we're doing internally and in concert with District leaders but as Hal said we're we're listing five names those are um unaligned leaders at the high school um you see those on the
left head of school assistant head of school our director of special education and I want to be clear that's a joint position that person whose wonderful is housed here and is also a part of um the OSS leadership team so it's an OSS
position but very much at the high school and supporting our wonderful special education students and staff then you move into we have leaders who are Unit B and Hal has nicely listed the curriculum coordinators and in almost
all cases 90 plus percent of cases our curriculum coordinators maybe 100% um not only uh support and supervise our teachers they also teach a class and so
it is not those are not 1.0 leadership positions they are positions B based at the high school or in three cases uh Wellness Visual Arts and Performing Arts they're K to 12 um and in all those
cases they also teach a class um at the high school you also have unit be leaders listed within special education um under ra Robin faviano um we've got a special ed coordinator our our special
ed department is very large as you can see and so just by sheer supporting supervising and evaluating teachers there's a need for a manageable um case load to do our best work for the people doing the most important work our
teachers um and so we list a coordinator and a therapeutic program coordinator those are two Unit B positions I want to be transparent there's another position not listed that a year ago we would have listed that is still partially at the
high school that is our winr house now a director level position that is approximately 70% at VHS and 30% in the middle school program at Driscoll um so that individual has taken on more
responsibilities districtwide is less active in supervision at the high school given their split between um two places so you have here listed Unit B department leaders uh you have Dean staff both are
unaligned Deans and then underneath them uh six associate Deans those individuals too have a 8.2 split they supervise and support hundreds of students and then they also are teaching a class or if they have
another lure they might have a case load of guidance students that is um point2 or 20% of a typical uh load and then you have to the right um both uh our Ace and
SWS as two alternative programs with Unit B leaders serving uh a number of students that's listed there we have an athletic department of five and as you can see we serve a whole number uh uh 1,00 plus students there and Kyle will
speak to that in the end um and then these are listed elsewhere also but baa our secretarial staff and our custodian staff so um those are the pieces I'd highlight knowing there are questions before we take questions I
just want to reiterate what Anthony said which is we can ask questions about structure but I would like no comments on or or suggestions of if there's anything someone thinks that they would like to remove and they that's not something we're going to talk about in this meeting this is not the place or the time to make those kinds of comments
everyone deserves the respect of having those kinds of conversations happen through appropriate channels which is not here um so again questions about the structure are great comments about things R reductions people suggest not the place go ahead Val thanks mine's
actually about four plus one um a Anthony I think you through lus and email I sent to lonus answered that um if teachers were teaching five classes that would um reduce FTE by 17 I think
and I'm curious now whether H how tutorial and programs like calculus projects were or were not um counted in that so were those counted as academic blocks I hope so but I guess I'm just curious how those were um calculated in
that question B I believe that that number is all of the plus one assignments so in total if you include um tutorial which I think Hal has listed here on the um
organizational outline the number of FTE in tutorial and there is FTE from plus one assignments um in other areas as well again we'd name calculus project and World langu some World language
classes as where we're deploying um a plus one assignment which we would also say is a a teaching assignment just a different type of teaching assignment Val does that worry that I'm um not answering your question I I think I'm wondering so assuming that those are
teaching assignments which I would um you probably can't answer this now but I would appreciate knowing what that reduction FTE would be um if we assume that things like calculus project and tutorial were a fifth teaching
assignment um but say something like a release for planning was not yeah I think it would be how can answer this too and greater specificity but I would say that is how we approach that these are fifth teaching
assignments and so that number that wouldn't fall into that is very very small pal thank you thank you yeah so in simplest terms and again don't take these numbers as the gospel accurate truth there's definitely some
revisions that let's call this a draft organizational outline probably I probably should have labeled that um but if you can assume that for the most part the the 22 Math teachers the 22 science teachers the 21 uh social studies the 23 World Language all of those would be
included in the total uh 10 or 50 of those teachers in total are directly in tutorial a number then additionally are doing things like a math Center is vital before school sometimes after school math Center
science Resource Center you know just really important resources that many students use and push in and rely on for their work some of those uh other again some of that balance so that's 50 plus ones that are doing math Center some are
pushing into Scholars some are pushing into calculus project uh so if you look at all those as we agree with you Val that those would be academic classes academic Support classes for those teachers the you know the what comes after that and then including the World
Language second teachers which we can go into more detail about why that's such a necessary and why that's a different model say than the other uh departments you're leaving over just a few that are in Less Direct uh um impact for
students thank you Carolyn and Helen and I want us to go fast because we still have to get to um to Kyle as well yeah weing late go ahead I think I was before Caroline go ahead okay real quick quick first of all thank
you so much for putting this all together I think it's really important because the high school is a very complicated place and Hal I don't envy you trying to put together schedules it must take mathematical genius to do it let's not get carried away
okay that being said um I'm looking at this chart and I'm seeing for instance two areas that that sort of I'm questioning um for instance the Ace Program has 6.5 FTE with 55 students and
we just at curriculum heard that some students even go to Mass Bay college so that may be less at times than 55 students I guess I question that ratio and if we can afford it uh I don't question the program I think the program
is a great uh uh program I think you know it it serves some kids extremely well the kids who are in it and I think we need to have more kids in it maybe include ninth grade you know get the numbers up to 15 per class and then I
would be feel comfortable with you know the the FTS or more comfortable at least um at this rate I think we have less than 10 per FTE that's one uh the other I would be
interested in I know you don't have this now uh it just seems to me I in the past don't remember so so big special ed um um Staffing at the high school and I'm wondering has
our I have two questions has our number of students on IPS gone up and what did our staffing look like like five years ago or you know seven years ago something like that um 33 pair professional I
assume are one on ones and you know I just I'm I'm curious about how that works sure thanks Helen um why don't we try to take those um thoughts or questions in order so I think just in terms of the ace you're right in terms
of the FTE and the um the number of students served I think one thing that we learned over the time of Ace was having a special educator embedded in the program really important given the 40 plus perc of students on IEPs who are
in Ace and that position is actually owned by ossp special education and they by choice deploy that to Ace I think it's an ongoing question regarding I know that a small size class size and
Community size is important to Ace and in these times where we're looking at our overall program it's really important to look too um at how we're deploying FTE in Ace which you know as you know is a strong program an
award-winning one and we need to look at it also and work with Dr berer um to look at how many students are able to have access to that um and in the same way that's an ongoing conversation with s SWS um in that it's really important
to keep that uh SI overall size at a reasonable number to Foster the sense of community um and so that's ongoing work we do uh with Dan bresman the program coordinator of s SWS in terms of special
ed staff um par professionals do a range of things there are some onetoone AIDS absolutely there are also a number of program AIDS um who serve lot you know might be in a classroom but they're serving a whole classroom of students we
also have par professionals as Hal noted who are um security folks and I don't think they included there and under the other I think they're probably I think oh those are those are separated um so
um I think I would have a harder time articulating or knowing how our special education Staffing um over five years I would say that we have landed an incredible director who has worked
really well um with Hal and me with her team and our team to just say where can we find deficiency how are we deploying staff um so we can certainly Circle back to the question with greater you can come back to me with the answers I give
you a quick answer on that I do have the numbers from five years ago just pre pandemic I have okay go ahead yeah and again again these are not this chart here is not the gospel numbers they're not it's not fully vetted as I'm saying
uh it's up a bit you know if I look just the teachers excluding Paris from five years ago I came to I have 58 and that probably might have included some of the um of the unit B people as well 58 FTE
teachers but that would also include the the psychologists and the social workers and the bcbas and the ETFs so uh marginally larger now than it was five years ago the numbers of student IEP has probably grown a little bit but not a
huge amount and and again we'll we will get uh better numbers for that and uh share that with Mariah and the committee thank you I appreciate that just one other quick comment quickly yeah the algebra
with the 23 kids in the class has two teachers correct is what you were saying ifre if you were to have done that I is that a problem yeah that's 23 would be too large for that class 23 and a CO talk
class is too large we want those to be 20 and and the other issue is getting the right ratio of kids who are on the co have co-taught on their grid and students that are um uh just in the CL just in the class because that they're in the regular geometry class for
example or algebra class in that case uh and so the fewer classes I have the more the class becomes you know a a majority special ed class which is something that we try to avoid
um uh creating okay thank you Carolyn yeah and I guess what I want to say at this point is this is extremely interesting extremely important I have several more questions but I'm really nervous about the time right now um
because we also have a a bump up against another 7 o'clock meeting we have a ton of people here some of whom I'm guessing want to speak so um I guess I wish this was happening at a time when we had a
lot more time to dialogue with how and Anthony because I really appreciate this so I guess I'm going to ask Mariah like do you foresee can this sort of happen again at a full school committee meeting that I wish we were having tomorrow um CU I do
have questions but I don't want to delay us more let's talk about that we can figure this out okay then I'm gonna skip my questions assuming that we're gonna have more opportunity okay why don't you write them down and send them to me so we can keep them in the hopper if that's
okay sure Mar I would quickly say that if Carolyn wants like through lonus or through Jodie if if those questions we're happy to answer those in writing and I think I agree the dialogue is important it's important to learn about
the high school it's important to learn um about the K to8 and our pre to8 so dialogue and transparency like this is essential and I appreciate that I think everyone knows I'm a fan of Open Session I will send questions but I I like Open
Session thanks very much though thank you yeah thank you and let's go to Kyle is he next on our we've made it through one question of six and we have a whole fy2 thing to cover too so we'll keep going um this is
helpful okay let's get to this one all right I'll jump in um thank you everyone for having us today for hearing more from me and and especially for the support again from the over ride from a couple years ago um we're still feeling the positive effects of that in
athletics um when I came to you this subcommittee a couple years ago in advance of the override I had shared with you that we had 25% growth from fy14 up to FY 23 um the override I think has been proven successful or beneficial in that um from FY 23 to 25 now we've
grown an additional 22% um and that's about 330 additional athletic Seasons participated in um so that's really important we've introduced Unified sports we've continued to improve access at a variety of skill and commitment levels um which we get that
request all the time from community members um One Challenge is that we're approaching roster limitation sizes based on fa facility supervision safety Etc um and so part of our budget request going into this year was to try to um increase novice freshman um
non-competitive opportunities that would allow students to still feel like a warrior have that sense of belonging and participate um we were asked to cut 100,000 from that budget request um and tonight I'm here just showing the numbers one of the questions uh presented to me was if we were to
increase the um user fee from $300 per student per season to 400 450 or 500 what additional Revenue would we anticipate would come along with that um and so the additional revenue is uh on the screen here um some factors to keep
in mind um I'm told it was last adjusted in fy14 um up to $300 um we have variable roster sizes we have 93 teams so even just one student uh participating more or less on a team um leads to a big change in Revenue um
we don't currently utilize online payment that would be uh incredibly beneficial to our collection rate and also just the overall labor and convenience for f families um there's a financial assistance component um that affects these numbers and then a second thing that affects these numbers is um
prior year fee collection um so students that weren't paying on time the prior year sometimes we collect that in the next fiscal year um so the the revenue numbers uh fluctuate based off of that across four years so um these are the numbers in front of you again the reduction that we were asked was uh for
100k so each of these would um cover the programming that we had previously been asked to cut can I ask you a question Kyle does this presume still the paper check delivery or are you assuming the higher Revenue um made possible by the online
system um this is is sort of comfortably in the middle I I had taken a a revenue collection rate um that predated my arrival three years ago um we're doing significantly better now even with paper checks um and so this is I I believe um it depends on on the number whether it's
400 450 or 500 um but it's anywhere from an 87% collection rate to a 93% okay so it's higher than the historical paper collection it is bit of a risk but hopefully we've been doing something right okay um when you send these slides over do
you mind including the assumptions that back up these numbers or the math just so people can understand those how you got from this to that yeah a conversation with that would be probably beneficial to uh Caroline's point that the the conversation transparency is helpful because it's a little intricate
yes okay that's very helpful thank you so essentially if if to bottom line this if the school committee were to vote to increase the athletic fees we could not only not make the reduce the reductions that were proposed to High School athletics but actually return some
Revenue to for other purposes is that an accurate summary uh that would be my understanding yes okay do you have a recommendation of among these athletic fees do I yeah um I I don't yet know I I
wanted to be able to I'm sorry Maria I'm sorry that's outside of the scope of this meeting I apologize I think that it's that's something that school committee can decide I ask them to present a range of options and that's something we can consider ourselves when we get there um oh yeah no
worries um any other questions on this slide before we let them go at six o'clock I thought you were going to be de like 5:20 I'm so sorry this has taken a lot longer than I had expected but I think it was really good conversation and I really appreciate the content that you have brought to this meeting which I think
really helps um understand some of the details about what's going on in FY for next year and for FY 26 so thank you very much um and I think we'll keep going on some of the other questions and let you all go to the girls varsity ice hockey game thank you so much and
certainly we can talk a lot so it's mostly on us and we appreciate the opportunity so thanks everybody thank you thank you um I just want to foreshadow the rest of the meeting which is we have more questions on 26 we're going to go back to get the update on 25
and then we have public comment so we have quite a to do in the next 30 to 40 minutes um we have a hard stop at 6:45 to be able to um provide the time to prep for our 7M meeting um so I just want to contextualize that for everyone
as we race along with the rest of our um presentation so um lonus are you up next or is Susan up next okay thank you so this was another question provided which is can the primary metco
Grant be used offset special education expenses for Meco students this is a follow-up to a conversation we had had at a finance meeting um a month or so ago where there was a separate Meco um special education offset Grant and we were we were curious about how special
education services are covered so I think you captured the essence of it there Mariah um that these uh program uh the current Medco Grant uh is it's considered a um an available
space and it's uh the funds there are diverted are directed to assisting these students um somewhat with materials and supplies but uh quite a bit of ours goes into uh Staffing support um like
adjustment counselors uh medol Liaisons uh certainly the director the transportation costs that um are filling with metco and then some after school Services I'm not sure if Malcolm is
online um but don't want to talk over him if he's there um the grant also is noted that it covers uh four teachers currently which is a little bit more than four it covers four of our PSB teachers right now and
desie um is actually getting a little bit stricter in terms of Medco Grant utilization um and uh looking at what portions or what fractions of uh existing staff should be covered by the
grant uh but ensuring that the resources uh again as we're talking about are uh in student facing a direct student service applications there so um metco does also offer additional um grants for
to offset special education cost but those grants have to be applied for those supplemental grants have to be applied for each year and they're very little money very little money yeah okay Carolyn go ahead thanks and also I would suggest
maybe we can bring this to a full school committee meeting um because I think like I think we need a just like with the um ideas grants I think it would be helpful to understand the full allocation like I'm looking in the
budget book and it says 21.4 FTE under metco and this says for teachers but honestly I don't want to get into this now because I think it the fy2 update and public comment is more important to
me but I think we do need I I would benefit from understanding the how the grant is fully allocated Y no absolutely so this this wasn't meant just to say that it it's only four teachers but it was an I um
that notion that desie is um getting more stringent about how the funds are utilized for existing staff within the within the district structure as such so and we Brookline happens to be the
second largest Medco District so we receive the second largest U funding source from dese regarding Medco thank you then there was a question about the rationale for the increase in me Co
staff um you can see um the breakdown of serving 300 uh 300 students is what we typically average uh we're a little larger than that right now at 303 from K through 12 and the question is what is
the rationale for the increase in Medco staff I believe the request was for two additional uh advisers or liaison BHS has one um one liaison is dedicated to BH BHS and six are in the 8 k8s each
School Lincoln Pierce DRFT School in Hayes has a full-time advisor liaison while Baker and RL Sher leaon and F frr and Lawrence Sher liaison and so the notion there would be to add two additional
um support staff so that each School each K8 school would have its own advisor SL leaon and we can definitely dig more into that when this comes back before the full committee thank you go
ahead this is Diane or Susan we're out of order now so I can uh I can speak to that if this if you wish sure thank you the uh the question was about circuit breaker and why we budget it the way we do circuit
breaker the best practice that desie recommends is that you think about circuit breaker as a three-year cycle in year one you have your special education expenses and you claim them at the end of the year in year two you're
reimbursed for the percentage of what you spent in year one and in year three you spend the money you collected in year two so if you look at the chart Below on this slide you see
that what Desi reimburses us becomes the budget in the oute so the 23 Desi reimbursement becomes the Brookline circuit breaker budget in the following year the revenues obscure the picture somewhat because sometimes at the very
end of the year there's extra money from desie and they send it to us they send it to everybody um they raised the percentage a little bit in FY 24 there was a little glitch this year their final payment for FY 24 didn't hit didn't come to us until the end of July
so it's actually came in in fy2 so when we look at this next year FY 25 revenues will be exaggerated by that final payment from 24 and why the number for 26 repeated is because we don't know what the number
what the Desi reimbursement will be in 26 because we haven't finished spending 25 yet we'll finish spending 25 at the end of 25 the circuit breaker claim will go in in early July and then sometime over the summer we'll know what the revenues will be coming in for circuit breaker
for 26 and we'll budget those for FY 27 we put in the same number as 25 just as a holding number but we really don't know what we're going to collect in 26 and we can't know because we haven't finished spending in 25 yet
so just to clarify for people the budget book showed for FY 26 4258 609 as a repeat but this is more updated and so this is a better that was the confusion I think yeah this this explains it better but if you look throughout the
way we present all of the grants if we don't know what the incoming budget is we gen if we have an idea that there's going to be a shift we use what we've been given by the state and project that but if we have no idea what's going to happen we tend to project the same number for a grant in the upcoming year for
entitlement grants so we followed the same method with this Stephen I see your hand is up go ahead sorry ju just to make sure I understand so what I'm sorry what period would be in what period would the revenue be
exaggerated um if you look at the middle row Revenue collected uhuh that Revenue number is short by 911, 16 three that payment didn't come in until
fy2 so the fy2 number will be over by 911 163 and and how does that impact our our um our projected Gap it doesn't we had
we are planning to spend 36064 99 okay so it's accounted for either way correct okay thank you thank you this is very helpful I was hoping one of these questions would reveal an amazing source
of money no one had considered yet but so much for that um I think we had some other questions did we not get to those ones there was the question on um student facing versus
non-student facing and then the question on increase over the budget did those oh here we go okay much to share yeah so there's not really much to say I mean these are the numbers so um
the question was of the FTE that are in the budget you know what percentage are student facing and what percentage are not and student facing was defined as members of Unit A and the pair professionals so that's what the
definition was and this is what the data shows I have a quick question and maybe I'll also email this um in the past we've been shown so there's often a sort of like
um I don't want to say talking point because that sounds weird but something like 85% of the budget is staff so now this is broken down which is great but I want to know what percent
I'll email you sorry it's interesting to see that um just going back to the FY 23 budget it was 87% um and I think it was so that's just a data point um that shift it could be
and it um yeah and I don't have the analysis from that so I can't really compare um the FTE from from back then to the FTE that I have right now I can say that this is I can uh validate this
data for sure okay we should also keep in mind the movement or the accounting of the change we made when beep went to full day as well um the fractional FTE from the pairs that went from the point
the fractional FTE up to the fulltime FTE as well because I think we captured that in last year's budget uh book as well but if anything that should have made it more student facing those right as opposed to less
and this is less for FY 20 23 was higher than this what I'm saying it was 87% and but we also took some reductions from student facing last year as well too we did I'm just saying that's the trend that it's getting out of student
facing um there was another question on the budget before we um before we get to that there was also a question on the detail of what were the 400 um what is the 400,000 in proposed services and supplies were you able to answer that
question we didn't get to that okay and what about the question on the cuts for budget for building that was Charlie's Budget on the no I didn't even get a chance to connect with Charlie hav had any time yet yep okay go ahead to the next question on
this you have that breakdown sorry go ahead the question came in three parts what is the increase over the FY 25 budget um so the increase uh from the FY 25 budget is
13,46 998 which is a 9 uh 6% increase so that was the first question the next question um or part was how does that compare to Prior years so as you know this year you you
got an all-in budget there were no reductions that had been made in Prior years you got a budget that had already been paired back so went back through the records as best I could uh um and I'm sharing with you what the initial
budget rollup was um so that you could compare Like Apples to Apples so last year uh before the budget um was uh submitted to the school committee uh for consideration uh it was $5 million
higher so the number when we rolled up the first the first iteration was 143 642 989 which was uh 7.4% over what the budget was in the year prior I went back
um on looked at information that I could find for FY 24 and my best estimate of what the original rollup before it came to the school committee was 133 730 588 and then in the second column is
what your final budgets were so the question about how does it compare to Prior years I gave you what the final budgets were and then uh what the rollups were so I hope that that is the question that was being asked or it's my best interpretation of what you were looking for
so um always hire when you first um start out your budget build and then uh you winnow the budget down to the available revenues so that's the answer to that question um
I didn't get uh a chance to get to the third part unfortunately for tonight um we focused our attention on getting you the fy2 um information right and if this is not what the uh the answer to the question that you were looking for you
know um certainly let me know and I'll I'll uh give it another shot but that's how I interpreted the question um Stephen wait one second and then we got Val Carolyn and then
you go ahead Val thanks um so Susan I'm still wondering what FY 26 would look like if we rolled fy2 forward so contract obligations and whatever we're assuming for inflation for non-contract
items and I will have that for you at the next meeting okay thanks y Carn um yeah I guess I just want to reiterate like so it's 6:17 I'm just being I feel really uncomfortable about this there's a lot
of people here I'm guessing Carolyn you're not sharing the meeting let's just get through this so we can get to that as opposed to like to request that we delay our executive session until after public comment is completed at this meeting I'm not trying to chair the meeting I'd like to request that we
delay executive session I can't answer that question I'm not Andy um let's just keep going Stephen do you have another comment um two things one I I wanted to support what Val said but um the bigger question was Susan my um what Val said
was my understanding of the question I think you were trying to answer here um I my still question is still looking for an explanation of the drivers of the budget Gap I I thought that was part of what was going to be answered in the next uh trunch of answers from from you
and from Dr Giller so I'm still looking forward to to that and and we'll have that at the next we just couldn't get to um all of the uh questions and get the fy2 stuff uh before you tonight so okay um I
actually want to support what um Carolyn said if we could push if we could push this longer I would like to hear from the public commenters too so if Andy's here I'd like to ask if we can do that as well I think he
is I can't do that I'm here I think we need to keep to our posted meeting schedule which means that we need to start uh the next meeting at 7 o'clock we're going to get some of these answers that people have we just need to keep going through this in public comment we
will work hard to get people heard let's go through fy2 and then turn to comment we'll have at least 15 minutes for comments I don't know how many speakers we have but we will we will hear who we have and we'll hopefully give them at least a minute or so this one we already covered before
with at the beginning of meeting yeah so I think that's the the conclusion of the questions well then we should be getting to fy2 correct correct okay all right Dr given or Miss
Johnson Susan you're unmute if you're talking talking um yeah so I'll I'll kick it off D Diane and I um have been working with OSS and um she's going to walk you
through the non-salary pieces uh we'll spend more time on that because we haven't spent uh any time on that so far uh but I do want to start with a little update on the salary deficit which is um uh down which is wonderful and so
you'll say well how and why uh so what we've done um is sure uh numbers are moving around um so one of the strategies I had mentioned at a previous meeting um to
help mitigate the impact of this deficit was to Institute a hiring freeze and so uh Dr gillery um and I have gone through uh the positions that were open and um
he's engaged in uh conversations with uh program leaders and we um have a number of positions which are listed a little further down you can't see um on the screen right now um I think it's six or
seven positions that will not be filled uh for this year so yeah if you can roll up then I can just name them so people can hear so the um uh office of student services has a senior director position
uh that position will not be filled this year likewise um there's no uh folks in these positions obviously um oaf the data NIS director uh that uh we're instituting a hir increase on that one
custodial position uh a point4 nurse uh that recently uh resigned uh one adjustment counselor um a BHS special education parah and a point to English language
uh learner teacher so those are the positions that um are Frozen um I also do want to remind you that there were three one: one FTE that um had been added um and those are in incorporated
into the projection they were the last time you saw this but I just wanted to remind you that those are um accounted for so that there's no wondering about that and then also the other uh component is um going through um the
projection and releasing any money for open positions also as we've been hiring we've been really conscientious about um uh hiring uh within um you know our our
allotted amount of money and um a number of the positions we've hired have have come in less than what we were holding in the projection so all of those adjustments as well as all the Grant shifting around has all been reconciled out and so we feel really good about uh
where we're at on the salary side also made some adjustments too for um some positions that will not be filled in terms of coaching and stiens not because we're freezing them but because in fact the seasons have gone by and uh those
positions weren't hired so all of that has been taken into consideration here and um has helped mitigate um the um the salary deficit so that's the update on that and I'm going to let Diane walk you
through um what's happening in other areas where we're seeing deficits now again when we say deficits this means in a category doesn't mean every account that we have is overspent as we know from the quarterly report that you just received couple of weeks ago there's um
unencumbered money um in the non-salary lines and we looked at that and so Diane sent a a Yan's work in getting um um that information kind of processed through and I'm going to let her share
uh information about where we're seeing deficits um in other areas that are not salary so I I'll turn the mic over to danan thank you Susan um if we can slide down to the grid I think that'll be the easiest way to
explain what we're looking at so as a yesterday um you can see in the leftmost column of numbers that is our fy2 budget as current as it currently stands in the
next column we see the expenses of what's what's been what money has gone out the door as of yesterday and then we see what is encumbered requisitioned or encumbered on our books as of yesterday and then
the column he is where we're really projecting now these projections are based on a variety of sources in the case of the OSS settlements Lisa shared a document that was instructed both for this year and for next fiscal year about her expectation of settlements and I
cross smash that against what had already been encumbered this year and this is the amount of those settlements that has not yet been encumbered likewise with transportation we looked at the students who may go out of district and and what their projected
cost is as well as some very unexpected um mckin vento invoices that turned up months late that we may or may not be responsible I've put that in here as if we will be responsible but we're still investigating that further as far
as the OSS contracted services this amount the 676 9917 is the amount of contracted services that are contracts we know about that are either fully executed contracts or contracts that are in the process of
being fully executed that are not yet encumbered they may be fully executed and partially encumbered or they may be not yet executed and so not yet at all encumbered this is the and this is the amount that we have to cover the last the last category is
other that is everything in OSS that is not settlements Transportation contracted services that we can anticipate at this time for expenses that may pop up between now and June and so all of those taken together the
actual expenses the actual requisitions and POS our projections bring us to a total overage which is repeated up above we can scroll up so that last column here shouldn't say total it should say total in excess
of budget okay right I just want to confirm that my understanding is correct okay is what it is so like the bud 486 for settlements we're really spending over a million dollars in settlements we are indeed we've more than doubled our
budget there we have so these are these sorry so can Mar can you just extend that to the rest so what are we actually paying for Trans you have to add the First Column and the last column to get the total here what's represented as total is actually total in in excess of budget
because the total expense here total projected expense there's no column there so it's budget and then that last col column is total in excess of budget which is if you do a whole bunch of plusy and minusing all the way across these columns that's what you're going to get but basically that means that OSS
settlements were over a million dollars and so they're more than 100% 150% in excess of budget so what I'm sorry what columns am I adding for instance to get First Column and the last column yes first and the last column so it's 4 million for Transportation 4.0 so we've
overspent by 10% in transportation but we've overspent by 150% in settlements and we've over spent by 70 something percent in contracted services and and by less than 10% in other sorry go ahead Diane go back up to
where you were sorry that's okay thank you for clarifying um and so you see these numbers again so our our budget Gap appap so here are the numbers our Gap our deficit in settlements our deficit in special ed Transportation our
deficit in contracted services and our deficit and others coupled with the salary deficit brings us to a total deficit of 2686 359 up against that we have some funding resources before you go on to funding
resources Diane can I get clarification so last time we talked we we spoke about two million in salary deficit and $2 million in non-salary potential funding to
reallocate so um where has the $2 million in potential funding to reallocate that's the 727 on that line the the next line down I guess we're just presenting it in a different way now let me ask my actual question the
the budget Gap all we're showing is student services um deficit are there no other deficits elsewhere in the budget are the only deficits there are not there are not the Sal deficit is not exclusive to osss but the non-salary four elements that you have there there the only
non-salary deficits are in student services that is correct thank you can you repeat that please Mariah yeah so last time we met there was we were presented with there's a two or maybe it's two meetings ago $2 million salary deficit but there was another $2 million
in non-salary across the the district that they were then going to do all of the work to have people um sort of make sure that all of their encumbrances were up to date and all of that and evaluate what still needed to be spent and we were hopeful that we
would be able to retain the entire 2 million to offset the $2 million in salary deficit now things have changed the salary deficit has decreased however it looks like um there are still big areas which contribute to the deficit
which weren't called out in the same way before and they're all in oss the four items you see below that which are going to be and I don't want to like take Diane's thunder away from the next bit but that $2 million we heard from last time of non-salary has been reduced to
727 and I presume that's from other offices other areas nonoss areas that are contributing funds to offset the the deficits in OSS that we see listed above great that does that make sense
Stephen I know it's so many just keep going I'll okay so I can give it another uh quick please just keep going please just keep just keep going we'll just yeah the funding plan we'll go go on to the funding plan so the funding plan as
Diane said the non-salary funds is the equivalent of the non-salary unencumbered balance from the last report so um at that time we were at the second quarter we're past the second quarter and if you go down to the grid
below you'll see that there's a bunch of things that are not were not encumbered right so where it says not in the system all of these um expenses need to be added right and so that is primarily why
you see the biggest difference between the $2 million that was available from the second quarter report and what we're showing now and we had mentioned that at the time that we knew that there was a gap here and um and we had also asked
everyone to encumber essential uh items from now until the end of the year so all that work has taken place with that had not been completed um at the time of the second quarter report so um now we've completed that work and of course the numbers we're giving you now are
going to change again you know because in inevitably 100 different things are going to happen over the course of the next uh four months and uh so some of these numbers are going to shift again I I I anticipate the salary numbers might
even improve um it just depends on what uh what we see in terms of absenteeism and things like that as we go through the year if some of the open positions that we're still hoping to fill do not get filled then there'll be more breakage there
so that will improve um the situation as well but for right here right now um the nons salary funds that are available to help offset the the deficit is we're estimating about 727 th000 to
23 and then Susan um I think similarly the way you all talked about the um the salary what we asked people to do there we also asked them to do that as Diane was articulating for the non-salary
items and so for example the a large one of the big ticket items in that non-salary funds available is the equity audit um it's included that money has been that uh money has been freed up to
go back into this fund um and it's part of the base there and so uh each um each senior leader uh school principal each budget manager we've asked them to scrub and double scrub their POS uh their
requests to see if there was anything they could defer or delay and this is the initial result of that and we're asking them to even take another look um at that as well to say what is it that you absolutely need to get through the end of the year what can you defer for a
year um and and pick it up at a later time and so this is how we were able to um identify this this pocket of money at this time thank you lonus do you want to talk quickly I want us to in no more than a minute get to the public comment and we
will be able to take at least 15 minutes of public comment absolutely and so these last two items again I had mentioned before that um we would uh and these are really this is the last um onetime Revenue that we have available
to us all of the other uh revolving funds had previously been tapped um in order to offset deficits from prior years um I feel pretty comfortable with uh being able to use the fund balance that's uh in these this amount of the
fund balance that's available in material fees and beep because um there's a recurring balance at the end of every year that's greater than that so what that tells me is the amount of money that we are collecting and the amount of money we're expending is is
coming in pretty close but some point in time in the past uh there was an accumulation of funds that um and I can't go back and and tell you how and when and why I suspect it could have been during your covid uh years when
money was being expensed off the federal grants um that uh enabled some of these other funds to accumulate balances um um and so this will cause no harm to any programs and um and so uh I
feel at this point um it would be although not you know my my preference I don't I don't see any other option here to close the gap other than to use this onetime Revenue again when we use one-time Revenue when we still have expenses in the upcoming year um then we
then it that's what we call like that structural deficit piece that then um you know needs to be funded in the in the in the upcoming year so that means at this point in time if you take where at with um our deficit projections and
the funding plan it means we're still a little bit upside down but I'm pretty optimistic we'll be able to close that assuming no you know significant out of District placements or or other things um catastrophic that uh we can't
anticipate happen I don't I don't see that um but you know um I'm not Clairvoyant and and um there was a a small possibility that something could happen that could change it wildly but I don't uh I don't believe that to be the
case at this point thank you Susan um Helen and then Suzanne very quickly and then we're going to turn it over to public comment very quickly I'd like to thank you for doing the hard work to
make this budget deficit for this year go away I think that's critical I do not want to go for a reserve fund transfer I see you know there has has to be a way for us to accomplish all of this within our budget and uh I appreciate the hard
work that you've done to to get it to where it is now I would hope by the next meeting we would see no deficit um I mean that would be my goal uh that somehow we freeze whatever else we need to freeze to make sure that that that
59,000 goes away thanks Helen Suzanne and then we're going to turn it to public comments so if people want to put up hands I'll call them in the order that we are going to and we'll just call them on the order that they raise hands um I just want to
say say again what Helen has said just very quickly thank you thank you thank you to Susan and Diane Mariah all who have worked on this Dr Giller having a deficit of 59,000 as of today is something that we can deal with and I think this is really good news so thank
you this is great agreed agreed um okay with that and I want to say thank you also to um the ANF team and to Dr gillery for coming up with a plan highlighting that this is a as you said this is built on one-time funds so this
the budgeting needs to come into alignment um it's not a good plan to use the onetime funds here we are and we need to um address the the underlying issues um but at least we are out of the whole for 25 with a plan and hopefully we will have to use even less of those
dollars than are even projected right right now um okay um I see Jen's hand is up Jen I'm going to ask you to keep your comments to um one minute if you don't mind and um we will hear from you go ahead absolutely thank you so much I
want to thank you very much for your leadership Mariah I'm impressed with your leadership tonight I'm impressed with all of you I'm very grateful for your service I'm very grateful to Dr Giller for his service to the uh Town um as you contemplate tough decisions I
want to please that we make a significant effort to remain invested and invest more in the needs of our students who are at most risk who are struggling who are low income who are metco students I I really would like to
see an equity officer inside every school kids need that they need the support they need to see someone who looks like them who cares about them in particular when they're struggling in a white predominant school system and I really want to urge that that not be put
on The Chopping Block please because the entire town benefits from equity and diversity and we need to invest in kids who need it the most thank you so much for your service thanks Chen um Alex go ahead also one minute other folks please just put up your hands it'll help me
track time if I know how many people are planning to speak so that would be very helpful go ahead Alex hi I'm a seventh grader at Baker School I would like to use this time to talk about um how the budget plan will affect students
inside and outside the classroom um students rely on school funded School funded Sports and music and may not be able to afford to participate um if not through school um me and others me and others
personally have watched School sport School sports like B volleyball and basketball our whole lives and would be devastated if they were cut and money was pulled from them um almost seems to this budget plan um and these budget
these budget cuts were crafted to negatively affects um students as much as possible by cutting classroom AIDS and making class sizes larger it will make learning more difficult for already challenged students um these are not money wasting unnecessary programs um
they are essential to our education um I urge the administrators to find um budget options that will have significantly less um impact on students in education thank you thanks Alex it's
always wonderful to hear from students other um commenters go ahead Julia hi good evening I'm really happy to be here thank you for all of the time that you're putting into these really difficult issues and I just want to
Second um what Jen offered around the importance of investing in equity and the office of educational Equity because it is such an essential piece of our ability to support students with all backgrounds in Brookline and knowing that there are gaps that continue to
persist we just have to be sure that we can focus on this investment and keep it at the center of the conversation thank you for all you're doing thank you Julia other public commenters Marsha go ahead
head yes I I would like to just speak on behalf of Brooklyn adult education um because I think it serves a part of our community that contributes to paying for our school systems and our education systems but may no longer have students
in in school and so it offers education and a connection to the school system for all of us Brookline residents and it's been going a long time it's been a point of Pride now that I I now teach there that it's still going and I know
would been a hard process to keep it going with the pandemic and everything else but I just urge you to consider the the long range implications of not having it for seniors and other Brookline
residents thank you Mara other public comments just raise your hand and I'll call on you um Mariah don't forget maybe we could vote on the gifts and the grants if we oh yes yeah well let's give let's let's let public comment go let's give people
another minute or so okay and of course our advisory committee colleagues um you know you're also of course welcome to speak you know that but I'll just remind you that we always um you don't have to be told to raise your hand so if you have anything to say feel feel
free and I'll just announce maybe for members and members of the public that um the meeting materials we use tonight will be on our website and on the town site um close to probably 8:00 p.m. after this school committee 7:00 meeting so you can look for those then thank you Betsy I don't see any any other hands up
so we're going to do some administrative business right now and if anyone wants to raise their hand or raise their hands we can call on you when we're done voting our um our couple of things we have to vote so the first thing is thank you Betsy is um uh voting to accept two gifts the first is the anonymous gift
for $5,000 for um the ace scholarship fund for students who went to the Dominican Republic during the February vacation last week and then $300 gift to parent child plus um for the um parent child plus program um thank you to the
donors the anonymous donors for these gifts and we need a I'll make a motion for acceptance do we have a second second thank you Carolyn how do you vote Yes Sarah yes B yes and I vote yes thank you Betsy for pulling that up and then
then the next we have I believe two grants if I recall correctly um that's right okay so we have two grants to accept the first is for $115,000 um for Meco um and then do you mind scrolling down for the next one Betsy I can't remember what it is off the top of my
head thank you the youth development Grant from the BCF for $1 16, um $700 and this is for beep summer enrichment program um I'm going to take a motion and then we'll take your question after we get the motion on the Carolyn can I
get a motion for acceptance I will make the motion do I have a second second thank you okay Carolyn go ahead um I don't know if we'll have time for this I actually had questions reading through the um metco
Grant I don't know if Jody's here Jody was here yeah okay go ahead so this is a grant for $15,000 and it says 210000 students will be served D all K through three teachers
will participate in high dosage tutoring after school there's also a separate request for $88,500 for a contract for high dosage tutoring and cultural competency training so my
overall question is we're accepting a grant for $115,000 but is this a program that has other costs associated with it lonus or Jody could you answer that I'll defer to Claire actually who oh is
Claire here okay is charge of the metco program and also is was this it looks like this is already underway they shouldn't be spending the funds before we've we've accepted the Grant I thought it looked like something about December 1st but that was another
question is Claire here there's a lot of people in the meeting I can't see everyone who's here I don't see claron I know she was on earlier maybe Jody can you take this so that we can keep going I actually can't I don't know the answer to Carolyn's question this was written
separate from me okay um Carolyn do you feel comfortable voting and then we can get your questions answered before this goes to full school committee because this is a vote to recommend to full school committee so we can get clear answers sure your Jody's list you're listed as
the project manager just so you know oh that's good um I believe in high dosage tutoring and I think it's important for our students um but that that is good to know thank you do do we need to accept this one tonight or can we defer it we
can defer okay so then we will only vote on the um beep summer program um so we'll amend our earlier vote and second to only the those two if that's okay with um B and Sarah since we can defer
okay so the vote is going to be just on approving the 16,700 for um the beep summer program from BCF um Carolyn how do you vote Yes B yes Sarah yes and I vote Yes okay um I
saw a hand up but now it is gone um whoever you were we have two more minutes for questions or for comments if you would like to make a comment go ahead Vina hi yes it was me and I just wanted to do what you actually um asked what you
actually just did was to um table that last um proposal until we can um speak with Malcolm Malcolm's on on the call I was on Just for just to um to chime in wasn't expecting some type of Grant to come up that was on the table so thank you for um putting on hold until we can get more information I appreciate it
sounds good thank you thank you okay um Anna go ahead and then unless we have another hand up we'll have you be our last commenter okay uh that's fine I actually just wanted to I guess question SL comment follow up on I think it was Valerie's question about
the BHS funding and specifically special education uh because the comment was that the Staffing had increased marginally but from 58 to 95 but there was a small increase in students and 58 to 95 is not marginal in
I think most people and certainly financially so I guess I'm just asking this doesn't have to be answered now but uh asking school committee to follow up on that I think Hal Hal was only comparing the unit a folks to Unit A he did not have the parah number I see his
hand is up is that correct H yes that is correct that I tried to make that clear that the P numbers were not included there so it was not an app to app number thank you okay can we still get clarification on what the Apples to Apples comparison is over time I think
Hal and they you said you would provide additional information H so we can get that okay as part of that okay Kevin go ahead and then we'll wrap up thank you Hal for staying on Hello thank you I just wanted to um thank you all for being here but also just encourage all of you to remember um
the impact that large class sizes has on students thank you for your time thank you Kevin um I really appreciate all of the people the committee members the staff and the public who have stayed with us for um the better part of two hours and
we are going to take a 10-minute break before we go into our next school committee meeting so I will see all of the school committee members in a short bit and as Betsy said the materials and the recording from this meeting will be online later on tonight thank you bye-bye